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OK... I was considering buying and using a Breeze as a trainer drone ...Or hold out and buy a Typhoon H

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Here are my thoughts and actions..
I bought a Visuo Xs809 that I wanted to use as a trainer drone before buying a Breeze 4K. From there I wanted to move to a Typhoon because of the resolution. This was the recommendation given to me in the Breeze forum(buy something cheap to learn how to fly without the bells and whistles) and it sounded reasonable being new to drones. The first problem with this advice I see is this please correct me if I am wrong. Decent drones have the bells and whistles that stabilize the drone and make the learning curve shorter. I do not want to race but I want to ultimately use drones on an organic farm for inspection and spraying of crops, Checking the perimeter of the property (90 acres) and things like that. The Visuo is a toy and I understand that but it was hard to control (could never get it to hover properly using trim). If I bought the Breeze also that is a total of $200 invested that I could add another $300 to and buy a factory reconditioned Typhoon H with a CGO3+ camera. being a 6 prop machine with bells and whistles it would seem to be more stable which would lower the learning curve and be a more direct move toward an 8 prop agricultural workhorse unit that would be more similar in characteristics.

In my mind there is a relativity issue as well as a learning curve. I am not doing this for play, but to increase efficiency. I feel the basic operating skills needed for a hobbyist VS agriculture business is different. Also the modularity of the Typhoon H is attractive.

PLEASE!!! shoot holes in my thought process because I may have a blind side. THANK YOU!
 
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Owning both a Breeze and a Typhoon H refurb I find your reasoning is sound. Skip the Breeze as the range of 300 feet is inadequate for your purposes. The TH will have the range you need to inspect your perimeter and could still fill that function in the future , leaving the more costly AG drone free to do the heavy work. The TH can use the CGO-ET for thermal evaluation of crops, but I have read that multispectral cameras more suited to crop evaluation (also much more costly).

The Breeze is easy to fly and very portable and very stable, but no gimbal for the camera so quite unacceptable for inspection use on top of the limited range.
 
Here are my thoughts and actions..
I bought a Visuo Xs809 that I wanted to use as a trainer drone before buying a Breeze 4K. From there I wanted to move to a Typhoon because of the resolution. This was the recommendation given to me in the Breeze forum(buy something cheap to learn how to fly without the bells and whistles) and it sounded reasonable being new to drones. The first problem with this advice I see is this please correct me if I am wrong. Decent drones have the bells and whistles that stabilize the drone and make the learning curve shorter. I do not want to race but I want to ultimately use drones on an organic farm for inspection and spraying of crops, Checking the perimeter of the property (90 acres) and things like that. The Visuo is a toy and I understand that but it was hard to control (could never get it to hover properly using trim). If I bought the Breeze also that is a total of $200 invested that I could add another $300 to and buy a factory reconditioned Typhoon H with a CGO3+ camera. being a 6 prop machine with bells and whistles it would seem to be more stable which would lower the learning curve and be a more direct move toward an 8 prop agricultural workhorse unit that would be more similar in characteristics.

In my mind there is a relativity issue as well as a learning curve. I am not doing this for play, but to increase efficiency. I feel the basic operating skills needed for a hobbyist VS agriculture business is different. Also the modularity of the Typhoon H is attractive.

PLEASE!!! shoot holes in my thought process because I may have a blind side. THANK YOU!

Woot , which is part of Amazon is selling the Breeze for $119.99 with the blue tooth controller. I don't know how long the offer will last.
Yuneec Breeze Drone w/ 4K Camera & BT Controller - $119.99 + $6 standard shipping
 
Woot , which is part of Amazon is selling the Breeze for $119.99 with the blue tooth controller. I don't know how long the offer will last.
Yuneec Breeze Drone w/ 4K Camera & BT Controller - $119.99 + $6 standard shipping
Yes, a couple of days ago WOOT had them for $99.00. I was basing the price off of Walmart that had them for $150.00 I ordered one, going to return it. There is also a company on EBAY selling company refurbs for $109 for the Breeze and $480 for the Typhoon H with ST16 controller.
 
