I have a drone with me today that we havent flown in a while. All this talk about many drones, havent seen much about this guy. In a long time it is the uh femi, x8 mini uh, so you know with all the talk about the the dji mini 3 and and the autel nano plus i havent flown this guy in a long time, so i thought i would put it up in The air and check it out – and you know, lets just see how it flies again: havent flown it in a long time, well, look at video quality, etc again its about 7 30 in the evening, so the sun is getting pretty low in the sky, so its Going to be looking into the sun one direction and have the sun at its back, the other so lets quit messing around lets get this bird in the air. So we had a little uh firmware, update so im getting that done right now, so uh its taken. A little bit never fails right. I should have fired it up before i left the house, okey dokey uh, so weve got the firmware updated and i just did a compass calibration lets go ahead and look at that uh uh uh, the the firmware version. Just for your information there we go flight control, 1024, camera 215b, so thats, where were at with firmware uh, we are shooting in 4k 30 frames per. Second again, i did a compass calibration, so we should be ready to go, were down to 87 battery thats.

Okay, this is just going to be a quick flight lets. Go ahead. Lets see, i want to look at one more thing: yeah precision landing is on sport mode is off okay, uh ive got, i meant to look at the return to home height as well return to home height 32 yeah, 35 meters thats plenty. Okay, sorry about all this mess around lets go ahead and start recording, so we are recording lets uh lets do an auto takeoff, its been a while since ive flown this drone so and there she goes theres the little guy its going aways up in the air. How high are we going here, uh its about four meters in the air, but its holding pretty good, so no circular motion or anything so lets bring it down here and and lets uh take a look at it with the camera. So now you see it kind of moving around a little bit, but not too bad so lets see if we can bring it in here, just a little bit and rock it back and forth. So you can see that gimbal in action. You know when youre used to a dji drone uh to see another drone like this thats, just its just not as stable theres, just no two ways about it. It moves around a little bit more lets drop that camera down. I dont see any reason why we cant do our uh our droney here, so lets drop that camera down a little bit and uh were in normal mode, uh, reverse and up now, yeah, so pretty good its doing just fine yeah im hitting that up.

Stick pretty hard uh yeah were about getting up about 40 meters thats, pretty good. I think thats above our famous cell phone tower over here lets pick that camera up and get to the rule of thirds nice flat horizon thats uh thats, always a welcome thing and were looking right into the sun. So lets uh lets, go ahead and go to the other end of the park here or of the school yard here and uh, and and so we can turn around and get the sun behind us uh, but just kind of want to show you how this, how This guy looks lets uh lets hit full throttle. Now this is in normal mode and see how fast yeah see. This is a quick little drone look at that were over 16 meters per second and thats in normal mode. As i recall, i remember this guy being a pretty sporty little drone. Okay lets kind of lets see if we can kind of move around here, get the the other way and well see what we can do going. The other direction see if we can get that same speed up theres, not a lot of wind, a little bit of wind, but not too much so yeah im just kind of moving it around here. Getting us pointed the other direction and well get kind of get uh over the top of the school buildings here and and well move back this way and lets see what we get for speed so uh yeah and it kind of moved side.

That was an inadvertent move. There was not on the controls there when you saw it move to the right. That was not on the controls and now its in fail safe return. It says not sure why i dont know okay, im gon na get out of that. Okay, i stopped that uh, okay, so yeah i dont that was that was kind of odd. We must we must have lost signal there for a second, maybe thats. What i missed there uh, but anyway lets uh lets, go full stick forward and uh lets see yeah and im, seeing a little orange on the con fpv signal there uh and lets see how fast itll go this way, yeah not as fast. So clearly, we had the wind at our back going that other direction. Nine meters per second thats pretty good and the drone is flying above us – 10 meters per second yeah. So we definitely had the wind at her back im watching the drone. Above me, though, its its flying along pretty good lets. Uh lets go across the street here and and get a look at uh over the top of uh discovery elementary here – and this is a look that i often get because its kind of interesting youve got youve got things off in the distance and you have uh Things close up here, you got those play structures with that are kind of colorful. Then you get the mountains off in the distance and then uh.

