The Micro Quadcopter 500

500 Flights in 198 Days

     I keep a log of every flight that I make with my quadcopters, so I knew that on February 2, 2017, I had made my 500th flight.  I made my first flight with my first micro quadcopter, the Hubsan X4 H107L, on July 20, 2016.  Thus, it took me 198 days to achieve 500 flights; an average of 2.53 flights a day.  Of course, a lot of days, I didn't have a chance to fly any of my fleet, but, on the other hand, my one day record was 11 flights.  As a retired engineer, I enjoy keeping records and analyzing data.  I have put together the following table showing all of my drones, the number of flights for each, how many days since I purchased each one and the average number of days between flights for each drone.

Drone                          No. of Flights             Days since purchase       Days between flights

Spidex                                88                                  184                                  2.1

Hubsan                               64                                  198                                  3.1

Verso                                  52                                  196                                  3.8

Syma X13                          44                                  168                                  3.8

UDI-U27                            40                                  168                                  4.2

Spyder X                            36                                  158                                  4.4

Blade Nano                        30                                  191                                  6.4

Kodo                                  23                                  181                                  7.9

Sharper Image DX2             24                                  135                                  5.6

Proto Z                               22                                  170                                  7.7

Quadrone                            22                                 143                                   6.5

Sky Rover                          13                                   63                                   4.8

Sky Thunder                       12                                   63                                   5.3

Swift Stream                        9                                    44                                   4.9

UDI U-841-1                        6                                    12                                   2.0

Zoopa Riot                           6                                    13                                   2.2

Quadrone Spark                   5                                    12                                   2.4

Quadrone Sparrow               4                                    12                                   3.0

     The last four quadcopters have not been discussed in their own post, yet, since I am waiting to get more flights with each one to have a better understanding of their capabilities.  In the chart above, the "Days between flights" column gives a fairly accurate indication of which drones are my favorites.

The Flight Room Becomes a Race Course

Results of a few time trials

     After flying all my drones back and forth the length of the flight room for a few months, I decided I needed more of a challenge: like a race course.  After some thought, I decided to use crepe paper streamers to make gates to fly around and through.  I took two eight-foot long pieces of paper, one blue and one orange, twisted them together and duct taped them to the ceiling and floor.  I put four of them in a row across the 12-foot width of the room, thus making three gates each four-foot wide.  I made three rows of gates, with rows being ten feet apart.  I now had a slalom course with nine gates that I could fly through using a variety of different patterns.

Slalom Course looking North

Slalom Course looking South

     I started out with the simplest course: a rectangle.  Fly down the three gates on the left side, across the back and up through the three gates on the right.  I wanted some quantitative measure of how well I could fly each of my quads on the course, so I decided to time each one in a three lap race around the course.  I would start the stop watch on my wristwatch, take off from the launch pad on the floor, fly the three laps, land (or crash) into a bean bag landing zone and stop the clock.
     I soon learned that flying this course was not easy!  Part of the problem was my lack of experience and skill and partly the narrow size of the gates for the speed and quickness of some of the drones.  A major problem was misjudging the speed of the quad and the distance to the back wall.  Luckily, the walls are padded.  I also chewed up plenty of streamers with the props.  Using the slowest speed settings for each drone, I have completed the course 41 times.  The best time was with my Syma D44: 37.06 seconds.  Here is a list of the number of times I finished the course (three laps) for each drone and the best time for each:

Quadcopter                   Completions      Best Time (seconds)

Syma D44                              3                    37.06
Ares Spidex                           4                    37.36
Sky Rover                              2                    38.44
Propel Spyder X                    5                    38.68
Swift Stream                          5                    39.89
Syma X13                              5                    44.45
Quadrone                               2                    46.63
Dromida Verso                       1                    52.89
Hubsan H107L                      6                     53.37
Dromida Kodo                       1                     54.37
Blade Nano                            1                     59.90
Sharper Image DX2               2                     63.32
UDI U-27                               2                     64.49
Estes Proto Z                          2                     67.32

     As can be seen from the results, there was quite a range of times over the entire fleet.  I was able to get each one of my quads through the course at least once, but is was a challenge for a few.  The best times, I feel, represent the quads that are the easiest for me to control and not necessarily the fastest ones.  My Blade Nano is certainly the fastest drone in the fleet, but I just couldn't control it well enough on this tight course to get a good time.  The Propel Spyder X set the record by having  completed the course all of its five times on the same battery charge.
     After a few days, I scrapped the slalom course, afraid I was going to do some major damage to a few of my drones.  I then built a simple oval race course with a large pylon at each end of the flight room.  Each pylon consisted of four two-stranded, twisted streamers attached to a paper plate at each end and tacked to the ceiling and taped to the floor.     

Two Pylon Race Course

Close-up View of  a Pylon

     Again, I timed three laps around the course for each quad.  The times dropped significantly for this new arrangement.  With a total of 90 course completions the results were:

Quad                               Completions      Best Time (seconds)

Quadrone Sparrow                  6                        25.81
Zoopa Riot                              5                        26.09
Propel Spyder X                     17                       27.07
Dromida Verso                         7                       27.53
Blade Nano                              6                       27.70
Dromida Kodo                         6                       28.48
Hubsan H107L                         6                      28.98
Swift Stream                            6                       29.21
Syma D44                                7                       29.27

Ares Spidex                            15                       30.24
Sky Rover                                3                        32.20
UDI U-841-1                            1                       35.95

Quadrone                                  2                       36.54
Syma X-13                                1                      37.87
Sharper Image DX-2                 1                      38.03
UDI U-27                                  1                      41.44

     You will notice that a few new names appear on this course due to some new purchases.  I could not get the Proto Z or the Quadrone Spark around the course to the finish, although, I tried.  As before, I am sure that the times reflect my flying ability more than they do the quads' speeds.  This course was much easier than the previous one and I enjoyed it a lot more.