Yooper! (Michigan's Upper Peninsula) - Lookin' to buy soon!!

[btollenaar]

Hey crew! Good to be here!
Been flyin' RC planes for 15yrs, helicopters since '96 (last one was stolen out of storage a few years back though), just got a new I have a new Futaba 8FGH in anticipation of getting a new bird. I have a BFA in photography so I figured that getting into a multi-rotor made perfect sense! I'm looking at the F550 but would love the new (S1000)... I'll let you guys know what I decide. Any suggestions?

 

[Motopreserve]

Sounds like you have a match made in heaven (photography and RC experience), but....

Make sure you get something that you can learn on before strapping on the expensive gear. It's tempting to get a large quad/hex, gimbal, sweet camera etc and want to launch. But the learning curve can be steep, and it's best to take it one step at a time.

Seems like the f550 would be a lot more manageable at first, as opposed to something like the s1000. Initially, the less you have to break, the cheaper it will be to repair

 

[SoCal Blur]

That's sound advice.

When you are ready to get into the big birds, you may want to consider building your own rather than buy something like the S1000. Sure it's cool with all the bells and whistles that it offers but it also has a base price tag hovering (pun intended) around $4,000.00. I built my T1000 for around $1,500.00 (including FC/TX/RX). You can also be sure that if you break something on a prefab the replacement parts will be expensive as well.

The other advantage to building it yourself is you know exactly how to fix it when it does break.

 

[btollenaar]

Thanks for the info! While it's very tempting to go all in with the S1000 I think I'll cut my teeth with the F550.

The current issue of Make magazine (awesome mag) also walks you through building one from scratch - I think that I'll go through that and build a beater as well.

I'll be sure to post on the builds. Still utterly frozen here on Lake Superior....

 

[Motopreserve]

There is also a build thread in the beginner section that you can follow along with. I think they may be using the 550 as the basis for that build.

 

[btollenaar]

Right on - I'll check that out.