DJI FPV Arm Bracer Kit – Do You Really Need It?

Now the kit itself is super easy to install it’s, really straightforward, and the entire installation process will probably take you about five minutes and i’ll walk you through that in a little bit. But i also wanted to answer all the questions we’ve gotten about the kit, because viewers are asking is this something i should be using with my brand new dji fpv drone? Other people wanted to know: does it improve the structural integrity of the drone? If i crash it into a tree, we’ve had a few questions about the flight characteristics. Does it impact the way it flies? Will it reduce the battery time we’ve had a few other people ask us if it’s such an important kit? Why was it included with the original product release so i’m going to answer all those questions at the end, but i first want to show you how to install it. But let me start off by answering the most obvious question: does it improve the structural integrity of the drone if you crash into something it absolutely does, because what you’re doing essentially is tying the front arms to the back arms with a piece of plastic? And if you crash into something all that kinetic energy, which is energy in motion, has to go someplace and having a flexible material like plastic, allows it to absorb some of that energy, both in the front arms and by putting the brace on now the back arms And even the brace itself, so you’ve got a lot more flexibility built into the system.

That’Ll absorb a lot of that shock when it smacks into a tree, so it absolutely improves the structural integrity and i’ll get into a little bit more nerdy. Details of why that’s true at the end but i’ll answer those other questions as well, but first i want to show you how to install it and then we’ll talk a little bit more about all the questions that have come in and i’ll give you the answers That i’ve got on those particular questions because i’ve had it installed on my drone for about a week now, i’ve been flying an awful lot with it, and i’ve got some real world examples of how it actually impacts the drone. So stay tuned for the installation and i’ll come back with those answers at the end inside the kit, you’ll find a set of arm bracers, a right side and a left side, two attachment clamps right side and left side and two screws. These do have a personality and when they’re talking about the right side and left side it’s from the drone’s perspective, so facing away from you, if you were the drone, this would be your right side. This would be your left side and it’s important. You get them on the right side, because you can’t put them on the wrong side. They won’t fit you’ll also find a full instruction manual, and they give you some pretty basic diagrams on how to install this inside the instruction manual.

But i’ll show you in a second it’s, really intuitive now. The way you can tell the right side from the left side is on the brace itself. If you look closely here on the plastic, you’ll see a little r in there it’s kind of hard to see it, but it’s down there in the plastic, but i’ll show you another way to check once i take the propellers off that’s. The first thing you want to do is remove the propellers. It just makes things a whole lot easier when you’re putting this together and the way you take. Those off is you’ll push down on the propellers and spin the motor underneath and it’ll actually loosen the propeller it’ll pop off when you’re putting it back on make sure you line up the propeller with the red ring, with the actual motor that’s got the red markings On it, because if you get them backwards and spin, it up it’s going to do a belly flop on you, so you don’t want to have that happen. So take all four of the propellers off then i’ll show you to put the braces on all right. So there’s the last one now the way i like to do this is again i like to keep the perspective of right and left so i’ll flip it over like this on its back and then this brace, you can tell that you’ve got it on the correct Side because you’ll see a deep v cut right here.

On this end, you don’t see it on the other side that v lines up with the actual v on the arm and the way you’ll install. This is slide it down over the leg and then gently pull it down until it snaps, and you see the back one lines up almost perfectly just pull that down and it’ll snap on it sounds pretty dramatic, but it’s not really that bad. Then you can do the other side same thing, Sei, going to slide it down oops. I got it backwards, you’re going to slide it down over the front leg. First you’ll hear a click and then the back leg, and once it clicks into position you’re good to go, you can spin it over and then you want to put the brackets on now the brackets go on the back. Let me spin it this way, so i can see it again right, side left side. This bracket is going to clip into a little slot in the back there’s a slot right there, the bracket’s going to clip into that slot. Just like this and it’s going to spin over the top, so let me put it back down, so i can do it. Regular i’ll put it in the slot and then i’ll spin it over the top on the front and once it’s in the slot. I can tighten it down right there same thing on the other side, it’s going to go into the slot in the back and then right around to the front and now we’re ready to put the screws in it.

