Drones

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Well, after dealing with my share of "Is this still available?" buyers (first line of my for sale ad stated "if the ad is still up the drone is still available", lowballers, and people who seemed legitimately interested but were taking 24-36 hours to respond to each and every exchange (one of whom got ****** when I told him I moved on and the drone was sold), but now that I've sold mine and I'm looking to buy I'm dealing with the opposite:

- People who sold their **** weeks ago and haven't deleted their ad & respond "Oh yeah, I sold it", and STILL don't delete their ad.
- People who sold their **** weeks ago and just don't respond at all.
- People who respond but take agonizingly long. Honestly, if you want to sell your **** don't take 8-48 hours (or more, I've had people take a week!) to respond to every exchange.
- People who think their 6 month old used drone is worth retail minus $25 just because "I'll give you the receipt showing you what I paid".
- People selling their busted crashed drones that need 50% of it's actual value in repairs for 80% of retail.

Good lord, people...why is this buying and selling thing so bloody hard?

If you're selling something, do your homework on the pricing and actually respond to inquiries in a timely fashion. And when it sells, delete the damn ad.

If you're buying, don't be a dick and waste peoples time in any way, shape, or form.

Where's the Tylenol? :p
 
PrivatePilot said:
Well, after dealing with my share of "Is this still available?" buyers (first line of my for sale ad stated "if the ad is still up the drone is still available", lowballers, and people who seemed legitimately interested but were taking 24-36 hours to respond to each and every exchange (one of whom got ****** when I told him I moved on and the drone was sold), but now that I've sold mine and I'm looking to buy I'm dealing with the opposite:

- People who sold their **** weeks ago and haven't deleted their ad & respond "Oh yeah, I sold it", and STILL don't delete their ad.
- People who sold their **** weeks ago and just don't respond at all.
- People who respond but take agonizingly long. Honestly, if you want to sell your **** don't take 8-48 hours (or more, I've had people take a week!) to respond to every exchange.
- People who think their 6 month old used drone is worth retail minus $25 just because "I'll give you the receipt showing you what I paid".
- People selling their busted crashed drones that need 50% of it's actual value in repairs for 80% of retail.

Good lord, people...why is this buying and selling thing so bloody hard?

If you're selling something, do your homework on the pricing and actually respond to inquiries in a timely fashion. And when it sells, delete the damn ad.

If you're buying, don't be a dick and waste peoples time in any way, shape, or form.

Where's the Tylenol? :p
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if it helps....over on red flag deals there are amazon warehouse deals on the Mavic mini now. Not sure how many there are as they seem popular.

I‘ve unboxed mine and charged everything up. Just going through tutorials now. What a great little piece of kit. I also bought the dji refresh care insurance thing which was cheap and gives me two replacement drones if I **** up for about $50 each.

Some amazing tech in this thing. I didn’t realize that you could press a few buttons and hey presto the thing takes a movie in a set flight pattern, edits the movie and sets it to music automatically. Crazy.

The only thing I wished this drone had was horizontal object avoidance but that would push the weight above the 249g mark.

I was also worried that the geofencing on the fly app would limit me. Not so...I’m on an approach route to the runway of the local airport and I can still fly up to 60M it seems which is more than fair. If I go a few minutes away there’s less restrictions.
 
The more I think about it the more I’ve decided to just suck it up and buy the Air2 - the lack of sensors in the mini plus the absence of a few flight modes (all in the interest of staying under the 250g limit, which doesn’t matter for me as I’m licensed anyways) is a deal breaker. And when it comes to size, the Air2 isn’t *that* much larger.

As for geofencing, take note that the DJI software will still let you fly in areas (even if it’s at a restricted altitude) that may still be illegal under the Canadian drone laws, so tread carefully - the fines are pretty steep and all it takes is one person to make a phone call.
 
