First Flight

Yesterday, I did my first test flight with the DJI Inspire 1. I have a little bit of experience flying DJI Phantoms, so I had a baseline of Quad knowledge and some expectations of what I would find. Wow, was I ever underestimating the Inspire. It is freaking awesome. It is such a well finished product. Everything you need is included and ready to go right out of the box. I invited my former studio partner, John McNally to come out and witness the historic event. I think he was pretty impressed with the Inspire's capabilities and the quality of imagery that it can produce. The gimbal is amazing. Even in aggressive flight maneuvers it holds the image rock steady. There were times when I was hovering that we both thought that the video signal had frozen because the display on my iPad looked like a still shot! The auto take off, auto land and come home functions are brilliantly executed. It's pretty cool to have the Quad so far out t hat you can just see a speck in the sky and push the go home button to bring it back. Each time it landed almost exactly on the same little spot of grass that it took off from. The sound is impressive too. A Phantom sounds like a noisy swarm of angry bees. I was expecting the Inspire to be even louder with it's bigger props and more powerful motors but it is surprisingly quiet and has a sort of a SciFi sound. I think the reduced sound level may be due to the carbon fiber props that are stiffer and therefore don't vibrate as much. I'm not going to post any of the sample video I shot. Not because it isn't impressively crisp, but because I don't believe in sharing test footage shot in a park of backyard. 90% of the Quad footage posted online is in that category. I prefer to share things filmed in locations worthy of the effort. So you will just have to wait a bit until I start hitting my marks around the globe. But here is a still that John shot of me and my baby while checking things out: