I moved to the Seattle area over a year ago from my homestate of Montana were I dabbled in R/C off and on, mostly cars in the lipo powered monster trucks like the Savage Flux and the big boy, HPI Baja 5T which were a lot of fun and I had tons of space and spots to drive them in. I tried a bit of E-flite helicopters but I quickly got frustrated with them and sold them and went back to cars.
Sadly, I pretty much gave up my R/C hobby moving out here as in a big city like Seattle, there is no place to go driving R/C cars really unless I drive way out of town. I had thought about doing something like the drones off an on but my memories of doing fixed axial helicopters kept me from looking into it, not to mention the cost.
But lately i've been needing to something else with my hands other then my computer gaming rig building and playing so today I looked up and found a local DJI dealership in my area and decided to check it out. To my amazing luck, they were having a new drone flyers demo do with all of DJI models out to see and fly as well as a drawing for a contest to win 30% off a Phantom 3 pro and a free extra battery I didn't win
http://imgur.com/a/UPCKY
In any case, I finally got to see what all the big hub bub was about with the drones and specifcially, the Phantoms that I kept seeing on the web off an on and I finally got to fly one for the first time.! I was utterly amazed at how freaking easy it was to control and move around vs the single rotor helicopters I tried, not to mention, the whole idea of using my Note 4 or a tablet to watch the drone fly around in real time was so freaking cool!!!! I had a blast in the few minutes I got to try out a Phantom 3! Everyone who attended got a 5% off coupon for anything they wanted to buy from them or DJI directly. They also gave basic safety walkthroughs on drone usage as well as current FAA regulations and basic TO DO's and NOT TO DO's with drone.
So needless to say, in the next week or so, i'm gonna treat myself to an early birthday present and go all out with a Phantom 3 Proffessional!!
I decided to go ahead and spend the extra on the Pro vs the Advanced as the faster charger sounded really nice and of course the 4k camera as I was amazed at the difference 4k videos looked, even downscaled on a 1080P monitor and it was nice to know I could still do 1080p at 60fps if I do any flying with lots of moving around. I went and picked up a Sandisk Extreme 32gig Ultra 3 microSD card just to get something nicer and bigger then the 16gig that the Phantom gives you.
I am so totally freaking excited to be getting back into RC and flying of all things! I've already got a dozen idea of where I wanna go fly and record! Yes I am fully aware now of the 400 foot limit, no national parks, keep the drone within visual site, don't fly in regulated airspace like airports, buzzing people and spying on private area's etc.... they really made sure we all understood those rules.
I do have a few thoughts on some things:
1. I need a real video editing program as Windows a movie maker ain't gonna cut it with 4k video. But I simply can't afford or justify Premiere and other high cost software. I just need to make basics edits, trimming, music and and slide shows for my new drone videos, I'm not going to be going George Lucas. Can anyone recommend a program in the $50 area? This will be for a high end i7 Windows 7 gaming rig, so no Mac.
2. I still would like some people guard during my early flights to give me some crash breathing room despite the naysayers on them. Any quick clip adapters with guards people recommend from 3rd parties?
3. Any cases available yet that allow you to keep the propellers attached vs always taking time off and on which would seem to be more unnecessary wear and tear on motors and props to me anyway
4. Any suggestions to buy or make a sunshield for my Note 4 while I'm flying? I won't be able to buy a bigger tablet or awhile so my Notes small screen will have to do
5. I read the full manual but I'm still not real clear on the different flight modes with the switch on the controller, especially the Intelligent Orientation Control. When and why would you wanna use that?
6. Is there a setting to prevent the Phantom from flying back on low battery?
7. What is the most common way to orient the gimbal during flight, follow or FPV and why?
8. Are their any setting in the DJI app that need to be changed as a good rule vs factory settings?
However, the past week my research through various websites, forums, here and youtube have been finding a disturbing amount of horror stories in regards to quality control and customer service in general with DJI.
It's coming up enough that it really makes me ponder wether I should really chance giving over $1,300 to a company that seems to take a sideline to taking care of customer issues and complaints as well as supporting their products.
These are just some of what I heard, so please feel free to ellaborate on them with any knowledge of these issues, personal or otherwise.
1. Extremely poor/slow shipping and turn around times for products being shipped new as well as warranty claims. All the way up to making people pay for return shipping with no gaurrentee that verification of warranty claim on DJI product will result in repair and not cost additional out of pocket expense.
2. Limited or no communication in regards to products being shipped from DJI warehouse and in some cases, orders have been ignored or cancelled for no reason
3. Difficult and frustrating customer service both via phone and email with DJI. Customers have been ignored, sidelined or put on hold and forgotten about
4. Lack of replacement OEM parts for Phantom products, selection is very small and limited
5. DJI has denied warranty claims for people damaged products due to claims that defect "falls outside of manufacturing process" or "product has been modified and thus warranty is voided" even though customers claim that is not true
Again, these are some of the horror tales i've been finding in my research about getting into this hobby and the products from this company. I REALLY don't want to dump this kind of money into whats supposed to be a fun and relaxing new hobby only to lose lots of money, time and patience dealing with a piss poor company that doesn't stand by its products and makes customer service a very low priority.
