I have got a Syma X8C to play with!

[Two-Six]

I been asked  to "troubleshoot" a Syma X8C as it wouldn';t fly.    .

It was a Xmas gift to an old chap I know, (89 ish) who wants to fly it with his son';s wife. His son bought it for him.  Neither of them have ever flown anything other than perhaps a kite.

So after a bit of a look, it was supplied from Amazon with four CCW props.  Oops. 

The son who bought it is going to talk to Amazon about it and get some CW props sent out...somehow.  Lets wait and see how that turns out for him....

Anyway, once the props arrive its going to be interesting seeing how it flies and how the cam works.  I will then be in a better position to give an informed opinion on the X8C.

Obviously I suggested he should start with a Hubsan X4, so he';s got one of them for £17 delivered on Amazon from China...

I wonder how this will all turn out.     

[Bajadre]

Tbf for the price its a good starter drone one of our guys has 2 and let me have a fly, handled a lot like my old 350qx did, the cameras aint too bad  on them either.
handles the wind pretty well too 

am the same as you matey always reckon a hubsan to start as its cheap,parts are cheap, the smaller size and being able to use it indoors works for new guys etc but something like that syma will get them used to size and proper movement as the hubsans seem very snappy to fly.

[Brainzzzz]

Watching with interest as i have an x8 being delivered tomorrow this will be my second drone/multi rotor ... (in three days) i bought the syma x5 and it flyes great......

[Saleem]

He wants to fly it with his sons wife?

[Two-Six]

So, I have flown the X8C twice.  The battery lasts for a respectable 8 or so minutes.  Amazon have them for sale for about £80. Is it worth it?

This is a tricky one, it has a camera and can record to a SD card.  Its not bad, its not great but it does work.

The battery is a 2 cell 2000mAh Li-Po, which is out of balance, despite me trying a proper balance charge/storage charge/ balance charge cycle using my proper charger.  I didn';t check the internal resistance but I suspect one of the cells will have a raised internal resistance already.

The supplied charger took about three hours trying to charge the battery as it tried to balance it up....It didn';t manage it.

The controller feels super toy like, so does the quad but it is very light.  The props have reasonable guards on them too and some sort of clutch-type plastic thingy that will disconnect the props if they hit something. They also don';t turn that fast, so its safer than your average quad.  I don';t think you would get a significant injury if you put your fingers in the way of the props.  Sure it would smart but probably no stitches.

It had brushed motors that work OK until the battery starts to discharge then it becomes pretty gutless for about 35% of the flight time, unable to arrest any sort of descent with any authority.

It is very docile and really doesn';t go very fast at all.  In any kind of breeze, more than about 10 mph it will blow away.  I don';t think I managed to put it into "nippy" mode.  I might have but I didn';t notice it getting any nippier.

I didn';t try "headless" mode.  It just seems too weird to me to even think about using it and its not compass/GPS based.  Obviously it has no GPS or compass.

Is it worth it?...well for a beginner, possibly.  It is ready to go out the box.

The best thing to say about it is that it might show people whether they like quad flying or not and give people a taste of trying to film stuff with a flying platform.  Hopefully they will then get something better.

With regards to the owner and how he got on, I did a little demo and gave him a few tips on how to fly it and get started..The "keep it in the imaginary small box" thing and obviously he really couldn';t manage it at all.  I had to grab the TX off him 4 or 5 times as it soared off up into the air blowing away over some garages behind us totally out of control before the battery went flat...Phew

At least now he can see how hard it is to fly and how easily he could loose it.

He has another mini quad on the way so hopefully he can get practising with that.

I also gave him and his Mrs a little lecture about how to store the LiPo, in a metal biscuit tin in the shed...COS IT MIGHT CATCH FIRE...lol  That made his old misses get all worried....Oops, perhaps I shouldn';t have mentioned it to her as well hehe....

I couldn';t not tell them about the very small but not insignificant risks of LiPo';s could I?  She might have found a good place to keep it on top of the gas fire or something!

[Jpdwyer1980]

I have been thinking about drones for a while now (I needed a hobby) and dropped a few subtle hints at the better half for Christmas, and low and behold I ended up with an X8W, and I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised by mine, I seem to have a controllable range of about 100m with the wifi camera range crapping out at about half that. yes the lag on the camera shows severe latency issues of the FPV setup, but as a drone to cut my teeth on and learn to fly before I can get an F450 kit ordered and put together, it will do very nicely.
My ';nippy'; mode is much quicker than the slow mode, which is better for slow FPV use IMHO as it suppresses the lag to some extent, but has left me wanting more. but recommended!
I think I might mod the controller for better range, but other than that I will put my efforts into a better drone, which was the plan from the outset and now I am hooked!