FREEFLY Systems Freefly ALTA, RTF collapsible hexacopter

[Hexacrafter]

On a quality A2 based aircraft that is properly tuned, there is VERY little difference between ATT mode and GPS mode in flight..... just the position holding of the GPS and how tightly you turn up the gains on Basic (GPS) settings.
Most of the production teams I know were flying ONLY ATT mode until GPS modes began to improve (SuperX & A2) as the GPS would always seem to fight to hold position.... Not good for footage....
But now GPS is much smoother......
It sounds like your aircraft is performing very sub-par to what I fly.... or the gains are too high...
Just an opinion, compared to what you are flying and describing, the ALTA will be much smoother for you once you tune the gains.....
Get used to ATT mode..... GPS is not always available, but ATT should not be so different than GPS.... it should actually be smoother....

 

[econfly]

On any controller, ATTI is all about height hold, yaw response, and the nature of reaction to stick inputs. If the barometer(s) do the job, then a decent setup can provide the stick sensitivity/ramping desired. Any FC I've ever tried can be managed easily enough with respect to stick inputs in ATTI. Where it gets interesting is in height hold and yaw. Height hold is mostly in the design of the FC. Yaw response is all about the build itself, balance, etc. I'll guess the ALTA has the best yaw response out there, excellent height hold, and buttery smooth and adjustable stick response in its version of ATTI. I can get all of that out of an A2 or WKM, but I have to work for it.

As noted above, the addition of GPS should ideally only affect one thing --- what happens when you get off the sticks.

 

[BogotaMatt]

Yes, my bird is nervous in ATTI but soooooo smooth in GPS mode, buttery smooth, a dream. What gains are you using ?

 

[jdennings]

They are answering, but I think you need to understand that you are not providing a "reference" for the A2 based aircraft.
Everyone's A2 based reference machine will be different, so how do they compare.

Agree, I meant on the same copter, as a swap (and after proper tuning). Seemed like jjjkkklll has had that experience.

I have a wkm on a flat (non RTF) octo that's been performing very well, and stayed away from A2 as an upgrade mostly because of early horror stories and price. I understand that the v2 imu for wkm has better gyros and accels, was just wondering how that translates in practice, and how the combo compares to A2 on the same machine. In other words, are these upgrade worth it: wkm -> wkm with v2imu -> A2

 

[Filthy]

Don't want to totally derail this thread as I'm very interested to hear continuing / evolving feedback on Synapse and Alta as early adopters get more time on it. I have a WKM w/ V2 IMU that I pulled off an X8 due to the alt drop during fast forward tracking shots. No real issue since I swapped it out for a SuperX FC. Also have A2 on a flat octo (back up unit) that is only has a handful of real work flights, but performing excellent as long as there's no wind. No very confidence inspiring if the wind gets above 10-15mph. So really interested to hear how the Alta and Synapse performs in wind. The V2 IMU off the WKM looks identical to the A2 version. Can anyone confirm if they're the same?

 

[dark_star]

biggest issue on alta is the published weight limitation. heard from guys at abel cine that it has a hard limit of 15 pound payload. they did a test at 16.5 that ended in a crash. it's very easy to go over 15 pounds with cine glass on a alexa mini or even epic. very concerned about that and it prob gets worse when hot out

 

[Filthy]

Don't know about everyone else, but I never thought of the Alta to replace a to true heavy lifter (Dragon, Alexa or F55 fully loaded). I don't think I've come across Alta footage yet showing what happens when you loose a motor or ESC. How does Synapse handle that when the AUW is maxed and it's moderately windy (for flying)? Properly built, tuned and balanced X8 makes me sweat less up 'till now.

 

[dark_star]

agreed, but they are basically promoting it as such. hexacopters with a motor out and no load do okay. hexacopters with a motor out when loaded do not. the thing will spin like krazy

 

[Filthy]

gulp! I think I just felt my liability premiums go up a notch! But seriously looking forward to the ongoing updates from owners. I'm over the building and tuning process as it just takes too much free time. Willing to pay a few bucks more at this point if it truly means only having to tune gains for conditions and balance out a cam.

 

[BogotaMatt]

I too am waiting for more feedback. There are just a very few out there, and before shelling out $18k I want to make sure this thing is as good as it seems. Freefly is certainly good at communicating and the Mövi system speak for itself. But flying an Epic or an Alexa Mini is an awful lot of money in the air, and I'm not even sure I can insure this thing at all...

