So I've been flying my friends warpquad while he's out of town. For those not familiar with them this is a small (230mm) super light but super strong and super fast mini quad with no landing gear. So I've been working on perfecting my hand launching and landing. I've also been working on mastering acro mode. And it's been annoyingly windy lately. It's also running an integrated motowii flight controller with multiwii 2.3 so whenever armed the props are spinning (which I like since otherwise it's hard to tell if it's armed or not, no mistaking it if the props are spinning!) but at a very slow speed.
I've been hand launching for a long time with my own knuckle quad and it's super easy on the warp. I've caught my quad a few times...but it's tricky and intimidating with it's 8" props...plus it has landing gear so I usually just land it on the gear unless I'm in a really dusty area.
With no landing gear on the warp hand catching is pretty much the way to go. And in self level modes I've pretty much got it mastered, even in the wind. Had a few close calls but no prop bites yet.
I've been working on improving my acro skills though so I keep working on hand catching the warp in acro - the wind the past few weeks has made this tricky.
Yesterday it finally got me.
Looks a lot worse than it was. Stung when it happened but I didn't see any blood so I kept flying. My hand did sting but I figured it was just a bit of light bruising since the props were just spinning at "idle", I had cut the throttle to zero and was disarming with my other hand as the wind suddenly shifted and blew the quad into my catching hand. It just happened to catch me right in a skin crease on my knuckle where the skin is thinnest. No worse than a paper cut...and actually hurts less than a paper cut. But since I was wearing white shorts I did have to put a band aid on for an hour
Lesson learned. There's no shame in using auto-level in the wind when hand catching even on a light little quad with 6" plastic props
(In fact I have a worse slice in my left thumb from holding the prop while tightening the prop nuts on this thing - but since it was in the meat of my thumb even though it went deeper there was no thumb.)
I've been hand launching for a long time with my own knuckle quad and it's super easy on the warp. I've caught my quad a few times...but it's tricky and intimidating with it's 8" props...plus it has landing gear so I usually just land it on the gear unless I'm in a really dusty area.
With no landing gear on the warp hand catching is pretty much the way to go. And in self level modes I've pretty much got it mastered, even in the wind. Had a few close calls but no prop bites yet.
I've been working on improving my acro skills though so I keep working on hand catching the warp in acro - the wind the past few weeks has made this tricky.
Yesterday it finally got me.
Looks a lot worse than it was. Stung when it happened but I didn't see any blood so I kept flying. My hand did sting but I figured it was just a bit of light bruising since the props were just spinning at "idle", I had cut the throttle to zero and was disarming with my other hand as the wind suddenly shifted and blew the quad into my catching hand. It just happened to catch me right in a skin crease on my knuckle where the skin is thinnest. No worse than a paper cut...and actually hurts less than a paper cut. But since I was wearing white shorts I did have to put a band aid on for an hour
Lesson learned. There's no shame in using auto-level in the wind when hand catching even on a light little quad with 6" plastic props
(In fact I have a worse slice in my left thumb from holding the prop while tightening the prop nuts on this thing - but since it was in the meat of my thumb even though it went deeper there was no thumb.)