Sorry for the very long post, but I didn't want to make mulitple threads so I figured I just put it all in one and whoever has patience to read it all defintetely deserve kudos.
Sadly, I pretty much gave up my R/C hobby moving out here as in a big city like Seattle, there is no place to go driving R/C cars really unless I drive way out of town. I had thought about doing something like the drones off an on but my memories of doing fixed axial helicopters kept me from looking into it, not to mention the cost.
But lately i've been needing to something else with my hands other then my computer gaming rig building and playing so today I looked up and found a local DJI dealership in my area and decided to check it out. To my amazing luck, they were having a new drone flyers demo do with all of DJI models out to see and fly as well as a drawing for a contest to win 30% off a Phantom 3 pro and a free extra battery I didn't win
http://imgur.com/a/UPCKY
In any case, I finally got to see what all the big hub bub was about with the drones and specifcially, the Phantoms that I kept seeing on the web off an on and I finally got to fly one for the first time.! I was utterly amazed at how freaking easy it was to control and move around vs the single rotor helicopters I tried, not to mention, the whole idea of using my Note 4 or a tablet to watch the drone fly around in real time was so freaking cool!!!! I had a blast in the few minutes I got to try out a Phantom 3! Everyone who attended got a 5% off coupon for anything they wanted to buy from them or DJI directly. They also gave basic safety walkthroughs on drone usage as well as current FAA regulations and basic TO DO's and NOT TO DO's with drone.
So needless to say, in the next week or so, i'm gonna treat myself to an early birthday present and go all out with a Phantom 3 Proffessional!!
I decided to go ahead and spend the extra on the Pro vs the Advanced as the faster charger sounded really nice and of course the 4k camera as I was amazed at the difference 4k videos looked, even downscaled on a 1080P monitor and it was nice to know I could still do 1080p at 60fps if I do any flying with lots of moving around. I went and picked up a Sandisk Extreme 32gig Ultra 3 microSD card just to get something nicer and bigger then the 16gig that the Phantom gives you.
I am so totally freaking excited to be getting back into RC and flying of all things! I've already got a dozen idea of where I wanna go fly and record! Yes I am fully aware now of the 400 foot limit, no national parks, keep the drone within visual site, don't fly in regulated airspace like airports, buzzing people and spying on private area's etc.... they really made sure we all understood those rules.
I do have a few thoughts on some things:
1. I need a real video editing program as Windows a movie maker ain't gonna cut it with 4k video. But I simply can't afford or justify Premiere and other high cost software. I just need to make basics edits, trimming, music and and slide shows for my new drone videos, I'm not going to be going George Lucas. Can anyone recommend a program in the $50 area? This will be for a high end i7 Windows 7 gaming rig, so no Mac.
2. I still would like some people guard during my early flights to give me some crash breathing room despite the naysayers on them. Any quick clip adapters with guards people recommend from 3rd parties?
3. Any cases available yet that allow you to keep the propellers attached vs always taking time off and on which would seem to be more unnecessary wear and tear on motors and props to me anyway
4. Any suggestions to buy or make a sunshield for my Note 4 while I'm flying? I won't be able to buy a bigger tablet or awhile so my Notes small screen will have to do
5. I read the full manual but I'm still not real clear on the different flight modes with the switch on the controller, especially the Intelligent Orientation Control. When and why would you wanna use that?
6. Is there a setting to prevent the Phantom from flying back on low battery?
7. What is the most common way to orient the gimbal during flight, follow or FPV and why?
8. Are their any setting in the DJI app that need to be changed as a good rule vs factory settings?
However, the past week my research through various websites, forums, here and youtube have been finding a disturbing amount of horror stories in regards to quality control and customer service in general with DJI.
It's coming up enough that it really makes me ponder wether I should really chance giving over $1,300 to a company that seems to take a sideline to taking care of customer issues and complaints as well as supporting their products.
These are just some of what I heard, so please feel free to ellaborate on them with any knowledge of these issues, personal or otherwise.
1. Extremely poor/slow shipping and turn around times for products being shipped new as well as warranty claims. All the way up to making people pay for return shipping with no gaurrentee that verification of warranty claim on DJI product will result in repair and not cost additional out of pocket expense.
2. Limited or no communication in regards to products being shipped from DJI warehouse and in some cases, orders have been ignored or cancelled for no reason
3. Difficult and frustrating customer service both via phone and email with DJI. Customers have been ignored, sidelined or put on hold and forgotten about
4. Lack of replacement OEM parts for Phantom products, selection is very small and limited
5. DJI has denied warranty claims for people damaged products due to claims that defect "falls outside of manufacturing process" or "product has been modified and thus warranty is voided" even though customers claim that is not true
Again, these are some of the horror tales i've been finding in my research about getting into this hobby and the products from this company. I REALLY don't want to dump this kind of money into whats supposed to be a fun and relaxing new hobby only to lose lots of money, time and patience dealing with a piss poor company that doesn't stand by its products and makes customer service a very low priority.
Sorry for the very long post, but I didn't want to make mulitple threads so I figured I just put it all in one and whoever has patience to read it all defintetely deserve kudos.