Owning both a Breeze and a Typhoon H refurb I find your reasoning is sound. Skip the Breeze as the range of 300 feet is inadequate for your purposes. The TH will have the range you need to inspect your perimeter and could still fill that function in the future , leaving the more costly AG drone free to do the heavy work. The TH can use the CGO-ET for thermal evaluation of crops, but I have read that multispectral cameras more suited to crop evaluation (also much more costly).

The Breeze is easy to fly and very portable and very stable, but no gimbal for the camera so quite unacceptable for inspection use on top of the limited range.

Yes, the expandability of the Typhoon H is VERY attractive, along with the ability to resist wind and the ability to return with a lost motor. The 360 gimble is also very appealing right off the bat. Also the Intel RealSense unit can be purchased for $400(on sale) at a site I saw.

I was floored a couple of weeks ago when I saw the cost of the multispectral cameras and that is what initially turned me off from considering a Typhoon. Time and thought healed my knee-jerk reaction. I do not have to do everything at once but start with a good foundation to be able to build from rather than duplicating cost by even starting with a non-buildable foundation. I don't mind an investment, but useless expenses are what I don't need. While I will have 90 acres, the whole acreage will not be planted immediately. I wish I had the foresight a week ago as Beach Camera was selling a huge Typhoon H package for $849.

Thank You for your informed advice, the fog IS clearing up!!
 
It's like investing in the stock market. what you invested in you can loose, and it won't affect your pocket book. Chump money.:)
 
Keep an eye on Woot for good deals on refurb Typhoon H and Typhoon H Pro systems. They are usually about $489 for the TH and $589 for the TH Pro. The only multispectral for the TH is the CGO-ET and not really suited for AG applications.

Save the multispectral purchase until you get a bigger and better AG based aircraft. Also do a lot of reading about usage of multispectral crop analysis and its advantages/disadvantages. For huge farms it has its uses but for smaller farms like you are talking about walking the property is actually more useful and cost effective.

Good luck in your future endeavors!
 
Yup.
Cant believe the breeze prices now. It was a big deal at $150.
 
Yup.
Cant believe the breeze prices now. It was a big deal at $150.

I would not be surprised if they are about to phase them out, OR own a large market share the 'toy drone market" at that level. If they owned the market at the $100-$150 level, the next upgrade a person would look to first would be Yuneec.
 
If you are literally new to drones then learning to fly a cheap one is a sound thought. A drone with no bells and whistles and without a high level of stability is going to be a MUCH better teacher that one that stabilizes itself. It's just like teaching a toddler to walk for the first time using crutches. The point is to develop pilot skills, not to learn how to fly a self-flyer. Smooth seas never made a skillful sailor! However there is a point when cheap is too cheap for learning, like learning to play music with a bad guitar, the student may become frustrated at the poor sound and not follow thru with learning. It should be good enough to fly well but not be too good.

If you are really new to drones you will crash it, repeatedly, hard, and often. Definitely not good to learn on something you cant afford to loose, repair, or replace. Your leaning model needs to be somewhat expendable, or at least really cheap to fix.

You will be learning fun new things you never knew you needed to learn. Like how much wind does it take to carry my drone off into the sunset forever? Or how to retrieve it from a treetop that can't be climbed, or a locked fenced in area? Or how far it can fall and not break into bits when a prop comes off and it falls like a rock? (H not withstanding). This list of "OH NOs" goes on an on!

Become a pilot first before you take to the air with a camera. Most importantly learn to fly manually without GPS. You will be glad you developed your pilot skills when the totally unexpected happens -and it always does, ...and just when you least expect it.
...Hey, I'll bet that's why they call it the Unexpected"! :rolleyes:
 
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I went straight in for the TH never flown before not even seen anyone fly a drone picked up all my learning on Utube never had any problem no crashes at all may hours of flying UNTILL SUDDENLY THE H DROPED OUT OF THE SKY apparently there is a fault in some batteries overheating melting soldered contacts resulting in total power loss according to posts on this forum, my dilemma now is do I spend £500 repairing the damage and risk it happening again.
 
