I have long dreamed of flight, to slip
the surirly bonds of earth and tumble unfettered amongst the clouds, to gaze
upon the earth as an angel or an albatross. To ascend into the frosty
windswept glory of altitude. But despite my many attempts to gain access to the
wheeling and whirling eddies of the atmosphere,
I have always ended up grounded.
Which is why when the PowerUp FPV arrived in the mail, I was beside
myself. With its mounted Wi-Fi camera
and Google Cardboard support, it claims
to let you experience flight as if
sitting in the cockpit of your very own paper airplane. At last, my chance to
soar. Or so I hoped.
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Expectations were high opening the box. I couldn't wait to tear it open and
start building my very own paper drone. They have a video tutorial that covers
how to properly fold it. And the process
wasn't overly difficult with a decent stack of sheets provided to allow for
mistakes. So in no time at all, the drone was folded and ready to fly.
Unfortunately, this is where we hit our first major setback. You see, I live in
the Pacific Northwest, and the drone is not advertised as being waterproof.
Once the skies cleared though, we downloaded the app, charged the drone,
and set off to a nearby field to at last
experience the joy of flight. Unfortunately, Tyler and his camera
operator, being the inexperienced pilots that they are, didn't have a lot of luck
with it. After fine-tuning their plane by moving the wing support bar back and
adjusting the elevators, I didn't have any trouble getting it into the air. But
it was still a pretty disappointing experience
because it flies like a plane and not
like a quadcopter. And because turning
is handled by slowing one of the two
propellers at the back of the skeleton, its turning radius is very wide if you
don't want to lose a lot of altitude since you've basically only got one
motor running, which means not as much lift for the air foil. So the FPV can
only be used in wide open spaces. I
would also recommend avoiding anything but soft terrain. The FPV doesn't land
so much as it crashes gently and
anything firmer than a bed of soft grass can potentially break the propeller.
Though I will give them credit for including some extras in the box. It
boasts a 20inut battery life, but from
my experience, admittedly on a somewhat chilly day, the actual time spent in the
air will probably be significantly less than that. After a pre-flight video
check, a false start and some adjustments, a minute or so in the air,
and then 10 minutes of following the, by the way, very helpful loud beeping noise
that it makes when it crashes through some blackberry bushes into the bank of
a nearby stream. I was initially pleased
to discover I still had 60% battery left. Great, let's go again. And as soon
as I launched, it dropped to 45%. Then seconds later, the low battery alert cut
the motors, forcing me to land. But
what's it like soaring through the air? Does it let you experience flight as if
you were sitting in the cockpit of your very own paper airplane?
I guess so. if the cockpit of your very own paper airplane is streamed over an
ISDN connection with Vaseline smeared on the glass. This is actually my first
firsterson flying experience in VR. And
while the setup is simple and the like
where you look is where you go controls
work great provided you don't lean over too far. The app connectivity is flaky
at best, and the choppy, poor quality
video feed makes it quite difficult to orient yourself, making crashes
pretty much inevitable. Though, all of this wouldn't really be that much of an
issue if the PowerUp FPV was a budget
entry in the market. It's not like while
it's in the air, it's not genuinely pretty cool. And I'd be okay shelling
out 20 or maybe even like 50 bucks for a
novelty item that I'll get a few hours of use out of before I crash landed in
the street and it gets run over by a car. But this drone is being sold at a
retail price of $200 and I can get way
more airborne entertainment for that kind of money. These battle drones we
featured on Channel Super Fun are two for 60 and a total blast building and
crashing them together. So, I guess the bottom line then is this. For its cost
and considering the plethora of other options on the market for flying toys
right now, from cheap units to expensive high-end quadcopters, I'm just not
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