I would like to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and all the best for 2020!
And to thank you to all my viewers of this blog and all the questions and chat in 2019.
The most questions I received this year were about the Wingsland S6 and Parrot Bebop 2.
2 fairly old quadcopters thesedays and with the advent of the Mavic Mini, I expect intrest in these 2 quads to fall off now.
I still like the Bebop 2 for its light size and flight time and also not having a gimbal means no fragile gimbal to worry about. Although of course only 1080p video and wont be as clear video due to using digital stablization. Also because its light, its not as noisey as most other quadcopters. So maybe still worth a buy if you can lay your hands on one very cheap with the remote controller.
As for the Wingsland S6, during the early part of the year I spent a lot of time tinkering with this small quadcopter. Tried a lot of mods and most were not that successful to be honest. Most done to try and improve flight time. Me and a friend from the USA tried a lot of modding to improve the S6 craft. Its still a great looking quadcopter and nice and tiny when in its case and has a 4k camera which in calm weather takes great video and stills You 100% need the remote though as without a remote , app control useless. Flight time is terrible though, just 5/6 mins (in warm weather) tops with the standard battery. And also another positive was the packing, looked the part and Wingsland done a great job with the presentation part. Sadly though they stopped support not long after they released it back in 2017 and so the app well out of date now. Also with the introduction of the DJI Mavic Mini and the age now of the S6 , I expect intrest to fall off the cliff now on the S6. I did have 1 last mod in mind, but not sure I will get the time next year to do it, but you never know 😉
I ended the year with a failure thus far and that was to get a salt water damaged DJI Mavic Pro Platinum working. Yet again most damage was done to battery and the ESC board, a project I will continue next year if a cheap Platinum ESC board comes along, they are more expensive than the normal Mavic pro’s and also tricky to get hold of.
Also with the price of drones/quads dropping a lot here in UK, which I assume is in part to the pointless need to now register any rc craft over 250grams , means I guess a lot have decided to give up on the hobby and take up other pastimes. Only the law abiding of us will register a remote controlled model and hence the idiots who do stupid things with there models and wont bother to register will carry on and thus this new regulation is pointless.
Also next year the other new EU rules will come into place and basically any model that has a camera on it will need to be registered and so the DJI Mavic Mini’s reign as a craft under 250 grams will not make any difference then in the UK and EU zone.
So what I am getting at is, the price of Mavic pro 1st generation have fallen a lot and might be cheaper just to buy a working one at this point, rather than try and fix my salt water version.
As for 2020, I think DJI will release updates to its Mavic Air and Mavic pro range with there new ADS-B receivers , which will be in all there new quadcopters over 250 grams in weight. I think DJI will lock there drones down more to ease issues with governments all around the world.
Been a rather quiet year this year and little progress forward with quadcopters, dji only really released a Mavic Mini this year and third parties have mostly been releasing wi-fi drones that have got a lot better quality but mostly no gimbals, so might see a few more toy grade drones with gimbals next year me thinks.
Merry Christmas and Happy flying 🙂
Graham
