NEW - Walkera Pandora Warrior - RTF - FPVguy

Pandora_warrior
HOLY BATSHIT BATMAN.! I wanted one since the movie, No really, its just a thing and it don't give backrubs, but this thing is just plainly cool. It is a model RC scale aircraft, personifying a aircraft from a animated feature movie.. its like flying FPV in your imagination. and trust me.. NON-RC people dig this thing big time.. you don't need to explain why its cool, they get it. pop your goggles on a kids head and give them a free ride in a Pandora Warrior. Nuf Said.

Ive got the low-down for you, Pictures, Video and 360 object movie. Click through for details.

UPDATE - Having stripped about 100+ grams the thing flies better, check my post and videos here.

First Impressions....
Tell me you did not want to fly with Trudy on Pandora..? (You are lying if you say so) My mind instantly started to figure out how the Pandora Scorpion had to work.. computer flight system. fly-by-wire. total awesomeness.

The RTF RC heli geeks at Walkera took my fantasies a bit further. Pictures started to surface of their movie fantasies about a year ago. I thought the project was forgotten and abandoned long ago.

Maiden flight WITH real FPV, since Walkera keep mentioning the FPV part in their advertising and I really wanted to FPV a AT-99 attack helicopter.. I put a magnetic wide-angle lens on the build-in camera to get a little more FOV.. not as much as I would like for flying a heli FPV, but better than it was. and off I went, flew 3 batteries through the FatShark goggles.. conclusion, once in the air, the Pandora Warrior is surprisingly stable and easy to fly, easier than a CP heli. but lift-off is harder than a quad and particularly challenging in goggles. See for yourself.

J-Hawk't video intro to the AT-99 and the Pandora Warrior

LAYOUT sketch and pictures with measurements

DETAIL pictures and descriptions of details.

UNIQUE Design Features:

Twin 6.9 inch tri blade rotors, with brushless motors powered by a single ESC

Two beefy servos pitch the two props individually, facilitating surprisingly fine graduated forward-backwards movement control. it is possible to yaw smoothly.

Walkera design almost all their aircrafts around similar components. all the micro multi-rotors fly 1s batteries. the medium ones 2s. 3s etc.. There are lots of advantages, well tried parts and batteries can fly with many airframes. But interestingly on the Pandora Warrior, Walkera specified a 14.8 volt (4cells) battery. I wonder if the extra cell might be for that extra pop quads get from flying higher voltage. probably to better manage the 750grams on two non CP props.

Born to FPV: Nah. Not really.. but close.
As far as Im concerned, Walkera is seeing the light. and maybe soon they may ship hard-core FPV.
Walkera have RTF airframes starting to ship "FPV ready". Out of the box it arrive with a HD camera and recording device installed and a SD video downlink. Walkera interestingly have chosen a 5.8 video downlink compattible with the higher end products from companies like IFtron, ImmersionRC and naturally FatShark.
The picture above was a pre-release picture and show a big wide-angle lens for FPV. unfortunately the actual lens ended up being a rather cheesy narrow field-of-view lens, so in the end, Walkera did not do me any favors, the camera system is better than their previous recording DV04 cameras, but is by no means great and the FOV sucks for heli-FPV. the native instalation is too narrow FOV and angled down so much that the horison is not visible when flying. I only see one solution.. evict the DV04 and replace it with a 808 with extended lens cable.. sigh.

Walkera have specified the FPV TwinRotor, so it can be flown with either the F4 or the F7 FPV radio. These radios come with build in video screen and radio data overlay. The radios also have video out for recording or connecting to goggles or a big screen.

If you have the Walkera FPV goggles with build-in RX or is a FatShark user, you can ignore the video out option on the control and use the build in RX in the goggles. I set the timer on the radio so I will be reminded to get on the ground about 60-90 seconds before I run out of power.

There were presistent talk of a articulated FPV camera. unfortunately feature got lost somewhere between the original concept and the final production version. Im thrilled with what we got. but I just gotta say this one time. I can't be the only geek that absolutely wanted to have a cool cockpit interior and a articulated cockpit camera, even if its only pan.. I want to fly this awesome scale aircraft and look to the side to check on the cool twin-rotors. BTW Walkera, the PIC sit in the left seat thank you.

FPV flying - Once I was comfortable with the performance and behavior of the Warrior, I suited up with my FatShark Attitudes and went flying.. FPV style. Oh Boy, there is something cool about flying scale with a cool aircraft, the build in system come with a whip and I got it out a couple of hundred feet, being under strict instructions not to damage the aircraft, I did not push my luck, but even a couple hundred feet is enough to know, this aircraft is easy to fly, and great fun flying around a bunch of kids of any age.

