My Trove of Useless Knowledge Increases

I feel like regaling you with more tales of my drone adventures.

Yesterday I spent quite a long time trying to fly my new Sky Viper M200 Nano drone. I learned a whole lot, but I did not fly all that well.

The most obvious reason is that I have no skill, but there is another reason. This drone doesn’t work.

The drone kept quitting and falling, usually when I tried to reduce altitude. Sometimes it quit when I was doing other things. I could not figure it out. I saw various “solutions” posted on the web.

One guy said the controller was weak, and that it was overwhelmed by nearby 2.4 GHz signals. That apparently includes things like cell phones, routers, and your neighbors’ routers. I put neighbors’ routers in a special category, because you can’t turn those off. You can turn off your phone and router, but there is nothing you can do about the fat guy next door who spends 19 hours per day beating nine-year-olds at Worlds of Warcraft or whatever it is they play now.

Doesn’t matter; it looks like that explanation was wrong.

Another guy claimed the batteries weren’t soldered correctly. I reject that explanation, because the dropping problem is pretty much universal. They can’t be doing all the batteries wrong.

The third theory is that the props are no good.

I don’t know a whole lot about drones, but I know that even the little ones are highly sophisticated. Think about it. How would you like to balance something in the air using four fans? That takes some electronics. Drones sense various things, including increased current draw due to prop obstruction. The drone I have shuts down when it thinks the props are stuck.

My guess is that under certain conditions, bad props will behave in a way that makes the motors quit.

Anyway, a Youtube guy who calls himself Frequent Flyer RC had trouble with the Sky Viper M200, and the problems stopped when he put different props on it. He uses props from a drone called the Hoverdrone Nano, and he says you can also use certain other props. He has a video where he flies an M200 all over the neighborhood.

I’ll put the video up. Look at the tiny space where he flies that thing…without losing it!

The M200 I bought dropped and dropped, and finally one engine quit.

I took the drone back to Toys R Us and got a new one. I am being careful with it. It drops like the other one, but I ordered new props from China, so I expect it to work eventually. If not, Toys R Us will eat it.

In the meantime, I found a better drone: the Cheerson CX-10.

The Cheerson is even smaller than the M200, and it flies like crazy. It comes in colors other than lost-in-tree-camouflage green and black. Best of all, you can get it for twelve bucks, delivered, on Amazon. There is a newer version which has something called “headless mode” (?), and it’s more expensive. The original is supposedly better.

The CX-10 is supposed to be very good for indoor flight, due to its yaw rate, whatever that is.

I ordered TWO Cheersons. I mean, come on. Twelve bucks. That’s lunch money. And I got orange ones because they show up well when you drop them in foliage.

The CX-10’s colors are pretty bad, but you can’t have everything. Not for twelve bucks.

I ordered one from China for twelve dollars, and I ordered one from the US for a few dollars more. The Chinese one will take forever to get here. I figured I would get one fast so I could use it and then have the other as a backup/relief drone when it arrives.

Too cool.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get a full-size drone. They cost hundreds, and I have nowhere to fly it.

While I wait for the Cheerson, I am practicing with the M200 at very low altitude, like under three feet. I don’t want it to bang itself to death.

I can’t believe I got here starting from an argument about cordless tools. What’s next? My own nuclear sub?

I will now post a couple of videos, and I’m sure someone who sees them will be just as immature as I am. Someone will buy a Cheerson.

Keep it away from your pets. They do not like drones, and the props can injure their eyeballs.