Backpacking with my quad

One of the great advantages of the Mini-H quad is that it backpacks easily.  this weekend I refined my technique a little and stuffed it in my old crumbler camera back and took it for a hike.
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Hiking is something I really love,  unfortunately I have found it harder than expected to bring my multi-rotors along when hiking.  most are big,  don't fold easily,  my s800 travels in a big flight-case for jobs but definately not in a backpack.  

One of the problems is the props, if they get bend out of shape they also loose balancing and the flight will be full of shakes and jello.    Another is naturally the TX, don't break the sticks. ;-)

Its hard to ignore the advantages of a micro-quad for hiking / backpacking / travel. first of all the aircraft itself is light, mine is about 350grams incl battery,  but the batteries is also light. I get about 6-7 minutes from a 2S 1000mah battery.  You can probably stuff 20 of those in the pocket of a pair of jeans if you had to.  compare that to my S800, one single 10 minute battery weigh about 1200grams. or about 2+ pounds,  10 of those would weigh about 25pounds and the s800 weigh about 8pounds itself.   Im not committed enough to lug along a multi-rotor + batteries with about a hour worth of flight capacity weighing in a more than 30 pounds. the mini-H on the other hand, with 10 batteries weigh roughly 1kg.  add your FatShark goggles and favorite TX,  I love the full-powered but mini-size Walkera Devo 6S 

I have before solved the prop problem by simply removing them, but then I have to re-install the props each time I want to fly.  Im too lazy for that.   

So I figured for local hiking, I could make a sleve from corrugated plastic,  I simply wrappe the sheet around the quad and taped it tight.  now I can tuck the complete quad into the sleeve, and it turns out that the sleve fit in the laptop sleeve of the backpack.

The firm and rigid corrugated plastic protect the props giving them enough space to avoid dammage

 

 

Here the quad-sleeve is tucked into the laptop sleve of the backpack. the Mini-H is small enough that I can close the lid comfortably (after removing the antenna)

The rest of the stuf goes in the compartments,  I think a packpack with closeable compartments would be much better to avoid batteries floating all over.  

 

I could easily see stuffing the mini-H with sleeve in a watertight pouch and on top of a backpack. and you can pack more compactly by stuffing the batteries and goggles into the sleeve as well. Im sure a little creative stuffing can get all the goodies in there.. then the only thing left is your TX,  unscrew the sticks.  Im printing switch guards for mine to avoid breaking the switches. and might also print a stick guard that can slide over the stick and keep it protected without any pressure on the gimbals.

 

A bit of video from a hike with my quad.

Comments

[Bo Lorentzen]

@Peter You are right a HD mini-quad would be perfect for travel video. but there are a few problems, first there currently are no true HD mini-quad's, and second mini-quad's have a lot of movement during flight, making the video pretty rough. I would take a look at the pocket-drone http://www.airdroids.com

[peter]

Hi Bo,

thanks for publishing your experiences, its helped me get an idea of whats possible.

I am about to leave on a round the world bicycle trip and think that a micro quad would be an ideal tool to make my videos more interesting.

Travelling by bicycle weight and volume are always a premium, so far I really like the look of the Hubsan X4 as a platform but even with the 2M camera the video quality is not that great.

Im interested in HD video quality, fpv is not important to me.

Are you aware of a similarly priced and sized quad with better video or a way to upgrade the camera to HD?

I saw some video taken by a DJI Phantom 2 Vision which I thought was great, unfortunately its both large and expensive.

I have wondered if I could fit a Mobius keyfob camera to an X4 without the camera module saving weight & battery life, but lots of small important pieces get lost while travelling & camping so an integrated solution would be a better solution for me.

I would be delighted to hear your thoughts or any suggestions you may have.

cheers,
Peter