I just received my Typhoon H and took it out for the first flight. I thought I would post my first impressions of the rig.
First a bit of background on me…
I have been flying RC on and off for over 20 years. Most of my stick time is with slope soaring but I've also flown both nitro and elector power. My reason for purchasing a drone is that I run a video production company and can use it in my business. I held off for a few years on buying as I have a rule that unless I have a client that can produce work to pay for a piece of gear, I don’t buy the gear. That client showed up this year requiring drone footage. Additionally, now there is a path to licensing for commercial operators which was also a factor blocking my purchase.
Why the Typhoon H?
One of the main selling points for me was the hex design. I love the idea of some redundancy in case a motor goes out. I also liked the retractable gear, 360 gimbal and of course the price point was quite nice compared to an Inspire which was my other possible choice.
First thoughts on the flight platform…
My first flight took place at the local RC club that I fly at. I did a compass calibration prior to the flight as suggested on the inter webs. I took off in angle mode and did most of my flying in that mode. I was amazed at how stable the TH was in flight. If I let off the sticks the hover was astounding locked in.
I did spend a couple minutes in safe mode and was surprised at how close the 300 foot geo fence is. I can see either changing that in the GUI or just flying angle mode. I’ll probably choose the later of those two solutions since angle mode is not an issue for me. I have flown small quads before and understand the orientation issues well.
One thing I didn’t like was the green arrow on the display. I understand that this points to me, but I sort of wish it would just point to the way the font of the TH is facing relative to me. With that I can then point the front of it back to me and know I am heading home. For the way my brain works that’s less thinking to figure out what I need to do to with the sticks to get it back. However I can see this being less of an issue once I train my brain to the way the TH thinks.
An additional dislike is that I seem to have a good bit of lag on the video feed. Although to be honest I didn’t spend a lot of time with my head in the display as I was more trying to get the feel of flying the TH on this outing. I’ll spend a bit more time on that the next outing.
First thoughts on the camera…
The first footage I captured was shot with auto white balance, auto exposure and the “Gorgeous” image style. I shot in UHD (3840x2160) at 30P.
My first issue was bringing the Typhoon H footage into Final Cut Pro X which is my companies edit system of choice. Apparently FCPX does not like the codec that Yuneec is using on it’s .mp4 files. The video has a pronounced stutter in playback, almost as if there's a frame rate miss match. I tried optimizing the footage in FCPX with no luck. However if I run it through Apples Compressor application using the Apple ProRes 422 setting that fixes it. Additionally you can run the footage through MPEG Stream Clip which is a free app and convert to ProRes to fix the issue.
Over all the footage was very nice. There were a couple spots where I was low over a grass field and the compression artifacts were quite bad. I’ll look into ways to possibly alleviate this.
My camera is very sharp in the center of the image, but has some focus roll off on the edges of the lens, more pronounced on the left side than the right. Nothing however that will in anyway make the footage unusable.
There was on thing that did leave me with a bit of a concern though. There were 2 times, where the TH was in the exact same spot in the air that I got some strange faint black rolling bars in the video. It was after the TH was rotated back towards the sun so I don’t know if it was an auto exposure thing or what. I’ll try locking in the exposure next time and see if the same thing happens.
All in all my initial thoughts are that I am happy with the purchase!
Mike
First a bit of background on me…
I have been flying RC on and off for over 20 years. Most of my stick time is with slope soaring but I've also flown both nitro and elector power. My reason for purchasing a drone is that I run a video production company and can use it in my business. I held off for a few years on buying as I have a rule that unless I have a client that can produce work to pay for a piece of gear, I don’t buy the gear. That client showed up this year requiring drone footage. Additionally, now there is a path to licensing for commercial operators which was also a factor blocking my purchase.
Why the Typhoon H?
One of the main selling points for me was the hex design. I love the idea of some redundancy in case a motor goes out. I also liked the retractable gear, 360 gimbal and of course the price point was quite nice compared to an Inspire which was my other possible choice.
First thoughts on the flight platform…
My first flight took place at the local RC club that I fly at. I did a compass calibration prior to the flight as suggested on the inter webs. I took off in angle mode and did most of my flying in that mode. I was amazed at how stable the TH was in flight. If I let off the sticks the hover was astounding locked in.
I did spend a couple minutes in safe mode and was surprised at how close the 300 foot geo fence is. I can see either changing that in the GUI or just flying angle mode. I’ll probably choose the later of those two solutions since angle mode is not an issue for me. I have flown small quads before and understand the orientation issues well.
One thing I didn’t like was the green arrow on the display. I understand that this points to me, but I sort of wish it would just point to the way the font of the TH is facing relative to me. With that I can then point the front of it back to me and know I am heading home. For the way my brain works that’s less thinking to figure out what I need to do to with the sticks to get it back. However I can see this being less of an issue once I train my brain to the way the TH thinks.
An additional dislike is that I seem to have a good bit of lag on the video feed. Although to be honest I didn’t spend a lot of time with my head in the display as I was more trying to get the feel of flying the TH on this outing. I’ll spend a bit more time on that the next outing.
First thoughts on the camera…
The first footage I captured was shot with auto white balance, auto exposure and the “Gorgeous” image style. I shot in UHD (3840x2160) at 30P.
My first issue was bringing the Typhoon H footage into Final Cut Pro X which is my companies edit system of choice. Apparently FCPX does not like the codec that Yuneec is using on it’s .mp4 files. The video has a pronounced stutter in playback, almost as if there's a frame rate miss match. I tried optimizing the footage in FCPX with no luck. However if I run it through Apples Compressor application using the Apple ProRes 422 setting that fixes it. Additionally you can run the footage through MPEG Stream Clip which is a free app and convert to ProRes to fix the issue.
Over all the footage was very nice. There were a couple spots where I was low over a grass field and the compression artifacts were quite bad. I’ll look into ways to possibly alleviate this.
My camera is very sharp in the center of the image, but has some focus roll off on the edges of the lens, more pronounced on the left side than the right. Nothing however that will in anyway make the footage unusable.
There was on thing that did leave me with a bit of a concern though. There were 2 times, where the TH was in the exact same spot in the air that I got some strange faint black rolling bars in the video. It was after the TH was rotated back towards the sun so I don’t know if it was an auto exposure thing or what. I’ll try locking in the exposure next time and see if the same thing happens.
All in all my initial thoughts are that I am happy with the purchase!
Mike
