As a total newbie to all things flying, but having reasonable experience with RC boats, cars and trucks, I have a few questions:
- How hard are the quads to fly?
- is FPV essential for aerial photography?
- How "breakable" is something like the kit Marschy bought?
- Is GPS required?
I'm considering an action camera purchase ahead of a big trip in 2015, and would love to be able to get some aerial shots of camp sites, water crossings, waterfalls, etc.
If you're going to be travelling, look at tri-copters, you can fold them up to some degree for transporting. Plus they can be far more stable than quads. The further apart the motors are, the more stable they fly. Read some of the RCgroups forum as Crispy also suggested to me. Great place to get ideas for beginners.
Otherwise, my experience so far is that they are extremely easy to fly in comparison to a fixed wing. That may not help you, but as an ex RC fixed wing flyer, the thing that nearly always did my planes in was landings which are always done at speeds in excess of 20km give or take (sometimes a lot faster than 20kmh). The landing speed of a quad can be as slow as you like, as good as the control you have of the throttle. Given the slower and easier to control speeds, my guess is this will invariably lead to less crashes than flying fixed wing, for me at least.
My kit is breakable in comparison to Crispies in so much that my kit doesn't come with a nifty flight control board that provides functionality like altitude/position hold, return to launch position, fail safe mode. But for around another $200-400 (and more) on top of a clone kit price, functionality like this plus on screen diagnostics can be added depending on your budget.
Spare frame for my kit is around $20 delivered if you look on aliexpress or ebay or hobbyking. You can pick up individual arms for as little as $3-5 plus delivery. Spare parts are plentiful for the original DJI flamewheel (aka Crispy's quad) and also for the clones (aka my cheapy from aliexpress). You can get kits from hobbyking, aliexpress, ebay, hobby stores.
I found a fantastic comparison on youtube between a DJI flamewheel and a clone, if I can find it, I will put a link to it on this thread. It gives you a good idea why you spend the level of money on either option. The big $ ticket item for the DJI flamewheel is the flight control board, it's a beauty.