You know the green trees in the foreground, so i think that always makes an eff an interesting shot to to check the drone out 17 satellites at sand. So thats pretty good im telling you this fpv is looking really good. What i see on the screen here looks great, i mean i mean nice flat horizon so, like i said its uh, its its been a while since ive flown this guy – and i remember it did it did pretty good before and by the way. This was my fourth one. I had a lot of trouble with them when i first got it so lets go ahead and throw it into sport mode just for the fun of it. So you do that inside the app here and im going to click sport mode on, and it says 18 meters per second. So we know the king of speed of the mini drone, so lets go and this should have the wind at its back. Let me drop that camera down just a little and lets go full tilt forward and lets see how fast this guy will get up to getting to the other end here and look at that 18 and a half meters per second holy cow, yeah, good, solid 18.. So thats, you know thats around 40 miles an hour there and i see it kicking the gimbal down a little bit which its gon na at those kind of speeds in sport mode.

You better expect that so thats not uh thats, not a knock on the drone. At all so lets do the same thing. Lets go the other way and lets uh lets see. Lets see how fast we can get it up to and again what im, what im telling you is uh in uh in sport mode. You are going to get some gimbal movement, particularly. You know this drone uh. You know it moved up to a pretty high speed. There over about 18 and a half meters per second, i think i saw there at one point so were going to leave that gimbal in that position that its in now and full stick forward and lets see how fast we can get it going. This way and its not messing around yeah, not quite as fast so, probably about the same as it did in normal mode. I dont think it was much faster than that meters per second thats, pretty good. You know the wind that must the wind must be yeah. Theres were getting up to 13 meters per second or close to it. Okay, easing off the stick: there lets go back in and go take sport mode off and uh lets bring the guy back around here and lets see if we can. Maybe just do some moves with it here. I you know one of my uh anybody that follows. My channel knows that one of my favorite things to do is orbit this uh cell phone tower here.

So uh lets see if we can get centered up on this guy and again, i am in just normal mode here, regular speed mode, so lets get centered up on it and lets see. If i can lets see, if i can do im going to do an orbit to the uh to the drones right – and this is a manual orbit here – folks lets see if we can make it happen, yeah so so the yaw is a little quicker than the Sideways speed but yeah not too bad were getting there. Yeah were keeping it pretty much in the center. The other thing that im doing uh. The reason that i wanted to get out and fly today is ive got the the new dji microphone system. So this is the first time ive used it. So i figured this would be a good opportunity to hook it up to my gopro and give it a try. So that worked out pretty good lets. Uh lets see if we can go over the top of the cell phone tower here and get a look at it see if i can drop the gimbal as we move forward, move slowly over the top of it and see if we can get a look at It see if theres any birds nests up there. Well, i said slowly and then i kind of sped up there a little bit im watching the drone and you know whats funny is it looks really close when youre looking at this video but im looking up at the drone in the cell phone tower and its Way above it, it just looks closer than it is so im going to go straight 90 degrees down with the camera and lets see if we can get right over the top of it and a little bit more there.

We go kind of moves back. So this you know this is kind of an illustration. You know im watching the drone up in the air there. Uh again, you know this little femi drone. It moves around a little bit its not quite as steady as what wed be used to with a dji drill. Let me see if i can get. I want to see if i can get centered right up on it yeah and i think the the gimbal moved around there just a little bit yeah. It did so lets go forward just a little more its its its hard, its making it difficult for me to get right in the center of it uh. It just keeps moving back as i as i move over the top of it. It moves back. So i dont know if the wind is blowing it around or what but anyway so what im going to do is im going to raise and circle. This is one of my favorite moves and its all on the left. Stick and lets see if we can kind of slowly go straight up and do a little circle here. I always think thats a kind of a cool move and, as you as you go, you try and go a little bit faster in all directions. Yeah not too bad. Okay lets stop right there. What were down to 44 batteries so were doing pretty good uh. You know i wonder uh its been a while, since i have done any of the automated flight modes with this guy pardon me, ive got the drone aways up there lets bring it down and in a little bit and lets see what else, what other tricks can We do with this guy so were down to 42 battery.

So let me take a look here. Uh, we could actually, i wonder, lets i havent its been so long since ive flown this drone, theres theres, a bunch of things that that i cant remember how to use them so uh s a r mode. I know i remember itll show your coordinates and it brings zoom up too so its just a digital zoom, but i can use the slider on the left side of the screen here to zoom. So lets see if we can zoom in on me here, maybe yeah there. It is. I mean its not like its super smooth, but you know what its there thats me moving it over and itll go up to three times. Digital zoom so well see how that looks on the sd card uh. But then you also look right above me. There it gives you the gps, coordinates so thats what they mean by uh, search and rescue mode, so that you could get the coordinates and you can zoom in on something so lets get out of that were clicking out of that lets. Go back into that little guy there and uh how about fixed wing mode, so fixed wing mode, uh yeah lets see when, when its at speed is up to three meters per second and the height is five meters for three seconds. So so what i believe itll do here so lets lets get up higher yeah, so i can see already its gon na fly like an airplane.