 

[fltundra]

Don't know about everyone else, but I never thought of the Alta to replace a to true heavy lifter (Dragon, Alexa or F55 fully loaded). I don't think I've come across Alta footage yet showing what happens when you loose a motor or ESC. How does Synapse handle that when the AUW is maxed and it's moderately windy (for flying)? Properly built, tuned and balanced X8 makes me sweat less up 'till now.

An X8 would still need plenty of thrust headroom to maintain a motor out carrying an epic. Which most don't at max auw.

 

[BogotaMatt]

Would flying a stripped Epic with a cine glass on an M10 be right on the edge of the MTOW ?

 

[stevemaller]

agreed, but they are basically promoting it as such. hexacopters with a motor out and no load do okay. hexacopters with a motor out when loaded do not. the thing will spin like krazy

Who's promoting it as what? Freefly have been very forthcoming about what the ALTA is. If I wanted to fly a payload like some have described here (10kg or so), ALTA is the wrong copter. And nobody from Freefly or any of us who own one would "promote" using the machine out of its performance spec. That's what performance specs are for. I really appreciate not having to guess.

If you build your own machine, you can spec it at whatever you want. And it's all on you as to whether it makes it or not. Freefly have thousands of hours of testing into my copter, and I'm confident it'll do what it's advertised to do. So it's up to you to decide. But I think everybody has been very clear about that.

 

[stevemaller]

Oh and everybody harping about what it'll do with a motor out isn't that interesting to me. Every "motor out" situation I'm familiar with (including my own) have been the result of bad solder joints, thermal problems from poor ventilation or over-current situations, physical damage gone unresolved, or other pilot error conditions.

With my ALTA I'm confident that the engineering is good enough and the specs clear enough that the MTBF of the motor/ESCs is not going to be measured in the 10's or even 100's of hours, but quite a bit more. Mostly because they've tested the Synapse/ESC/Motor combination on my specific copter for a very long time. That's a huge advantage over any other platform out there. That's one of the reasons I bought it.

 

[BogotaMatt]

Steve any bad point you are seeing with this copter ? Anything that could be a disappointment ?

 

[Carapau]

Steve, dont underestimate the importance of redundancy. How much testing do people like Rolls Royce put into their engines? What happened to the Quantas Airbus A380? I agree that Freefly have put in a load of time testing but things do still go wrong. Mean time between failures are a great indication of general life but it is also the same as chance. You have a one in a goodness knows how many millions of winning the lottery but each week someone seems to win.

 

[BogotaMatt]

I'm sorry Steve but you seem a little bit like a fan-boy here and every question ends up in oh the incredible guys at Freefly, the amazingly incredibly fantastically exciting thingy Alta, it looks like I'm reading an Apple press release on a new product.
I'm looking for unbiased, objective view, not a press release from Freefly. I guess I and many other people in search of reliable, constructive informations will have to look somewhere else.

 

[Motopreserve]

I'm sorry Steve but you seem a little bit like a fan-boy here and every question ends up in oh the incredible guys at Freefly, the amazingly incredibly fantastically exciting thingy Alta, it looks like I'm reading an Apple press release on a new product.
I'm looking for unbiased, objective view, not a press release from Freefly. I guess I and many other people in search of reliable, constructive informations will have to look somewhere else.

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for. Your questions seem to be leading toward eliciting negative comments about the Alta, but you seem unwilling to accept that the user doesn't have any negative things to say.

It seems to me that Steve (and other early adopters) is still in the early stages of using and testing a very new product, which requires patience. It's very likely that any user of a new product might eventually find some flaws, or at least certain characteristics he wished were done differently. But if those characteristics do not make themselves apparent in the early stages (or ever), it doesn't seem fair for you to find fault in his assessment.

If you are unhappy with the analysis - that's your prerogative. But it seems unnecessary for you to personally insult someone who has taken the time to report his findings, whether you are happy with the findings or not.

Let's please try to keep it friendly around here - so that we encourage, not dissuade people from sharing their experiences.

 

[fltundra]

Every "motor out" situation I'm familiar with (including my own) have been the result of bad solder joints, thermal problems from poor ventilation or over-current situations, physical damage gone unresolved, or other pilot error conditions.

ditto, or complete lack of maintenance and proper pre-flight checks.

 

[BogotaMatt]

There's nothing insulting in saying that every time someone points out a potential problem or ask if there's any kind of flaw, information which seems of the first importance to me and many others, I feel like I'm reading directly from the Freefly website. I agree that we are still very early on, but like many others ready to press the purchase button we are looking for the most infos possible.