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FLYTEC T18 "MINI RACING DRONE"

Flytec T18 "Mini Racing Drone", $72.99 (www.cnflytec.com...)
Manufactured by Flytec (www.cnflytec.com)
Last updated 10o-24-19

This isn't a flashlight, household lamp, Christmas light set, or other thing that glows, but it *DOES* have a number of LEDs on its fuselage (this word is definitely *NOT* pronounced "fyoo SELL' uh jee" as Drake Parker from the TV program "Drake and Josh" would pronounce it; the word is pronounced "

, so what the hey

I love things that fly; that's why I took the bate and also why I added a seperate section titled "PRODUCTS DESIGNED TO FLY" on my website a number of years ago. I was also attracted to something that this drone has that many others don't...

1:It has a gyro -- that means it's easy to fly even for a "craptastic" pilot like me.
2: It has all of those wonderful LEDs

This is a small, lightweight (50g), easy-to-fly 4-channel remote-controlled outdoor (and indoors with a large enough space) drone. Its remote uses RF (radio frequency) radiation.

It sports a camera; both still photos and aerial video can be taken with it!

Size of product w/hand to show scale

SIZE

This toy is remarkably easy to use for a drone...here's how to get it off the ground:

As with any rechargeable product, charge it first (see directly below), install the flight battery, and then you can pretend to fly a dragonfly (well, that's what the kitty cats would think it was if it were designed to be flown in a small living room).

1: On the remote control, slide the slider on the bottom edge of the radio toward the right.

2: Plug in the drone's flight battery into the female receptacle on the drone's fuselage directly below the battery bay and place the drone on the ground so that the tail-end (the end with the green LEDs on it) faces you.

Move several feet away from the drone (at least six feet away).

3: The bright blue light on the radio should be blinking at this time. Push the left-hand stick on the remote control forward, then pull it back toward you. This "arms" the drone. If you did this correctly, that blue light will go from blinking to steady-on and the R/C should emit a series of two tones in rapid succession.

4: Push the left-hand stick forward -- but do so a bit more gingerly this time.

5: The Flytec T18 "Mini Racing Drone" should now lift off the ground. Congratulations, you're now a pilot!!!

For additional instructions & tips on how to fly, please read the instructional material that comes with the product.

Slide the slider on the lower edge of the radio to the left and unplug the drone's battery when finished using them.

This drone allows you to have FPV (well, there's a bit too much latency for TRUE FPV but you can easily line up photographic shots using the realtime FPV video transmitted to your smartphone.)
To do this, scan the QR code on the back of the instructional materials or go to Google Play or The Apple Store on your device and download an app called, "Flytec" by GuanZhi Technology.

Go to your phone's Settings >>> Wifi section, turn the drone on, wait half a minute or so, and look for a WiFi hotspot that starts with the word, "Flytec". Connect it, and then launch the Flytec app. Press the button at the lower right of your phone's display labelled, "PLAY" and you're good to go.

The drone's radio has a built-in cellular telephone handset holder; just pull straight out on it (jiggle it a bit if necessary) and place your phone into the holder.

You can then proceed to launch normally.

The battery in the Flytec T18 "Mini Racing Drone" itself is rechargeable; however the batteries in the remote will need to be changed from time to time.

To do this, unscrew & remove the phillips screw from the battery door on the underside of the unit, using the included small phillips screwdriver. Set the screw aside.

Slide the battery door off, carry it to the top of the basement stairs, and kick it down those stairs into the basement crawling with thousands of hungry silverfish that have to piddle -- they'll think it's something yummy to eat and start chewing on it, but quickly find it unpalatable, so they all pass micturition on it...O WAIT!!! YOU'LL NEED THAT!!! So just set it aside instead.

Remove the four used AAA cells from the compartment, and dispose of or recycle them as you see fit (recycle them if your community has a battery reclamation program in place; otherwise just huck them into your regular garbage).

Insert four new AAA cells into the compartment, orienting each cell so its flat-end (-) negative faces a spring for it in each chamber.

Finally, place the battery door back on, and screw the screw back in.
Aren't you glad you didn't kick that battery door down the stairs to all those hungry, hungry silverfish that really need to go poddy now?

To charge the battery in the Flytec T18 "Mini Racing Drone", take the thin cord that's attached to the USB charger dongle, and plug the small end into the cable on the battery itself. Plug the larger end into any USB port on your Mac or pee-cee

When the charge cycle is in progress, the red LED on the charger will be on. When the charge cycle is complete, this LED should turn off.