So is that nice and tight yep that’s good. All right to do that, you’ll flip it over the screws, go through these holes in the bottom and they actually attach to this top piece and squeeze it squeeze. It really tight right there to hold this thing in place. Now the one thing that i think they misfired on is you can’t, actually use the allen wrench that came with the kit it won’t fit the uh. The size of the screw is too big. This just spins, so you can’t use that, and i think that was a bit of a mistake. Whoever put the screw together should have actually had it fit that allen wrench, because it would have been nice to use the tool that came with the kit, but not that big a deal so put the screw in find an allen wrench that will fit that now. I’M going to do a shameless plug here. This is the drone valley, 28 piece precision, screwdriver set and we’ve got 28 different bits inside there. Per coincidenza, one of the ones you need is perfect for tightening these up. So if you’re, using that kit or you’ve got your own kit put that in there and just tighten up that screw now, you may have to actually hold it to tighten it up top. So let me do that real, quick and you’ll feel it grab. Make sure you don’t cross thread this? The screw also has a little bit of loctite on it.

So once you tighten it down, it’s going to stay in place, it’s not going to loosen itself up and you don’t want to go too tight on this. You want to get it just finger tight, just get it to the point where you can feel it stop and that’s all you need to do all right. Let’S do the other one, this side we’ve got that screw right here, just drop it in the hole. In realtà, this is magnetic, which makes it really easy, so i’ll hold the bracket put that through the hole and i’ll tighten it up, and then once you tighten that up you’re good to go everything’s installed at that point now. The reason this makes a big difference is because again, what you’re doing effectively is joining the front legs with the back legs and it’s pretty much the same thing you’d see with any bracing going on. So if you have an attic in your house and you go up in the attic and you see all the stringers up there they’re supporting that roof, this is tying the front to the back. So when you have a crash, heaven forbid that energy. That this thing is going to try and impart to whatever object, you’re running into has to be absorbed by the drone now normally, that would just be the front arms which would be way too much, probably for the front arms to handle and they’d crack. But by adding this bracket i’m now spreading that that energy, se si desidera, between the front the back and even the brace itself, because it’s plastic, so all three of these components have a certain level of flexibility to them and i’ve actually reduced the amount of dangerous Energy, if you will to these front arms by spreading it at least in half to the back and some in the middle, so it really does distribute that and improves the structural integrity of the drone.

So it’s a really big deal and then, to finish up, you just put the props back on make sure you put them on the right motors, so line up the colors spin. A quarter of a turn will go back on same thing over here and i’ll. Do the two front ones and that’s really all there is to it it’s a pretty straightforward kit to install it’s, not that hard if you’re flying fpv today. This is probably something you can do with a blindfold on, but for people that are not used to taking stuff apart and installing things i think they did a pretty good job with the kit and again it’s pretty straightforward to install it. Now that you understand how to install the arm, bracers kit i’d like to answer the questions that we’ve gotten from viewers, and this first one was by far the most common question that folks were asking and it had to do with the kit itself. People wanted to know is this a kit that i should be installing on my brand new dji fpv drone and i think what they were really asking there was: will it help to improve the structural integrity of the drone if i’m racing along at high speed – and I smack into a tree well for starters, try and avoid the tree, but the short answer is it absolutely will, and i understand the question, because flying an fpv drone is dramatically different than flying.

A camera drone with camera drones you’re up at 100, 200 300 piedi. You’Re cruising along it’s, pretty much handling all the balancing of the drone and you’re pointing the camera where you need to and you’re recording, stuff and that’s a beautiful thing, and i love flying camera drones, but flying an fpv drone you’re closer to the ground. È, a higher speed drone it’s a lot more cinematic kind of filming where you’re racing along you’re getting closer to objects, you’re weaving between trees. You might go under a bridge and you’re going to run into stuff, because any fpv pilot will tell you the way you get to be a better pilot. Flying fpv is, by crashing a lot and you’re going to crash a lot so you’re going to run into stuff you’re going to flip the drone over and pancake on the ground and you’re going to get a little better every time and learn that you can’t do It that way next time, but the challenge is when you first start flying and you run into something normally an fpv drone. You can take parts off that are broken and you can replace them. The challenge with this drone is that it’s plastic and i know there’s a lot of controversy out there about why didn’t they make it a carbon fiber, they chose plastic. Now plastic is not necessarily a bad thing, because plastic has a coefficient of elasticity that can absorb a lot of shock.

