Maiden flight of an Iris

[dazzab]

I helped a friend maiden his 3DR Iris RTF quad today. Other than the throttle being a bit too responsive for my preferences, it flew like a dream. Smooth and rock solid. I put it in Loiter (GPS) mode for my friend's first attempt at flying a quad and he did great. No problem at all. Given that the Iris has a Pixhawk flight controller in it with all the functionality of waypoints and a slew of flight modes it seems like good value to me. I did check out the configuration before flying it by connecting up the ground station and running Mission Planner but the thing came totally configured. We tested the 'Return to Launch' point with the Auto Land option several times and it landed automatically within a meter of where we took off. We had a lot of fun with it.

 

[Old Man]

Putting a Pixhawk or APM in Loiter mode is like telling it to "wait here. I'll be back in a few minutes". I would have been truly disappointed if the user didn't do great

3d Robotics does an extremely good software set up with their RTF birds. Some of the accessories like FPV, monitors and gimbals can be sketchy because of manufacturer's deficiencies in quality control but the 3dR copters are serious pieces of work. Definitely well past the point of being a toy. Glad to hear you had a great day!