Got my Inspire yesterday in Australia and have had 4 flights now. Lanched from boat today and filmed some foiling Moths at the World Championships. Unfortunately a very grey day. This is low res, but the 4k video is very impressive:



Some initial toughts:

The inspire is fast and powerful and flies well. It still wobbles quite a lot like the Phantom when you change speed and direction quickly, but smooth flying with rectify this. For it's weight it is very agile.

I got a weak signal message and some glitches on the video at about 500m, so did not got beyond this.

A few times I lost the gimbal and got disorientated. It was locked is one direction even though I was turning the inspire. I did not realise that the buttons on the back change the gimbal setting, and I think I hit them by accident. Something to be aware of.

I have been finding it hard to get the horizon level. Initializing on a moving boat probably didn't help! You can make adjustments while it is flying, but there is more than one axis.

Hand catch is no problem. Just grab the underside of the battery. When you do so the sensor will detect you and start transforming so don't get your fingers jammed!

I have done many boat launches and catches with Phantom, 550, and 450. I struggled a bit to catch the Inspire today as it kept flying away from me. I suspect the optical sensors might have been following the waves so it was not staying in position. I had to actively fly it with one hand on the right stick and catch it with the left, and then depower to shut down which was a bit tricky... Not sure if you can turn the optical system off (if this was the issue).

Overall I'm really impressed with the Inspire. The build quality, flight and image quality are all top notch. the case is awesome, the app works well, and 18 mins of battery is more than enough in my opinion. I was done after 10 minutes on most flights. Just need some more batteries...

Also, I got it up to about 17m/s (60kph) flying downwind. That was in GPS mode with only a few mins of battery left, so I suspect it can go a bit quicker in attitude mode.

Nice writeup, thanks.

I don't have mine yet, but I read on another forum where a pilot was able to catch the Inspire by grabbing the back of the battery, and did manage to stay away from the optical sensors.

I've seen the 500m limit too. I'm going to try manually selecting a channel next. It wasn't a loss of video it warned me about, it was loss of control. Video oddly wasn't breaking up.

mjdmike@email.c Posted at 2015-1-10 19:25
Nice writeup, thanks.

I don't have mine yet, but I read on another forum where a pilot was able to  ...

I've done quite a few hand catches with the Inspire 1.  Here's a quick video:
http://youtu.be/yCUa6l6C-Jg

This is critical for flying off boats.