You may then safely unplug the battery from the charger, and unplug the USB dongle from your computer.

Fully charging the Flytec T18 "Mini Racing Drone"' battery should give you approx 7 to 9 minutes of flying time.

This RC drone is meant to be used as a toy in a dry area outdoors (or in a large open room indoors), not as a flashlight meant to be carried around all the time, thrashed, and abused; so I won't throw it against the wall, stomp on it, try to drown it in the {vulgar slang term for a fudge bunny}bowl or the cistern, run over it, swing it against the concrete floor of a patio, bash it open to check it for candiosity, fire it from the cannoñata (I guess I've been watching the TV program "Viva Piñata" too much again

- candiosity is usually checked with a scanner-type device on a platform with a large readout, with a handheld wand that Langston Lickatoad uses, or with a pack-of-cards-sized device that Fergy Fudgehog uses; and the cannoñata is only used to shoot piñatas to piñata parties away from picturesque Piñata Island), send it to the Daystrom Institute for additional analyses, or inflict upon it punishments that I might inflict upon a flashlight.

So this section of the drone's web page will be significantly more bare than this section of the web page on a page about a flashlight.

The range of the radio in the Tx (R/C hobby talk for "transmitter") is stated as 90 meters (~295 feet); frequency is stated as 2.4GHz.

The unit has a 4-channel remote control; this allows for forward / backward / up / down / left / right movement (movement on all three axes -- X, Y, and Z). It also has a fully proportional control system; simply meaning that the motor speeds can be varied depending on how far you move the joysticks -- it isn't simply "full power and no power at all" like some other R/C products.

The camera has a video resolution of 1280 x 720 (720P video quality).

Photograph of its remote control with my own cellular telephone handset affixed to it.

Aerial photograph taken by this drone.
Click on the image to view it in its raw format (opens in new tab or window)

ALL OF THE FLIGHT VIDEOS ARE ON THEIR OWN WEB PAGE
SO THAT THIS EVAL. WOULD NOT BECOME TOO CUMBERSOME!!!

TEST NOTES:
Test unit was purchased on Ebay on 07-05-18 and was received on the afternoon of 07-10-18.

UPDATE: 07-14-18
Drone has become damaged as a result of an accidental run-over; repair attempt is in progress.

UPDATE: 07-14-18
(Same-day update)
I have determined that the starboard (right) rear motor has burned out at least one of its windings; the motor only reaches approx. 50% the speed of the other three even after changing the prop and checking for dry grass, cat fur, and other unwanted materials around the motor shaft.

Therefore, the always-dreadful, " Failed or was destroyed during/after testing

Failed or was destroyed during/after testing

" icon will be appended to its listings on this website at once, denoting that the product no longer performs as intended (in the case of an aircraft, it no longer flies).

UPDATE: 08-03-18
For reasons totally unknown, the drone has begun to function again. Therefore, the, " Failed or was destroyed during/after testing

" icon can safely be removed from its listings on this website!

UPDATE: 08-08-18
After a prop turned up missing prior to my first flight of the morning on 08-06-18 and the spares were nowhere to be found, I harvested the propellers from one of my two Parrot Swing Transforming Optical Flow Sensor R/C Drones, snipped the tips off so that they were approximately the same length of the props on this drone, and installed them. A very brief test indoors showed that this drone lifted off the ground (it's a bit noisy, but that's to be expected of props with sharp, squared-off tips like these props have -- though I trimmed the sharp corners of each prop at a 45° angle which should help quiet things.

The following is what the T18 looks like now:

UPDATE: 08-12-18
The replacement arrived yesterday, but a gust of wind promptly blew it away on its maiden voyage.

This probably makes the record short time between receipt of a drone and loss of said drone.

Since the drone was lost in the line of duty, the forever-dreadful, "

" icon will have to be used on this website to denote the fact that drone is gone.

UPDATE: 08-14-18
The drone was found & returned to me yesterday!!!

The above photo (from my 08-08-18 update) is no longer valid because this drone (the one that was returned to me) is a replacement and has its OEM props -- plus a full complement of spares.

UPDATE: 08-15-18
I was flying it in a large open area yesterday, and it stopped responding to the transmitter. Instead of landing like it's supposed to, it continued to rapidly gain altitude and fly to the WSW until it went beyond visual range. A search that I conducted using the transmitter (trying to bind it with the radio and trying the photo/video button to listen for its beeps) was totally fruitless despite my having travelled in my electric wheelchair at least 0.50 mile (0.8km) in the general direction of where I watched it vanish.

