I've owned my spark for a few weeks now and have been taking it really slow. My first few flights I stayed in beginner mode, next few flights after that in standard mode.
To date I've just been gradually "stretching my drone legs" bringing it a bit higher and a bit farther each time to get comfortable with where my personal comfort zone is while flying.
I have been planning on flying today all week long. Getting out I noticed it was windier than I'd have liked, but well within what the Spark can handle. At one point, I brought it up to 150' high for a look around. After a couple minutes I got high wind warnings on the screen so promptly brought it back down below 20'. This made the Spark happy and no more wind warnings. I did some LOS flying and figure 8's to practice.
Once I got to my last battery, I decided to test out sport mode since I was on a huge open field with zero obstructions or people.
I lined it up on the safest path and slowly ramped it up to full power. HOLY GUACAMOLE! It was like watching the Delorean hit 88mph in Back to the Future!
I ran it out at full power to the end of the field, watched it pitch up 5-10 feet high while braking, turned it around and zipped it back at full power. With a tail wind It hit 33mph, but **** it seemed WAY faster!
I did some very controlled turning and burning for the next 10 minutes.
The end result of my tests was deciding that I'd only ever use sport mode when I need to cover a long distance in a short time or when I need to bring the drone back quickly / fighting strong winds, etc.
I'm amazed at the speed and power of sport mode, but seeing that video to my tablet gets laggy / choppy at high speed and the extreme sensitivity of the remote, it's not a good idea to use it other than at higher altitude and/or in a large area with zero obstructions.
I'm now fairly certain that the vast majority of catastrophic Spark crashes likely happen in sport mode, where things can go wrong so fast, that if you haven't given yourself a lot of room for error recovery you're going to have a bad day.
I've definitely gained a good chunk more than the already healthy respect I had for this machine's power and capabilities. It's darned amazing!
To date I've just been gradually "stretching my drone legs" bringing it a bit higher and a bit farther each time to get comfortable with where my personal comfort zone is while flying.
I have been planning on flying today all week long. Getting out I noticed it was windier than I'd have liked, but well within what the Spark can handle. At one point, I brought it up to 150' high for a look around. After a couple minutes I got high wind warnings on the screen so promptly brought it back down below 20'. This made the Spark happy and no more wind warnings. I did some LOS flying and figure 8's to practice.
Once I got to my last battery, I decided to test out sport mode since I was on a huge open field with zero obstructions or people.
I lined it up on the safest path and slowly ramped it up to full power. HOLY GUACAMOLE! It was like watching the Delorean hit 88mph in Back to the Future!
I ran it out at full power to the end of the field, watched it pitch up 5-10 feet high while braking, turned it around and zipped it back at full power. With a tail wind It hit 33mph, but **** it seemed WAY faster!
I did some very controlled turning and burning for the next 10 minutes.
The end result of my tests was deciding that I'd only ever use sport mode when I need to cover a long distance in a short time or when I need to bring the drone back quickly / fighting strong winds, etc.
I'm amazed at the speed and power of sport mode, but seeing that video to my tablet gets laggy / choppy at high speed and the extreme sensitivity of the remote, it's not a good idea to use it other than at higher altitude and/or in a large area with zero obstructions.
I'm now fairly certain that the vast majority of catastrophic Spark crashes likely happen in sport mode, where things can go wrong so fast, that if you haven't given yourself a lot of room for error recovery you're going to have a bad day.
I've definitely gained a good chunk more than the already healthy respect I had for this machine's power and capabilities. It's darned amazing!
