Reviews
Ruko f11 gim
I will preface the review and indicate that this is my third quadcopter drone, but I still consider myself a novice. My first was a Quark Micro Drone completely manually controlled drone. It is an indoor auditorium/gymnasium drone or possibly an outdoor drone if there is absolutely zero wind. Anything beyond that, mother nature controls your drone, you do not. It still functions to this day and never replaced a prop or broke anything. The second is a Potensic D85 drone. Definitely more than a step up. It has some quirks, especially during take off and the wind could drive it unpredictably some times. The return to home is pretty solid if you get into to trouble mostly. Trees are definitely your enemy. Don't take of near them. Think Charley brown and the kite eating tree. All of my crashes have been tree branch related, where I disregarded taking off close (within 30 feet) of any/all trees. All my crashes were wind related where the drone was being moved by wind currents. Ground level wind and above treeline/building wind are way different. Transitioning between them is always a challenge. Return to home is nice, but once in one of these challenging situations where your are suddenly restricted in your options, do use it. In almost all cases, it is better to just shut off all drone motors and let gravity take over to get you out of the situation than to press it. Get below tree branches or structures, then hit power and try to reduce the effects of gravity, if possible. Having props hit objects and sending it bolting in unpredictable directions will limit your options to a fragile pinball waiting for the scene of the crash. One of branch/prop hitting situations involved the D85. A solid drone, but from 30 feet high, an entire arm of the quad copter broke cleanly off. A few drops of Clear JB Weld later, and the same drone was back in the air flying like new. I didn't even need to replace the dinged up props. It flew predictably, but I still ended up replacing them out of an abundance of caution.That brings me to my third quadcopter drone The Ruko F11Gim drone. Everything about it including the case is professional, well made, and well thought out. It is a little trickly to pair depending on your device. If you have a table without 5Gig WIFI, forget trying to attempt to pair it. Pairing is a little finicky, you always have to do so in this order. Drone on flat surface, don't touch it. Turn on remote control next, Pair with phone next. Do these in any different order is an exercise in frustration. Nothing will be easy. Once paired, setting up the drone and calibrating the drone are a little order dependent and finicky (you will end up turning off the drone and starting over) but easy to get through again once you work through it once. Make sure the controller stays in its default "NORMAL MODE" (slower responding and more forgiving mode). First flight to around five feet was very stable and easy to maneuver and rotate with no issues. Don't let that fool you into complacency. The second maneuver is just going from a hover and simply sending up at increasing altitudes to see how things respond to the current weather conditions. Okay up to a point, until the drone decides to float in an uncommanded direction towards said trees, probably interacting with upper winds. This is where the easy way out should not involve return to home. Return To Home does two irreversible things. First, it sends it to an altitude higher that you are normally at, to basically attempt to put it above obstacles. It does absolutely nothing for you if there are any obstacles above said drone location, such as tree branches or out croppings. Second, it doesn't put you directly over your home position, but puts it in some circle away from your home location and slowly brings it back it. Neither of these are good for a tight landing location. If their are trees around your home location, Return to Home might as well mean send me to tree and hope for the best. My initial reaction to hit the Return To Home button to address the uncommanded drone movement (wind related) was a bad one. It sent it into the path of a tree, then up through its branches. No drone propeller likes branches nor can it fly stably through them. The Ruko F11 GIM is no exception. Return to home sent up through said tree branches, pinballing through said tree branches while attempting to stabilize itself as it fell and crashed atop my roof upside down. Not a good experience for rotating props that continued to rotate well after the crash. The Return to Home feature managed to keep the drone from falling all the way to ground level vs the top of my roof and some damage, but there was some damage. The drone arms are very solid and with stood the impact. One of the clear caps where the flashy red/blue lights was knocked off. A drop or so of clear JB weld solved that problem. What couldn't be solved was while the camera was not directly impacted, the shock of the impact damaged the panning up/down feature. It no longer moves vertically. In all other respects, the camera works fine, the zoom works fine, image is clear, no damage to lens, just no camera movement up or down. Not sure its camera is its best feature now, but still works and is fun to fly.As with most things, you learn more when things don't work right that when everything works perfectly, but any drone crash is unpredictable and is to be expected. There is no collision avoidance. Any feature used such as follow me will also mean follow me into a building, tree, or bridge (if driving in a car with follow me) if common sense is not used. Probably if you are in a car using follow me, you are not using common sense. How many YouTube videos are out there doing just that? Quite a few!!
07/03/2021
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