Cool thread! :cool:

Some friends and I built this recently, its a Tarot X4 frame kit with 18" rotors. It's got a Pixhawk on it with Ardupilot. It's beefy, weighs about 5 kilos when its ready to fly
XdGGygq.jpg


We do our flying up at TEMAC in Stouffville. They are a great, welcoming club for electric R/C aircraft. On the day we first flew the quad, the field was empty so it was all ours!
3fY0zIc.jpg
 
tricky said:
Cool thread! :cool:

Some friends and I built this recently, its a Tarot X4 frame kit with 18" rotors. It's got a Pixhawk on it with Ardupilot. It's beefy, weighs about 5 kilos when its ready to fly
XdGGygq.jpg


We do our flying up at TEMAC in Stouffville. They are a great, welcoming club for electric R/C aircraft. On the day we first flew the quad, the field was empty so it was all ours!
3fY0zIc.jpg
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Damn. What's the purpose of one that big? Just because you can? Someone wants to fly a proper video camera? What is the payload capacity?
 
Awesome drone but portability is the issue. Biggest reason I sold my old Phantom (which honestly I really loved) and bought the Spark (and am now looking at Air’s) is portability. The big drones are just no fun to try to transport on a motorcycle, and that’s 90% of where found myself wanting the drone with me for cool photos and such.
 
GreyGhost said:
Damn. What's the purpose of one that big? Just because you can? Someone wants to fly a proper video camera? What is the payload capacity?
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We built it to do flight testing, as a way of testing out some rotor improvements we are working on at our lab (the aerodynamics lab @ Ryerson)

We needed a big *** drone, because its easier to deal with larger rotors for what we are trying. And anything ready to fly in this size is going to be $$$$$, so we assembled our own

And maybe 20% "just because we can" ?

That frame kit is set up for filming with proper cameras, it has retractable landing skids in order to get a clear FOV as well. But for our flight tests, we won't be mounting any payload, to keep it light so we can get a bit more flight time out of it

PrivatePilot said:
Awesome drone but portability is the issue. Biggest reason I sold my old Phantom (which honestly I really loved) and bought the Spark (and am now looking at Air’s) is portability. The big drones are just no fun to try to transport on a motorcycle, and that’s 90% of where found myself wanting the drone with me for cool photos and such.
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I agree 100%, that thing has zero practicality outside of recreation and commercial filming! I wouldn't dream of packing it on a bike, or really bringing it anywhere except the flying field

My lab has a history of making drones that are unwieldy. This is us after the first flight of our prototype "solar plane" (though it had no solar cells at the time of this picture). This is a part of the "CREATeV" project at our lab, CREATeV — Clean Renewable Energy Aerial Test Vehicle

552pNp2.jpg
 
Man, seeing those start-stands at whatever RC field you're at really makes me yearn for my old RC days when I was super into the hobby...

modelplanes.JPG

modelplanes2.JPG

Still have my original beat and battered trainer from circa 1990 in my basement. Sold pretty much everything else except from a few of my old Helis as well from the early 2000's when I was into those as well. Might throw a motor on the old trainer it one day and fly it again for old times sake.
 
Those all look fantastic.

I love the idea of flying models of anything. I think that’s why I got into the model rockets this year.

Another question. Looking at the regulations for drones under 250g am I correct in thinking that I can fly more or less anywhere as long as I avoid people, airports, provincial parks/ F class airspace (prisons/military etc). Stay under 400ft and keep the drone within eyesight? Basically don’t fly like an *******.
 
So I learned a thing today....apparently drones ordered directly from DJI's webstore ship not only fast to Canada (most are saying a few days), but arrive duty and tax free. And free shipping.

I'm not sure how that is (it seems odd Canada Customs doesn't want their pound of flesh - HST at minimum, but potentially duties as well?) but hey, there's way too many stories of people receiving their shipments $0 due for it to not be legit.

So, for an Air2, $1139 on Amazon (or other retailers pretty much the same price) = $1287 after taxes.

Direct DJI, $799USD = $1053. Even with a $25 loss on the exchange via my credit card, lets say $1075 CDN.

So, close to $200 savings ordering online.

Hmmm.....
 
jc100 said:
Those all look fantastic.

I love the idea of flying models of anything. I think that’s why I got into the model rockets this year.