So when you see it tilting around there, thats, not the gimbal, its just locking the gimbal in place so lets fly. It around here yeah and it says it entered fixed wing mode, so we should yeah so well get that tilt just like you would in an airplane so more like an fpv drone, uh, so thats kind of cool isnt. It yeah been a while since ive done, that, with this guy exit, short press and auto lets see over the top of the cell phone tower, thats, pretty cool okay were at 32 percent battery im going to get out of fixed wing mode exit, fixed wing mode And lets just do another flight out here. Lets go out to the corner over here and then lets throw this guy into return to home. It does have precision landing, although we didnt use a landing pad so but lets uh lets go ahead and kick it into return to home and just see how she does so there we go man. It took that command immediately 29 battery weve been recording for about 14 and a half minutes, but remember we used this uh uh yeah and its giving us that low battery warning – and you know, pay attention here, looks like were going to go right by the cell Phone tower uh, you know you want to make sure youre above uh things like that and were probably pretty close to the height of that thing, but were going to go right by it.

But but anyway, when it got down below 30 percent is selling a slow battery so uh, and we did the the firmware update on this battery. So we didnt have a full battery when we started and lets see how close it gets to us here. Its coming in well yeah its not seeing a landing pad, which we didnt expect it to its uh, its gon na land im going to move the camera kind of over here, because its going to kind of land on the corner. Here its a little bit of a slope there, but itll be all right, its not going to hurt anything im going to say thats, going to its going to be within uh five feet of the of the landing pad of where it took off from i cant Remember if this guy picks up the camera automatically or not, but im gon na, do it so bringing that camera up and down. She comes and yeah youre, seeing that on the gopro yeah and she shut right down uh one of the cool things that femi does. Is it stops recording when you land that way you dont corrupt, a a video file. So let me let me get everything shut down. Well, do a quick conclusion: hey, okay, guys, the uh little phoebe, x8 mini uh, nothing special about this flight. I just wanted to fly it because i havent flown it in a long time, and you know what it did.

Great uh weve proven that this is the fastest of the many drones we had it up over 18 and a half meters per second. Of course it had the wind at its back, but nonetheless uh, that is by far the fastest of the many drones. Theres no question about it. Uh the drone flew fine, it handles good, i mean you saw. We did the orbit around the cell phone tower uh. I can tell you the video on the fpv looked good. I im anxious to get the sd card and and take a look at it and see how it does. As i recall, sometimes you would get a little micro shake in the gimbal once in a while with this thing, but i havent seen it yet so so im not going to say that from this flight, so we didnt have a whole lot of battery because we Did a firmware update, however uh we did have time to try out fixed wing, fixed wing mode and we tried out search and rescue mode and tried out the uh, the digital zoom, that this little guy provides. Uh yeah and you just got ta kind of look at the at the video quality of it it. I can tell you it. It flies great uh for the price i think uh. When i bought this, it was like 319 dollars. I think its a little bit more than that now i think you can commonly pick this guy up for 350 bucks, im going to say thats a pretty good buy for for a pretty decent little drone.

Now the only caveat im going to throw out there is femi does have quality issues from time to time. This is my fourth one. I went through three of them before i got one that worked great now, of course, that was early on its when they were first starting to build them, so perhaps the ones now are are better. I dont know that i just wanted to tell you about my experience, but again, if you can buy one of these for 350 bucks shoots in 4k, 30 frames per second has active track, has a number of intelligent flight modes. There you go everything that everybodys asking for in a mini drone. It does not have obstacle avoidance, it has downward sensors, but does not have any front facing or rear facing sensors etc. So if you use the tracking modes, be careful because you can walk the drone right into something, it wont know that its there uh so anyway, thats about it for its about uh yeah, its just right about 8 p.m. Now so, and the sun is, is pretty low on the horizon, as you can see, im just kind of squinting my eyes to see here and again im anxious to try. Ive got the the dji mic system hooked up to my gopro, so im anxious to see how the sound quality is on this one as well. I can tell you this mic system is pretty easy to use and i and i like it so far, but this is the first time anyway enough jibber jabber thats about it.

This is marcus crawford with the idaho quadcopter channel out and if you like this kind of content, please consider subscribing to my channel. Most of all. I so appreciate you taking the time to look at this video and yeah, of course, well see on the next one and im thinking the next one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tr1fIXQvGQ