THE UK’S 1ST DRONE AND MULTIROTOR MAGAZINE
RCFLIGHTCAMERAACTION.COM
ISSUE 4 APRIL / MAY 2016
THE UK’S 1ST DRONE AND MULTIROTOR MAGAZINE
FROM ENTRY LEVEL QUADS TO FPV RACING, AERIAL FILMING, IN-DEPTH BUILD GUIDES AND INDUSTRY INNOVATION
NEW DRONE TECH EXPLAINED & EXPLORED
FORM500
THE UTILITY DRONE THAT CAN DO IT ALL!
IMPROVE YOUR AERIAL VIDEOS
QUAD ON A SHOESTRING NEW SERIES! BUILDING A BUDGET FPV RACING QUAD FPV SIMULATORS
WE PUT THE LATEST SIMULATORS THROUGH THEIR PACES
SECOND SIGHT
INTERESTED IN THERMAL IMAGING DRONES? WE’VE GOT YOU COVERED
HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF YOUR FOOTAGE
TEMPLE INSPECTION
THAILAND’S TEMPLES FROM THE AIR
UDI VOYAGER
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE HEXACOPTER KIND
RCFCA ISSUE 06
Issue 06 £4.99
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INSIDE RC FLIGHT CAMERA ACTION
JULY/AUG 2016. ISSUE 06 THE UK’S 1ST DRONE AND MULTIROTOR MAGAZINE
RCFLIGHTCAMERAACTION.COM
Parrot Minidrones
10
UDI Voyager
16
Helimax Form500
28
CL-84 Dynavert
54
UDI Discovery
60
ISSUE 4 APRIL / MAY 2016
THE UK’S 1ST DRONE AND MULTIROTOR MAGAZINE
FROM ENTRY LEVEL QUADS TO FPV RACING, AERIAL FILMING, IN-DEPTH BUILD GUIDES AND INDUSTRY INNOVATION
NEW DRONE TECH EXPLAINED & EXPLORED
FORM500
THE UTILITY DRONE THAT CAN DO IT ALL!
IMPROVE YOUR AERIAL VIDEOS
QUAD ON A SHOESTRING NEW SERIES! BUILDING A BUDGET FPV RACING QUAD FPV SIMULATORS
SECOND SIGHT
INTERESTED IN THERMAL IMAGING DRONES? WE’VE GOT YOU COVERED
HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF YOUR FOOTAGE
TEMPLE INSPECTION
THAILAND’S TEMPLES FROM THE AIR
UDI VOYAGER
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE HEXACOPTER KIND
RCFCA ISSUE 06
WE PUT THE LATEST SIMULATORS THROUGH THEIR PACES
Issue 06 £4.99
Main Cover image courtesy of Hobbico in the UK
REVIEWS 10 Parrot Minidrones
Exploring Parrot’s latest creations with John Stennard
16 UDI Voyager
Close encounters of the hexacopter kind! UDI’s nimble saucer-shaped drone tested
28 Helimax Form500
We find out just what a ‘utility drone’ really is
54 CL-84 Dynavert
Is it a tricopter? Is it a plane? It’s both! Flyzone’s tilt-wing creation reviewed
60 UDI Discovery
Another drone from UDI put through its paces!
74 FPV Simulators
Get ready to don your virtual goggles as we check out the latest FPV sims
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Viewpoint
FEATURES
48
21 Quad On A Shoestring
Part 1 – Wayne Andrews builds a racing quad on a budget
36 Improving Your Aerial Videography David Bright shows you how to turn your amateur footage into pro-level videos
44 Back To School
We go to flight school with David Bright
63 Second Sight Thai Temple Inspection
68
Aerial Thermography explained and explored by Rod Boswell
68 Thai Temple Inspection Eric Hanscom tells us all about using a drone to help out the local monks
REGULARS 34 Quad Clips
Another round-up of our favourite FPV videos from all over the world
48 Viewpoint
The latest and greatest images posted to Dronestagram, including Lowepro competition winners
80 Event Calendar Dates for your diary! FPV Simulators
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74
RC FLIGHT CAMERA ACTION
5
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PRODUCT REVIEW
FORM500
We took this 500 class utility drone from Helimax out to the field to see how it performed AUTHOR: JAMES CROZIER
he Form500 is one of the latest creations from Helimax, which is the Helicopter and Multirotor division of Hobbico. You may have seen this quadcopter in the Nuremberg report in the previous issue of Flight Camera Action alongside some other great looking Helimax models such as the 3D focused Voltage.
T
gimbals etc. Sure, you could say that some drones have multiple functions and in a lot of cases, they do. However, a utility drone allows you to do anything you can think of. For instance, you can mount any sort of payload, such as a camera, but at the same time drop or lift an item to an otherwise difficult to reach location. The applications are endless.
Intended as a utility drone, the Form features two accessory mounting rails, allowing you to attach a whole host of accessories and extras – more on this later.
In order to fulfil such a wide range of differing tasks the aircraft needs to be a good all-rounder. So, how does it perform? Read on to find out...
So, what exactly is a utility drone? Most multirotor models serve one specific purpose. Racing quads are built for – you guessed it – racing. Aerial photography drones such as those made by DJI or Yuneec for example, are designed to allow the pilot to take stunning aerial shots or silky smooth video with the help of
What’s In The Box The box that the Form500 comes in serves as a decent indicator of the rough size of the model. If you hadn’t already guessed from the name, the Form is a 500 class multirotor. In layman’s terms, it’s big and it’s quite heavy!
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AUTHOR: JAMES CROZIER
The Form500 comes with everything you’ll need to fly
Ditching the current trend of brilliant white ‘Appleesque’ colour schemes, the Form’s box (and the model, which we’ll get to soon) is a very cool matte black affair that really helps to make the well photographed shots of the model stand out.
LED light strips make the Form look impressive from underneath
Sitting in a low hover
Inside the box is everything you’ll need to get flying with the Form500. First, there’s the airframe. The first thing that catches your eye with this model is that it features arms that are able to be folded down for easier transportation, similar to some of the other larger drones we are seeing at the moment. These are fixed into the ‘upright’ position by tightening the bolts that sit at the base of the arms using the included 3 mm hex wrench. The moulded canopy again features the black, grey and yellow colour scheme and has pseudo ‘air intakes’ at the rear, as well as an area made to look like a cockpit. And so the Form500 looks like some kind of futuristic racing machine. Next up are the propellers. These are ‘self-tightening’ – the instructions state that you must hold the motor and spin the propellers in the appropriate direction for each respective arm. There is a diagram in the instruction manual to illustrate this but it is essentially the standard ‘marked Clockwise/Counter-clockwise’ technique that most ready to fly drones have adopted. The Form500 also comes with a Tactic TTX810 Transmitter and TR825 Receiver. The TTX810 is a
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