Are you saying you want to transmit HD video to the ground? Sorry, but there's no cheap way of doing that. Best option right now is the Connex from what I've read. I think they just came out with a smaller one. But they're north of US$1000. If you want to knock it down to SD and transmit that to...
@FerdinandK no way that was a Phantom.
I've watched all the videos I've found (from 3 different angles) several times and here's what I can tell...
The copter was clearly falling sideways when it hit the snow
It was a large-ish 4-boom (probably X8) machine
It had retracts which appeared to be...
I don't think Freefly have a "liability department". From my experience with them, the entire company considers themselves to be the "liability department". I'm sure they have lawyers (maybe just a lawyer), but I sincerely doubt they were consulted in this. Freefly are just fanatics, and...
Olympus 12mm f2.0 is the bomb. I had a director who's doing a documentary solely on RED stuff ask me if I could fly one of his REDs. I took a look at some of the footage he had, and I said I was pretty sure I could match up his stuff on my GH4/Oly 12 rig. Sure enough, he was blown away.
Day job (ground-based photo and video) has been consuming me lately. Not as much time to fly as I 'd like, but bills are getting paid. Nutshell review is it's all that it's cracked up to be. Super happy with it. It's a very professional tool. Doesn't fly itself, though...the better your flying...
The ALTA and MōVI both have "motion booting" to deal with this. They just use the last good value for gyro calibration.
This doesn't address the issue of the GPS home position, but that's going to be a problem that can only be solved with something on the LZ. Best solution would be a mobile app...
Freefly are keen on designing their own motors and ESCs, so I doubt the mythical ALTA XL would be relying on any off-the-shelf components like a U8 or the like. And judging from the size of the MōVI XL under there, I'd say this is one big honkin' machine. No idea what size props those are, but...
Freefly have said they're "working on" an ALTA XL. That machine they had at NAB was clearly a prototype. I saw it. I'm sure one of the things they're looking at is the market feasibility of building such a large, high-end machine. After all, how many could they sell? A hundred? And if so, how...
I am an unapologetically happy ALTA purchaser and user. I do quote from the website when I don't have personal input, like when folks ask about the limits of the copter. Am I going to load up my personal machine to the max and try and make it fail? Don't be silly. That's why I bought a RTF...
Oh and everybody harping about what it'll do with a motor out isn't that interesting to me. Every "motor out" situation I'm familiar with (including my own) have been the result of bad solder joints, thermal problems from poor ventilation or over-current situations, physical damage gone...
Who's promoting it as what? Freefly have been very forthcoming about what the ALTA is. If I wanted to fly a payload like some have described here (10kg or so), ALTA is the wrong copter. And nobody from Freefly or any of us who own one would "promote" using the machine out of its performance...
Apples vs. oranges. Synapse is tightly integrated with the ALTA and A2 is highly dependent on each copter installation. If you have a well tuned and well engineered machine, I'm sure the A2 will work well. But it's all on you to make sure that it is well-built and well tuned.