Finally got time to fly the Spark today out of the box when it arrived at lunchtime.

Charged up, connected and activated, none of the problems seen on the forum it all worked. Firware updated and off we go.

Started with flying off the iPhone (7 Plus iOS 10.3), after unlinking the remote it appeared as a Wi-Fi SSID and connected to the phone, power up the Spark and after it aquired a GPS lock went for auto take off. Up it went, flew away to around 30 Meters out and promptly lost Wi-Fi! Oh Oh what next, it came back to the home point and proceeded to start landing. At this point I felt a bit helpless so while it was busy managed to reconnect the app and was about to stop it landing & thought I would just monitor progress, it landed bang on the take off point and shut down.

I carried out the test in my garden which is surrounded by trees, not the best environment but I wanted to see how well the Wi-Fi coped, to be honest not as bad as I thought it would be considering you are relying in part to the output of the iPhone as the drone has a good view of the horizon which means even a tiny RF output goes along way. I suspect the 2.4Ghz will give more range out in the country side away from other networks. Lower the frequency and increase the range!

Gesture control next, power up in the hand, press the button twice and get ready to dive for cover! It powered up beeped and lifted off my hand. Palm follow works fine, you have to be very acurate with you commands or it gets lost off or confused, up down, left right it followed my commands with remarkable accuracy. Send away command given and it backed up and climed. At this point I couldnt remember how to beckon it back, doh! Consult manual, read manytimes but had forgotten that bit. Right got it, stood like a 5th of the village people and back it came. Wow canny impressive! (canny - very very ) sent it away again and did a couple of selfie gestures, all worked, and it was queit happy tracking me too.

Beckoned it back and it obayed, held out my hand and it gently touched down and shut off.

Reconnected the remote and linked the phone to the remote and the Spark to the remote too, using the button presses, not the app. all good. Flies very like the Mavic much more resposive compared to the phone app. Again range was not fantastic, again lots of trees and houses which prevented me using 2.4Ghz. it still gave a good video feed and only when almost OOS would the connection give up, Switch to Sport mode!

Total fun, fast and resposive, very manovrable loads of fun, tried the various Quickshot functions although Dronie gave a very shallow reverse and the trees were getting rather close, abandoned for another day. Rocket works well although it seemed to go up 30 meters from its current hieght then came back again as instructed. No space to risk helix but back to wizzing about in Sport mode. Came back and flew it at a tree to check the OA, almost a disaster, switch out of Sport mode, worked as intended, if anything it seems better than the Mavic, much more sensitive. Battery low warning, so returned it to my patio table and manually landed.

Generally a great fun drone, the pictures are also very good on first look.

All in all it does what it says on the box, range is a bit short, but its tricky to see 30 meters out never mind the theoretical max of 5Km.

This might be a first...someone that actually didn't have any issues.

aviscomi Posted at 2017-6-19 07:56
This might be a first...someone that actually didn't have any issues.

None at all, it all worked & it didn't try to kill me :-)

Excellent report!  Can't wait for mine to arrive.