An update... I flew my first drone flight and also with my modified antenna on the drone and controller. For a refresher posts #11 and #13 touch on antenna theory. I link another video to help beginner flyers understand how antenna works.
Now here is what you can expect when you fly a stock cheap toy drone made in china. This is an Indonesian video but I think you can understand the video as English language videos only disparage china drones other than the industry standard DJI drone company which is also Chinese. Note that Z908 is clone of DJI MINI 3 drone under 250 grams that does not need to be registered in sg. Mini 3 is first generation to have obstacle avoidance but only on 3 sides, front and sides only. Whether obstacle avoidance is useful to beginner flyers depends on how much experience you have gained in your flying training which is the subject of this post.
From this video it is apparent that it performed as expected but notice man is flying in a large open field with no buildings and trees around which is typical in Singapore.
Here is my field report of my first ever drone fight and impressions as a newbie beginner after watching many YouTube videos. Yesterday, Sunday I decided to experience what is drone flying. My drone comes with obstacle avoidance unit mounted on top like the Indonesian video but I did not attach it as I modified the drone antenna and the controller. Photo below. Whether obstacle avoidance is useful for beginners
depends on how good the obstacle avoidance software can detect small objects like tree branches. Cheap china drones use infrared so they are not good in daylight. Even DJI is not foolproof but is quite good but be prepared to pay about sgd$1k for a mini 4 pro.
Note the antennas are partially finished as I added 4 more wires 90 degree apart like a folded umbrella slopping downwards which act as reflecting ground. The original attenna was inside the drone and the earth ground you stand on is the reflector. ( Original attennas were removed , both the drone antenna and camera video antenna. )
I wrote a lengthy report but somehow it got lost in the editing. So here is a short summary. I decided to fly my drone after the antenna mods. If is also my first drone flight. If you live in Queenstown I dare say there is only one place that is suitable as the field is rectangular roughly I estimate to be 70 meters X 60 meters with a few trees. Nparks had recently pruned the trees botak after many years to prevent tree branches breaking from as the tree canopies were large. It had the advantage that there is more space and easy to see where things are.
( Forgot to mention this tract of land will be used to build a flyover connecting Farrer road to Alexandra road to ease traffic congestion in 2 or 3 years time or sooner so fly when you still can!!!! )
I decided to use as take off point further away from the footpath. There was a concrete covered drain which is better than the grass field which is soggy from the rain.
Set up the drone and powered on, powered on the controller to calibrate the drone and also to set WiFi to drone WiFi name. Drone and controller are binded.
Use one button take off. It rose 1 meter plus and I observed how stable drone was maintaining hold it's position via the flow sensor or the 2nd. downward looking camera. Made some fine tuning adjustments for the drift of position.
Pushed the flight stick forward to go higher step by step. If you are beginner this is good way as keeping your fingers on the stick you may end up going higher than you realise and that's where the danger begins! I played with the controls like going up and down, banking left and right , basically going side to side and turning the drone front 360 degrees. You can use "headless mode" so that you do not need to concern yourself which way the drone is facing and just intuitively push forward to move away or backwards towards you. But I did not do this. Anywayas drone got higher but below sg stipulated maximum height the wind got hold of the light weight drone and began to drifted away from me. I panicked as I could not visually see the drone as it was too small and the tall buildings made the drone blend into the scenery. I thought I was going to Lise the drone and the prospect of it fall on someone or car or crashing into a building.
I got my wits about me and tried to bank right as the left is forest and trees. Luckily banking right allowed me to see the drone against the sky between the buildings and flew the drone towards me, thanks to the attenna mods which maintain signal connection. Battery flight time is roughly 8 minutes but in real life it was about 5 minutes. As drone was about few meters from me I could see the flashing lights of the drone that means it is low on power and was dropping in altitude and finally falling to the grass field. I recovered the drone and inserted a 2nd. battery out of the 4 I had.Played around to observe how drone flew .By the 3rd. battery the drone crashed because it was drifting because of wind and watched it come down at a low height. I notice the camera module had dislodge from the underside as I forgot to screw it back. It was intact with no wire breakage. It was getting dark and I decided to pack up and leave. The drone app could not record video either and the live view froze so technically I was flying blind hence the potential flyaway which I recovered.
I now have a good experience after only 1 flight but because I had watch YouTube videos of how not to make beginner mistakes and survived . So the take away from this experience us it is useful to have live video feed but cheap drones have only a short range and the video is choppy and not smooth. You also need to keep the drone in line of sight so cannot pay attention to what's on the phone screen. All in all it was a good first flight.
What advice I would give beginner flyers is buy a drone with extra batteries from AliExpress or taobao or if you can get them cheaply in sg. Prepare yourself thoroughly by learning all the basics of drone flying. Well as proof I only managed to take an aerial photo of the forest to my left, not really forest but vegetation and trees.
I also do not advise beginners to fly at Pandan Reservoir after what I have experienced as more likely to will lose your drone in the water as
you don't know how long your battery last !!! So never fly over water or canals.
Until further updates...