I've wanted a good drone for some time but was waiting until (1) I was living up here and (2) I could find a Black Friday or Cyber Monday deal.
I'm lucky enough to have a friend who flies drones. He's a big fan of the Hubsan H501 line. He actually has four. Unfortunately, I'm not finding any deals on the H501A X4 Air Pro drones he owns with the HT005 controller. I reached out to him today to ask about another Hubsan drone that I thought looked comparable to his. He shot that down, noting that the controller it comes with doesn't have a built-in video display. It requires the owner to synch his smart phone with the controller in order to monitor the flight. Since I don't own a smart phone that's not going to work.
He looked around for a few minutes and found this Amazon package: http://www.amazon.com/HUBSAN-H501S-Altitude-Transmitter-Quadcopter/dp/B0753XCCZ1?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0753XCCZ1&fbclid=IwAR16R6NVrr_XA51tQHatrBPqvmCiydMox4wHZv8jusfgPUGTedoZ2IGeUvc
It's almost the same as what he owns. Specificationwise, the only difference seems to be its 300 meter range versus his 400 meter range. That might have been a deal breaker for me except that in the comments, one guy says he added an optional external antenna to the controller and now flies his drone 1,200 meters (3/4 of a mile.)
That works for me.
Amazon's $169 price is better than the $199 my friend paid for his drones and is NOT a Black Friday special. Therefore I'll wait unless I find something better tomorrow (the real Black Friday) or on Cyber Monday. I'd rather not buy a drone at the start of winter and then have to wait 4 months to find out whether it works.
Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months
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