So this drone is permanently gone.

UPDATE: 08-16-18
My original (the one that was deader than a doorknob) has inexplicably sprung back to life.
So I made a brief test flight (not recorded since my only MicroSD memory chip flew away with the other T18 on 08-14-18) of it yesterday and verified its functionality.

UPDATE: 08-16-18 (Same-day update)
A strong updraft caught the sodding thing and carried it far, far away (it went beyond visual range again).
A search that I conducted using the transmitter (trying to bind it with the radio and trying the photo/video button to listen for its beeps) was totally fruitless despite my having travelled in my electric wheelchair at least 0.25 mile (0.4km) in the general direction that I watched it vanish.
Therefore, the always-dreadful, "

" will (once again) be appended to its listings on this website immediately.

UPDATE: 09-12-18
I liked the little guy so much that I ordered a replacement, which should arrive on or very near 09-18-18.

UPDATE: 09-16-18
The replacement arrived at 12:12pm PDT on 09-15-18, so I'll be flying this little guy once again!!!

UPDATE: 09-19-18
I have taken note that the MicroSD memory chip (for the flight camera) can be a bit fiddly to install -- that is, sometimes it "misses" the socket for it and ends up slipping over the socket and into the drone itself. Fortunately for me here is that the MicroSD chip was relatively easy to tip out to the point of where it could be retrieved with the point of a household steak knife on the several occasions that this has occurred.

.

UPDATE: 09-23-18
The drone's camera has eaten it after the drone inexplicably fell out of the sky and impacted upon some small rocks. It still flies fine, but the camera is shot Therefore, the somewhat dreadful, "

" icon will have to be appended to its listings on this website.

Since this might be ***ENTIRELY*** the fault of the MicroSD memory chip (and this is looking more and more likely now!) I might be able to remove that stupid icon by very-late September -- the soonest that I'll have another MicroSD card in my hands.

UPDATE: 09-24-18
I'm beginning to suspect even more and more that the MicroSD memory chip itself was either irrecoverably corrupted or was even physically damaged and that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the drone itself. But I won't know that FOR CERTAIN until 09-28-18 at the soonest -- this is when the replacement memory chip is due to arrive (it is being shipped from Canada).

UPDATE: 10-02-18
I have confirmed that in fact the drone's camera has gone down the tube.

UPDATE: 10-02-18
The drone records onto the MicroSD memory chip, but the FPV system is shot.
As long as I fly strictly-dicktly LOS, I forsee no issues with the FPV failure.

UPDATE: 10-08-18
I just confirm that yes indeed the onboard camera has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Therefore, the, "

" icon will be appended to its listings on this website at once, denoting the fact that while a partial failure has occurred, the product can still be used at least somewhat normally.

UPDATE: 10-18-18
The drone now performs a total shutdown after several seconds of flight; the props have no significant resistance when manually turned so that wasn't "it".
Therefore, the, " Failed or was destroyed during/after testing

" icon will be appended to its listings on this website at once, denoting the fact that the drone is no longer flyable.

UPDATE: 12-04-18
A replacement T18 arrived this afternoon; the video image was upside-down thouigh but it was repairable in post.
Apparently, some asshat (or assbonnet) at the Flytec quality control department must have been visiting the loo when this particular T18 drone whizzed past his or her station, hahaha!!! :-)

UPDATE: 10-24-19
Product was stolen in Shelton WA. USA while awaiting shipping to me in Fresno CA. USA.
Therefore, the dreadful, "

" icon must be appended to its listings on this website, denoting the fact that some true-blue total asshaberdasher has kyped it -- probably to sell for drug money if who I suspect stole it indeed did it.

Flytec

Mini-sized R/C quadcopter (drone) w/inbuilt camera

LED

13 (1 blue & 1 red in radio, 1 red in charger, 4 red and 4 green in drone itself, 1 red & 1 blue in flight camera)

N/A

Pushbutton on/off on radio

Plastic

N/A

4x AAA cells for radio; 3.70V 450mAh Li:PO battery for drone

Unknown/unable to measure

Very light sprinkle-resistance only

EIN GROßER RIESIGER GEIST, DER EINEN RIESIGEN PLUMPS NIMMT UND DANN DEN KOPF UNROT NEIN VERLÄSST!!!

USB charging dongle w/ integral cable, 2x front & 2x rear rotor blades, small Phillips screwdriver, green fuselage cover

146.0mm L x 137.0mm W x 36.0mm T

50g

China

None

Flytec T218 "Mini Racing Drone" * www.cnflytec.com...

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