I went high speed into the sided part of my house the other day. Not a glancing blow, dead straight on to a full stop. I was ripping between the white posts and the house and forgot the garage roof sticks out so far and just drilled it. It dislodged the VTX board from it’s rubber mounts and I had to take it inside to loosen everything up so I could pop the board back in. Zero frame damage, zero prop damage. In that last vid I posted you can see where I nailed the hula hoop and didn’t even stop flying. I’ve had several other crashes into tree branches and the ground and I’ve just brushed it off, set it back on the driveway and went right back to flying.
If you want to start out, I’d really recommend the Tinyhawk S over the Larva X. The Tinyhawk is smaller and more durable. It’s just as much fun to fly but it’s much more forgiving. As a huge plus when the weather sucks the Tinyhawk is a blast to fly around the house and because the props are enclosed and it’s outer shell is flexible you don’t have to worry about wrecking your house. The Larva X is carbon fiber, runs on 3s lipos instead of 1s or 2s lipos and is really only good outdoors. I don’t have any video of the Tinyhawk just because it doesn’t have onboard DVR and I haven’t added DVR to my goggles yet. The Larva can fly in winds the Tinyhawk can’t, but if it’s decently calm (10mph or under) I have more fun flying the Tinyhawk in my back yard using my kid’s fort as an obstacle course than I do flying the Larva X. Must more than 10mph it’s honestly not much fun flying either outdoors because all you can do is fly the Larva around above all the obstacles and that gets boring. The Tinyhawk also has turtle mode, which is amazing. You crash the quad somewhere and it ends up upside down. Flip the disarm switch on the radio, flip the turtle mode switch, re-arm the quad and when you use the right stick it runs the motors in reverse, in pairs, so it will flip the quad back upright. Once it flips, disarm, turn off turtle mode, re-arm and fly away. You can’t do this with an exposed prop quad so you have to get up and manually flip it over any time you crash.
Figure around $400 to get all in with gear you’ll be able to use going forward, less if you search around for the best price or find shit on sale (the goggles were $79 and radio $89 when I bought, now they’re $95 and $99). Or buy an RTF Tinyhawk kit for $165. That’s the original Tinyhawk, not the S. The S can be run on 2s cells when you want more power. The problem with the kit is you’re unlikely to ever use that radio or charger for any future quads.
My recommendation:
Radio:
Quad (Tinyhawk S):
Or:
Quad (Larva X):
Goggles:
These are not top of the line goggles. In fact, I guess they’re not really goggles at all since it’s really a headset with 2 mirrors to reflect the little screen directly in front of your face, but the reviews are great, they’re super cheap and the range and video quality is excellent. They’re on several youtubers lists for starter FPV.
Charger:
I had an Onyx 235 from my old heli days and it’s a nice lipo balance charger. I went to Fields because I needed some difference balance adapters and they had a nice $40 balance charger that came with all the leads I needed and by the time I bought the leads separate I just bought their charger. It’s been nice having two chargers so I can charge quad batteries and my radio or goggle batteries at the same time. Either way, figure $40 for a basic balance charger. I’ll update this with a link to the one I bought at fields when I get home because I forgot the model.
Batteries:
For the Tinyhawk:
For the Larva X:
For the goggles:
For the radio:
Misc:
Parallel charge board so you can charge a bunch of quad batteries at once:
