FLYING A MOTORIZED PAPER PLANE - PowerUp FPV
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,114 words · ~5 min read
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I have long dreamed of flight, to slip
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the surirly bonds of earth and tumble unfettered amongst the clouds, to gaze
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upon the earth as an angel or an albatross. To ascend into the frosty
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windswept glory of altitude. But despite my many attempts to gain access to the
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wheeling and whirling eddies of the atmosphere,
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I have always ended up grounded.
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Which is why when the PowerUp FPV arrived in the mail, I was beside
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myself. With its mounted Wi-Fi camera
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and Google Cardboard support, it claims
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to let you experience flight as if
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sitting in the cockpit of your very own paper airplane. At last, my chance to
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soar. Or so I hoped.
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Zotac Magnus EN10 mini gaming PC is VR
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and AAA gaming ready. Check it out at the link in the video description.
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Expectations were high opening the box. I couldn't wait to tear it open and
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start building my very own paper drone. They have a video tutorial that covers
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how to properly fold it. And the process
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wasn't overly difficult with a decent stack of sheets provided to allow for
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mistakes. So in no time at all, the drone was folded and ready to fly.
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Unfortunately, this is where we hit our first major setback. You see, I live in
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the Pacific Northwest, and the drone is not advertised as being waterproof.
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Once the skies cleared though, we downloaded the app, charged the drone,
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and set off to a nearby field to at last
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experience the joy of flight. Unfortunately, Tyler and his camera
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operator, being the inexperienced pilots that they are, didn't have a lot of luck
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with it. After fine-tuning their plane by moving the wing support bar back and
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adjusting the elevators, I didn't have any trouble getting it into the air. But
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it was still a pretty disappointing experience
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because it flies like a plane and not
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like a quadcopter. And because turning
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is handled by slowing one of the two
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propellers at the back of the skeleton, its turning radius is very wide if you
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don't want to lose a lot of altitude since you've basically only got one
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motor running, which means not as much lift for the air foil. So the FPV can
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only be used in wide open spaces. I
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would also recommend avoiding anything but soft terrain. The FPV doesn't land
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so much as it crashes gently and
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anything firmer than a bed of soft grass can potentially break the propeller.
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Though I will give them credit for including some extras in the box. It
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boasts a 20inut battery life, but from
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my experience, admittedly on a somewhat chilly day, the actual time spent in the
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air will probably be significantly less than that. After a pre-flight video
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check, a false start and some adjustments, a minute or so in the air,
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and then 10 minutes of following the, by the way, very helpful loud beeping noise
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that it makes when it crashes through some blackberry bushes into the bank of
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a nearby stream. I was initially pleased
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to discover I still had 60% battery left. Great, let's go again. And as soon
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as I launched, it dropped to 45%. Then seconds later, the low battery alert cut
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the motors, forcing me to land. But
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what's it like soaring through the air? Does it let you experience flight as if
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you were sitting in the cockpit of your very own paper airplane?
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I guess so. if the cockpit of your very own paper airplane is streamed over an
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ISDN connection with Vaseline smeared on the glass. This is actually my first
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firsterson flying experience in VR. And
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while the setup is simple and the like
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where you look is where you go controls
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work great provided you don't lean over too far. The app connectivity is flaky
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at best, and the choppy, poor quality
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video feed makes it quite difficult to orient yourself, making crashes
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pretty much inevitable. Though, all of this wouldn't really be that much of an
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issue if the PowerUp FPV was a budget
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entry in the market. It's not like while
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it's in the air, it's not genuinely pretty cool. And I'd be okay shelling
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out 20 or maybe even like 50 bucks for a
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novelty item that I'll get a few hours of use out of before I crash landed in
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the street and it gets run over by a car. But this drone is being sold at a
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retail price of $200 and I can get way
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more airborne entertainment for that kind of money. These battle drones we
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featured on Channel Super Fun are two for 60 and a total blast building and
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crashing them together. So, I guess the bottom line then is this. For its cost
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and considering the plethora of other options on the market for flying toys
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right now, from cheap units to expensive high-end quadcopters, I'm just not
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really sure who the PowerUp FPV is supposed to appeal to. You know what's
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appealing? FreshBooks. Freshbooks has
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around with complicated accounting solutions and more time earning money,
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and managing your business. You can send professionallook invoices in less than
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30 seconds. You can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks.
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You can take deposits so you're getting paid on your schedule. You can see when
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a client has seen your invoice, putting an end to the back and forth nonsense of
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oh u sorry I haven't paid you yet. I guess you uh I didn't see the email.
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Yes, you did see the email. So try out FreshBooks for 30 days for nothing by
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going to freshbooks.com/teips and enter Linus techtips in the how did
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you hear about us section. So thanks for watching guys. Dislike if
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