Nearly 1000 flights and 6000km.
I have been amazed at the reliability and still wonder how many hours I can expect before the motors fail.
Most of the hours are pre-set missions to monitor cattle and protect our crop from birds.
I have replaced the propellers twice, bought 4 more batteries, 2 quad-charges and the Smart Controller (V2).
During the first replacement of the propellers, I put the 2 rear props on backwards (I'm an idiot). During take-off, the drone flipped and landed hard. I thought I had broken it....
With a total of 6 batteries, we can keep the drone in the air almost indefinitely.
The Smart Controller was purchased for 2 reasons.
1) I could teach my wife how to operate it without using a mobile phone. She is in charge of all flights now. I do maintenance and updates.
2) Connect the output to a TV.
I purchased a wet-suit from Phantom Rain and have flown 50 hours in very poor conditions. At one stage the drone struggled to return home as winds hit 50km/h with sideways rain. I had to land it in the paddock and manually retrieve it because battery power was below 10%.
We have had 2 floods in the first 3 months of the year and the paddocks are saturated to the point that we cannot get machinery out to work.
The drone is covered in mud-splatter every time it lands. A wipe down and quick check is all we have been doing.
By biggest gripe is mission loss. Randomly, I will lose the entire mission. Most of them have about 40 way-points so it is extremely frustrating to redo them.
Automated return home to take-off point has about a 50% success rate for landing on the pad. Another 30% within 3 meters. Worse case has been 20 meters when it almost hit power lines.
In "ludicrous" mode, I have clocked it at 68km/h, had up to 200 meters vertically and 5km horizontally.
In summary: Absolutely delighted with it.
I have been amazed at the reliability and still wonder how many hours I can expect before the motors fail.
Most of the hours are pre-set missions to monitor cattle and protect our crop from birds.
I have replaced the propellers twice, bought 4 more batteries, 2 quad-charges and the Smart Controller (V2).
During the first replacement of the propellers, I put the 2 rear props on backwards (I'm an idiot). During take-off, the drone flipped and landed hard. I thought I had broken it....
With a total of 6 batteries, we can keep the drone in the air almost indefinitely.
The Smart Controller was purchased for 2 reasons.
1) I could teach my wife how to operate it without using a mobile phone. She is in charge of all flights now. I do maintenance and updates.
2) Connect the output to a TV.
I purchased a wet-suit from Phantom Rain and have flown 50 hours in very poor conditions. At one stage the drone struggled to return home as winds hit 50km/h with sideways rain. I had to land it in the paddock and manually retrieve it because battery power was below 10%.
We have had 2 floods in the first 3 months of the year and the paddocks are saturated to the point that we cannot get machinery out to work.
The drone is covered in mud-splatter every time it lands. A wipe down and quick check is all we have been doing.
By biggest gripe is mission loss. Randomly, I will lose the entire mission. Most of them have about 40 way-points so it is extremely frustrating to redo them.
Automated return home to take-off point has about a 50% success rate for landing on the pad. Another 30% within 3 meters. Worse case has been 20 meters when it almost hit power lines.
In "ludicrous" mode, I have clocked it at 68km/h, had up to 200 meters vertically and 5km horizontally.
In summary: Absolutely delighted with it.