Another question. Looking at the regulations for drones under 250g am I correct in thinking that I can fly more or less anywhere as long as I avoid people, airports, provincial parks/ F class airspace (prisons/military etc). Stay under 400ft and keep the drone within eyesight? Basically don’t fly like an *******.
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The DJI Mavic Mini fall under Transport Canada’s Micro Drone category. If you have a micro drone, you must never put people or aircraft in danger. To keep yourself and others safe, you must always fly your drone:

  • where you can see it at all times
  • below 122 metres (400 feet) in the air
  • away from bystanders, at a minimum horizontal distance of 30 metres for basic operations
  • away from emergency operations and advertised events
  • Avoid forest fires, outdoor concerts and parades
  • away from airports and heliports
    • 5.6 kilometres (3 nautical miles) from airports
    • 1.9 kilometres (1 nautical mile) from heliports
  • outside controlled airspace (for basic operations only)
  • far away from other aircraft
    • Don’t fly anywhere near airplanes, helicopters and other drones

There's *less* restrictions, but not none as some think. Most are the same as the licenced category honestly with the exception of not needing to have a licence or have your drone registered. Considering the test is only $5 or something like that (and isn't particularly hard), it seems that buying something like a Mavic Mini solely to escape the licence and registration requirements isn't the best decision. The test took me about an hour and the cost of the test and registration is really cheap in the end.
 
Just found out that using an educational email address you can get a 10% discount as well.

Wracked my brain on how I might be able to get one of those...and you know what? I remember when I came back to riding again after my long absense I decided to take the M2x refresher course at Centennial College and had an account there as a result.

And sure enough, it was still there. Had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get access to my account again, but sure enough, I have an @my.centennialcollege.ca email address there. I got access to that all settled out, logged in, and yep, all good.

And just like that, after jumping through a few more hoops at the DJI website I have a 10% educational discount code sitting there on my account now.

Well, it looks like I have 2 of them sitting there, actually... lol.

Edit: $80USD discount, $719 USD now after discount. I think this pretty much firms up the reality that I'm ordering an Air2 direct from DJI lol.
 
PrivatePilot said:
The DJI Mavic Mini fall under Transport Canada’s Micro Drone category. If you have a micro drone, you must never put people or aircraft in danger. To keep yourself and others safe, you must always fly your drone:

  • where you can see it at all times
  • below 122 metres (400 feet) in the air
  • away from bystanders, at a minimum horizontal distance of 30 metres for basic operations
  • away from emergency operations and advertised events
  • Avoid forest fires, outdoor concerts and parades
  • away from airports and heliports
    • 5.6 kilometres (3 nautical miles) from airports
    • 1.9 kilometres (1 nautical mile) from heliports
  • outside controlled airspace (for basic operations only)
  • far away from other aircraft
    • Don’t fly anywhere near airplanes, helicopters and other drones

There's *less* restrictions, but not none as some think. Most are the same as the licenced category honestly with the exception of not needing to have a licence or have your drone registered. Considering the test is only $5 or something like that (and isn't particularly hard), it seems that buying something like a Mavic Mini solely to escape the licence and registration requirements isn't the best decision. The test took me about an hour and the cost of the test and registration is really cheap in the end.
Click to expand...

that’s what I thought....

If I like the mini I’ll get the licence and a bigger drone but the mini is really small and packable.
 
jc100 said:
that’s what I thought....

If I like the mini I’ll get the licence and a bigger drone but the mini is really small and packable.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if I didn't already have the licence and didn't want to bother with it I'd certainly have probably bought a Mini, but a few things going against it that I didn't like:

- No occusync. Having dealt with the WiFi connection of my Spark (and the Mini uses a similar setup) it could be wonky at times. Scared me on a few occasions when I thought I was about to lose the drone.
- No obstacle avoidance sensors. The spark was a +1 there as at least it had forward sensors.
- A bunch of flight modes (some that even my spark had) are missing. Intentionally crippled as to not bite into the Air/Pro market too much, most seem to think.
- No 4K. Not a show stopper (heck, I don't even have a 4K TV...yet) but for future proofing it was something I kind of wanted.