I went straight in for the TH never flown before not even seen anyone fly a drone picked up all my learning on Utube never had any problem no crashes at all may hours of flying UNTILL SUDDENLY THE H DROPED OUT OF THE SKY apparently there is a fault in some batteries overheating melting soldered contacts resulting in total power loss according to posts on this forum, my dilemma now is do I spend £500 repairing the damage and risk it happening again.

I’m truly sorry for the loss of your Typhoon H, hopefully it was still covered by warranty and replaced by Yuneec. The case you are stating is the only one I’ve heard of where an overheating battery melts solder joints on the battery connector causing total power loss, and then they magically resolder themselves.

A battery that overheated that much would be so puffed up the aircraft would have to be disassembled to remove it from the aircraft. The melting point of the plastic that holds the pins in the connector is lower than the melting point of the solder and it most definitely would remain in its melted shape once it cooled.

This is the third post you’ve made since you joined on November 27th all saying basically the same thing and saying members here agree there is a problem like you describe with the TH. I’ve done a search for such posts and come up empty except for the three you’ve posted recently. Maybe you could reference the posts to which you refer in a reply to this one.

I for one would like to see you provide some backing for your claims about the Typhoon H.

After your first post in this thread New Boy from OZ, I implored you to post the telemetry files from your TH. As I said in that thread, there are several members here that are good at analyzing telemetry from these craft. We would still welcome the opportunity to do so.
 
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To get back to the original topic, if you really want to test your flying skills, get a little race drone and fly that (read try to fly that). I recently bought a fast little fpv race drone. I don’t claim to be all that good at flying, I’ve only been into drones for about a year. But, boy is the race drone a challenge. Super fast. Super responsive. No gps, no stabilization. It is certainly teaching me new/better flying skills. Sometimes, just keeping it in the air feels like a win.
 
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Personally, I would never consider buying a fully stabilized drone to learn how to fly on. I would certainly not buy an expensive stabilized drone with a bunch of bells and whistles that required learning before using it effectively.

As automated systems tend to fail from time to time I cannot justify using an expensive drone as the platform to teach me how to save my a$$ when everything starts going wrong. The only certainty is that I will crash an expensive drone when I could have learned those lessons on a $50.00 drone.

If you can’t fly without benefit of GPS position stabilization or “home lock/headless mode” orientation you’re not ready for the expensive stuff yet. As the Breeze uses both it’s not a good learning platform. It teaches you very little.
 
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Flying without GPS stabilization is a good thing and teaches you to compensate for the wind. Yet cheap drones that you have to constantly adjust the throttle to keep it in a stable hover or that the trim functions of the controller can never quite zero out the yaw, pitch, and roll even when indoors in a zero wind condition are very frustrating. Using a controller that was built for kid sized hands with chunky man hands is not a good fit either.

I’ve watched video of my son flying his FPV racing drone, and while it is entertaining I’m about to blow chunks after 5 minutes of watching on a big screen TV. If I were wearing the FPV glasses to fly it it would take even less time to lose my lunch.
 
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It’s not that much different from flying full scale down on the deck. More peripheral vision with full scale though. Just imagine those military folks flying “nap of the earth” at night wearing night vision goggles.
 
I know Pat. I loved watching films from the HUD camera and helmet cams from the Strike Eagle Pilot and WSO. Flying just below mach1 at 200 feet AGL can really keep you stuck to your seat. That was before the first Gulf War. Had the opportunity to see some footage from the first Gulf War. The supply lines, tank columns, and SAM sites were fodder for the F-15E.

Used to love the flight sims and first person shooters on the PC, but I seem to get vertigo trying to play them now.
 
I know that road. It got ugly.

As we age it seems it’s more difficult for us to process large volumes of information as fast as we used to. I’ve noticed it most in my driving as I’ve reduced my speeding to only 10-15mph over the speed limit instead of the 25-30mph it used to be. Quite a bit cheaper now... Unless it’s a freeway, in which case it’s full tilt boogie[emoji56]
 

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