Yuneec Breeze UAS

About three weeks ago, I wrote about buying an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) and being certified by the FAA to fly one of these things. My plan was to get some aerial video footage of the lake house and some of our activities.  As often seems to be the case when it comes to my experiences in new endeavors, nothing really went according to plan with this UAS.

In my initial flight tests (just a couple of short flights in my first outing), I found that control of this UAS was rather lousy. You use your phone or tablet with an app to control this UAS and there was a lot of lag. You would use the app to try to rotate clockwise... lag...  lag... lag... finally, it would either slowly start to turn clockwise like it was trying to fly through molasses or it would suddenly start a fast, jerky movement to clockwise. It was usable but it was disconcerting and a bit frustrating.

Next, I quickly realized that the video quality wasn't nearly as good as I had hoped. The bit depth was lacking significantly and the files were massively compressed which hurt the bit depth even further. Plus, the auto white balance setting was producing very... very... bluish, greenish footage. The white balance needed to be changed so drastically to make it look real that it further degraded due to the lack of bit depth. This was quite disappointing as well.

Even considering these drawbacks, I was really looking forward to capturing some aerial footage of us at the lake house. I had viewed some decent sample footage online so I was optimistic.

I chose this particular UAS because it was small and unobtrusive. It was relatively quiet too. I definitely did not want to be flying a noisy, large copter. I wanted to be as unobtrusive as possible. This UAS was tiny and fit into a tiny white case about the size of a small household first aid kit. The size was awesome!

Another plus for the Yuneec Breeze was that the price was right. It cost less than $400 and I can tell you with absolute certainty that any camera costing less than $400 in today's market is generally poor yet the video quality I was seeing online was looking pretty good considering this low price point. I figured it was worth a try.

When I finally took flight with this new UAS at the lake, I found some new little "quirks". I found that it was quite difficult to fly smoothly which is required for smooth video. The lag in the control between the Breeze and my tablet didn't help this at all. I decided that I would just cut out any jerky movements in the video and just work with the smooth or stationary aerial footage. Again, I was optimistic.

I shot a couple of short videos from the house... the Breeze flew up and away from the house and then automatically returned to the same spot where I started. This worked out well. 

I found that it was also very easy to land on my hand! This would come in handy for using from my kayak as I had seen in some promotional videos online. We typically do a lot of kayaking together as a family so getting an aerial perspective of this activity would be an interesting viewpoint.  

So... Lukey, my grandson, was learning to paddle his own kayak and I wanted to capture some interesting video of this event but this meant that I would now need to be flying over water. There were plenty of sample videos online of this little UAS flying over water so I wasn't overly concerned about doing this. I knew I would simply need to be careful and deliberate.

We all ventured out in our kayaks to about fifty feet or so from shore. I pulled the Breeze out from under the front deck of my kayak and placed it on top of the deck. I started her up using my tablet... pressed the button to take off...  and my Breeze lifted off the front deck of my kayak. 

The kayaks all drifted with the wind but the GPS controlled Breeze was steady. I gained a little altitude and adjusted the camera angle to capture us on our kayaks... I captured about a minute of video and suddenly the Breeze started oscillating uncontrollably...

I had very little control once this oscillating began. On my screen, a little notice popped up indicating that I had a "motor malfunction"... I tried to gain control but the Breeze kept oscillating into a larger and larger circle... now I was getting worried....

I decided that I needed to gain altitude and try to control the Breeze enough to push it to shore. We were very close to shore and nobody was on shore so I knew I wouldn't crash into anyone. I also knew I didn't want to land it in the water. I figured if I could inch it over to land at a higher altitude, I had better chances of a hard landing on dry land rather than electronics-frying water.

The Breeze kept flying in an out-of-control circle... larger and larger... but I was managing to gain altitude and I was having intermittent success at inching closer and closer to the shore. This was good news but I knew I wasn't free and clear just yet!

Eventually, the Breeze crashed into trees and then came tumbling to the ground near the shoreline. When I paddled to the shore I found the Breeze submerged in two feet of water. 

Although I would not have flown it again even if it had landed on solid ground because I would not trust it to fly safely and reliably, there was no way to fly this waterlogged piece of electronics now!

Below is a short video of this doomed flight. As I was putting this video together, I noticed that the white balance changes throughout the video and that the video is a bit fuzzy. I think these are signs that something was wrong with the electronics within the Breeze... perhaps the main circuit board was defective. This Yuneec Breeze was definitely defective in one way or another but I'm seeing signs of a problem in the quality of this video in addition to the loss of control problem. There definitely was a bigger problem with this UAV.

Anyway, here is the doomed flight....







I have some other video clips shot from this Breeze (before it crashed) and they are far crisper... color is more consistent... this video, above, is quite poor and certainly does not meet my standards. Whatever caused the Breeze to crash was also affecting the quality of the video. 

Needless to say, this waterlogged UAS was no longer operable. When we returned home, I contacted Amazon so I could possibly return it. They had asked if I wanted to exchange it for a new one but I opted for a refund. There is now no way I could ever trust another Yuneec product. Someone could have gotten seriously injured and I don't want to take part in any incident like that nor do I want to be responsible for injuring someone with a flying camera!  

For now, I'll stick to ground-based photography and videography. Unmanned aircraft systems are not ready for the masses just yet. After this loss-of-control incident, I can clearly see how anyone can lose control of their UAV in an instant and it is of no fault of their flying abilities. Malfunctions happen. In this case, however, the malfunctioning equipment can hurt people as it comes crashing to the ground.

Plus, I really do find UAV's (or, as everyone erroneously refers to them, 'drones') to be as annoying as a jet-ski!


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