Now, I know all that being said, it's priced accordingly (and some of that stuff needed to be left off to get in under the 250g limit), and it's one heck fo a drone for the money, no question, but aside from the 3 axis gimble the Spark I just sold was missing it would actually be a step backwards in a few aspects for me.

Anyhow, further to my last flurry of emails, I just ordered the Air2. $719 USD with free shipping and no taxes/duties for a drone that would cost me $1300 for locally, well, hard to now jump at that. Might order a second one (using that mysterious second 10% discount code) for a Christmas present depending on how this order goes.
 
Holy hell, DJI shipped already at 6AM our time.
 
Damn it, this thread is making me want to dive back in FPV again. But $200 just for the controller is kinda hard to spend. Why do i like expensive hobbies
 
PrivatePilot said:
Yeah, if I didn't already have the licence and didn't want to bother with it I'd certainly have probably bought a Mini, but a few things going against it that I didn't like:

- No occusync. Having dealt with the WiFi connection of my Spark (and the Mini uses a similar setup) it could be wonky at times. Scared me on a few occasions when I thought I was about to lose the drone.
- No obstacle avoidance sensors. The spark was a +1 there as at least it had forward sensors.
- A bunch of flight modes (some that even my spark had) are missing. Intentionally crippled as to not bite into the Air/Pro market too much, most seem to think.
- No 4K. Not a show stopper (heck, I don't even have a 4K TV...yet) but for future proofing it was something I kind of wanted.

Now, I know all that being said, it's priced accordingly (and some of that stuff needed to be left off to get in under the 250g limit), and it's one heck fo a drone for the money, no question, but aside from the 3 axis gimble the Spark I just sold was missing it would actually be a step backwards in a few aspects for me.

Anyhow, further to my last flurry of emails, I just ordered the Air2. $719 USD with free shipping and no taxes/duties for a drone that would cost me $1300 for locally, well, hard to now jump at that. Might order a second one (using that mysterious second 10% discount code) for a Christmas present depending on how this order goes.
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They ship by DSL courier from China and arrive in about 6 days or so. I did all the sleuthing before the prime day deal popped up. I was going to wait until Black Friday but the amazon deal was very good.

I bought a parabolic range extender for my DJI controller as I’d heard about the drop outs. I’m hoping that gives a small boost for line of sight. If I ever fly it to its range it will be way out in the boonies and without trees if I can manage it. I’m impressed that everything fits in a case the size of a lunchbox. This is going to be fun on trips and more on vacation....if that happens again anytime.

edit. Amazon sent me a free drone course coupon as part of this deal so I’ll do that soon in case I fancy a larger drone in the future.
 
So there was an article in the local paper about Drone Delivery Canada making deliveries to first nations. Check out the weight and speed of the chopper. It would seem to me to be a decent safety risk to have a 1000+ lb unmanned vehicle cooking along at low altitude at 120 kph. That would really put a hurting on anything it bumped in to.

20201017-195628.jpg

I apologize in advance for image rotation. Imgbb wouldnt let me fix it.
 
That's a whole different level of drone - very controlled flight (despite the fact they're a drone), defined flight paths, onboard transponders so other aircraft know where they are, the HQ liasonons with air traffic control when necessary, flying using lots of onboard and cloud based data to prevent collisions with towers, etc etc. Very low risk in the end to anything short of, well...potentially, other drones flown by hobby pilots like us - that would be about the only thing sharing the airspace at the level they fly at, and also the one thing they couldn't plan for.
 
PrivatePilot said:
That's a whole different level of drone - very controlled flight (despite the fact they're a drone), defined flight paths, onboard transponders so other aircraft know where they are, the HQ liasonons with air traffic control when necessary, flying using lots of onboard and cloud based data to prevent collisions with towers, etc etc. Very low risk in the end to anything short of, well...potentially, other drones flown by hobby pilots like us - that would be about the only thing sharing the airspace at the level they fly at, and also the one thing they couldn't plan for.
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Vfr planes? That little bugger will be hard to see and you arent running any collision detection/radar/anything else to help you. The drone can try to avoid you, you probably dont even know it is there to try to avoid it.
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