Manuvering is reasonable pricise and predictable, a bit of drift on takeoff make me gun it a little to get clear. on landings I prefer moving forward a little while decending to touch-down, just to make sure Im not backing into something.

SPECIAL CAUTION:
Because of the two rotors, the sytem is sentisive to having the tail cought by the wind from behind.
Fly & Land nose into the wind, the tail have a tendency to catch the wind and push the Warrior backwards. it have some funny effects, I was trying to back up towards me, I had my back to the wind and the wind was pushing down on the tail, the warrior was compensating and pushing forward to stay in place, I had to give more than 50% elevator before it started suddenly backing up quickly.

What bugs me.?
The Pandora Warrior arrives with another one of the Walkera build-in-RX jobs. the master flight-control board is married with a RX and the regular 30mm whip antenna is curled up a little to fit into the canopy. SERIOUSLY WALKERA..! Give me a break, this is a $450 aircraft "claimed" to be made for FPV flight.? the biggest fear when flying FPV on a non-GPS aircraft, is naturally flying out of control range. so why not spend $5 more and give me one of the exellent dual-antenna premium RX's from Walkera. then I can have a antenna dangeling on each side of the aircraft and know comfortably that as long as I have video I can fly this thing. with the build-in radio you should be rather concervative with how far you venture out, simply because the antenna is partially on top of the control boards, if you are behind the aircraft and 45 deg down, you are looking at a lot of signal blockage and from straight behind the mechanics for the rotor angeling will hide the antenna from the control TX.. That is simply poor design on the radio side and the pandora could be much cooler with a separate RX box.

CONCLUSION:

OK get real, forget the 3D flying, the thing is almost 1kg and not made to stand on end. think scale-flying. It flies amazingly smooth and confident, I did at no time feel it was about to get away. the big drag fins and body provide enough drag that it accelerate slowly and predictable. Its a fun aircraft for scale flying and it don't get away from you as quicly as a CP heli can.

How do it fly.. well its NOT as easy as a the Hoten-X, but it is way easier than a CP heli. If your skill level fit somewhere inside that box.. you are good to go for a bit of fun. just remember this is not a aerobatic aircraft by any stretch of imagination.. its not a rock-star flyer, but it looks cool enough at the park or beach to make up for its short-comings. I had a bunch of kids thinking this was possible the coolest RC thing they had ever seen.

Specifications:

Ouside look: It is not like 6CH RC helis, neither Quadcopters, It is comined of the features of the both, 6CH helicopters with quadcopter propellers.

Main Dia: 150mm ~ 6.9 inches

Fuselage: 500mm ~ 19.7 inches

Body Width:155mm

official Weight: 728grams with battery *** Mine fully loaded is actually only 720grams with battery
The weight makes it more stable than typical helicopters and planes, Walkera says its great platform for photography.

Receiver: RX2648H-D six axis built in

Servo: WK-2601H*2 for rotating propeller angle in flight.

Brushelss motor: WK-WS-28-008W*2

Brushless ESC: One ESC Drive two motors! lower rotate speed, claimed benefit High torque force

Battery: 14.8V, 1800MAH: Larger capacity, larger power. in addition, Charger is sepcial, can charger Ni-Ge battery, and can adjust how much electric current you want to charger, 1A~3A is selectable. it charger battery faster.

Video Downlink: TX5803 ( American Standard)/ TX5804 ( Europe standard)
Camera: HD1280*720P (DV04-C): Install with HD camera enjoy FPV fun lfight

Flight time: 8~10 minutes.

Features:

Sale model with FPV, it is a great combination!

Advanced twin rotor control system with multi axis stabilisation.

Rotor guards provide additional safety and durablity.

Stable like a plane but agile like a helicopter, swoop in and do a vertical touch-down.

Film star mini-flyer

LINK - Ali flies and crashes a stripped down Pandora

LINK - RCgroups conversation with video links

David & Chat at FliteTest build a dollarstore foam RC twin rotor copter.

Comments

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Hey John, I think the Scorpion is probably out of production by now. this was a product back in 2013

Posted by: Bo Lorentzen | 10/29/2016 at 10:18 AM

LIke the bird. I have been looking everywhere even over seas to purchase, but can't find a supplier. Really would like to know from where I could purchase one. Can e-mail me at [email protected]

Posted by: JohnHaimeck | 10/29/2016 at 08:41 AM

Hey Don,
David have them - http://walkerahelicoptersupply.com/products/pandora-warrior-a-rare-gem

Posted by: Bo Lorentzen | 05/22/2014 at 07:51 PM