Endless practice area!

[Roadkilt]

Parksville on Vancouver Island in BC Canada has a unique and very cool opportunity for quad flyers. When the tide goes out it REALLY goes out, to 2 km, leaving flat hard sand flats covered in sand dollars and clams. It's a chance to fly high and far without wifi interference, planes or people. Great spot to check out RTH and signal drop, fly aggressively and not lose the bird. Maybe not as safe as the Utah salt flats but maybe a little prettier. Then..the tide comes in and in two hours the entire area is underwater. It's an amazing place..check it out...

http://youtu.be/Yhby1JCzfXw

 

[simonthk]

Your videos are so smooth, what is your setup?

 

[martcerv]

The gimbal is doing well, nice practice area though not ideal for unplanned landings with all that water around.

 

[Roadkilt]

That was an aeroxcraft gimbal, I haven't set it up for pointing down yet off the transmitter. Not bad for a 10-15km breeze. Interesting artifact is the yaw rotation from the breeze which isn't handled by the gimbal at all. Final Cut Pro cleans that last bit of back and forth up well though. It would be interesting for some wealthy and patient dealer to buy each of the half dozen plus gimbals and run a comparison. Each seems ok. But compare weight, power draw, efficiency, vibration dampening, installation ease, ease of installing and removing gopro, and build. Personally I would like to see a small on-off switch added so that there is no power when manipulating the gopro, and lighter components to reduce weight.

 

[martcerv]

The yaw issue I think will be common with all 2 axis gimbals when using gps mode. In GPS the NAZA adjusts yaw to keep you heading towards the nose even with a cross breeze, so if you stick forward with wind off the side it will still fly towards the nose, in atti it doesnt use the compass so there should be no yaw corrections but flying with a crosswind it will drift and so you need to correct for wind. I think this should not be there in atti mode or at least nowhere near as much. A 3 axis gimbal wouldnt have this issue but then you need to yaw the camera or have modes that will allow it to rotate but slow this down and ignore micro corrections or at least smooth it out.

I dont think many dealers would ever stock all possible gimbals and there are new ones nearly every week. Also a dealer would not be the best person to use for an objective and fair review of all as they have a vested interest in making sales and they may not always give the best advice but lean towards one that gives them the best margins.

General user reviews and video examples are probably the best way to get an idea of which one to get. Regular users will generally post their thoughts and issues with each and you can get a basic idea by the specs of each one. Some will be much more plug and play where others may need lots of tweaking but if built properly and using good controllers they should all do ok. User videos will clearly show issues and performance but even still how something works on one setup isnt a guarantee it will work exactly the same on another without the need for any tweaks or adjustments.

I do like the reviews and tests the guys at flightest do, if all gimbal makers sent them a gimbal to review im sure they would give a pretty fair and honest review of each. Plus they are pretty good pilots and good at setting up rc gear so they could show faults and tweaks that can get the most out of each.