So by putting this bracketing system on what you’re effectively doing is tying the front arms to the back arms with a plastic bracket. Ora, it’s physics right, so this isn’t an opinion. You got ta trust science, but physics will tell you that the first law of thermodynamics is that energy can neither be created or destroyed. It can change forms, but it can’t be destroyed. Allora, if you’re flying along at high speed, you’ve got essentially kinetic energy in that drone and when it stops the energy that’s in that drone has to go someplace and through that collision. Some of it is going to get transferred to whatever you run into. So if it’s, a soft subject, you’re going to run into it, it’s going to absorb a lot of the energy if it’s a really hard subject, and you smack into it that energy has to come back inside the drone and if you’ve got sort of elasticity in The drone that can absorb that kinetic energy that’s a good thing, it’s not going to crack. So there is a point where the front arms will crack but i’m telling you tying the front arms to the back arms with this brace gives you flexibility in the front arms and if i hit something i can now share that impact with the back arms, and I can even share it with the brace now i know a lot of people are saying why didn’t they make the bracelet a carbon fiber.

That seems like a good idea, but it’s not really a good idea, because carbon fiber is incredibly rigid. It’S got zero elasticity in it, so that’s going to transfer as much energy as possible to the back arms and you’re. Only sharing it between the two arms by having a plastic brace in between this will wobble for lack of a better word. This will wobble, and this will wobble so it’s sort of a three way sharing. If you will at an impact now i’m, not saying if you hit something at 87 miglia all'ora, you’re still not going to break anything but i’m going to save a better chance of not breaking something by sharing that impact between the two, because that law of Conservation of energy, you can’t beat it it’s science and it’s going to happen so you’re going to have to deal with it all right, quindi questo è, the first question, the other thing people were asking about the braces had to do with. Why were they not included with the kit, and i can’t really defend that right, because if dji saw this and said you know what we can make it a little bit more structurally integrated by putting these braces on there. I kind of view that as an accessory and the reason i’m saying, that is because, when you buy a drone there’s a lot of other things, you’ll buy with the drone to sort of enhance your flying experience to make it a little safer.

A little bit more fun things like landing gear kits i talk about those all the time on the mavic products, where the mavic’s laid really close to the ground and we’ve come out with lift kits that take them up off the ground to keep the camera and The gimbal away from the dirt and the dust and the grass and all the rest of that stuff that’s an accessory a lot of people like to use prop guards right. Pop guards are an accessory we’re, probably split 50 50., when you first start flying a camera. Drone put some prop guards on it, because you’re going to run into a tree and it’s nice to have it bounce off the tree or the wall rather than crashing into a tree or a wall, so those are accessories that are optional. I view these as optional accessories as well, because i’ll bet you the talented fbv flyers out. There are not going to put these on because they’ve gotten so good at flying. Fpv i’m, not one of them i’m, still crashing an awful lot but i’m pretty good. But most of the guys that are exceptionally good at flying fpv are going to look at these and think of them as training wheels because they don’t think they’re going to crash the drone. Per me, i want to have them on there, because i am going to crash the drone and just on the off chance that i try something a little more risky i’ve got them on there to help absorb that shock.

So i think they’re accessories if they put them on there and weld them on the drone. People will complain about them right. So the fact you can put them on when you need to take them off when you’re ready, that’s perfectly fine, just like prop guards just like landing gear, just like lipo bags and landing mats. All of those things are accessories that you can add to the drone. If you want you, don’t have to use them, but if you decide to use them, you can snap them on. So i think that’s, okay and that’s – probably why it wasn’t included in the original kit. A lot of people asked about the aerodynamic properties. A questo proposito. Does it affect the flying characteristics of the drum i’ve? Had these about a week and a half i put them on the day i got them. I’Ve been flying non stop since then. I can’t tell any difference it handles the same in the air. Maybe it’ll get snagged in a tree if i get close to a branch because i’ve got something to hang up on, but i don’t get that close to the trees. I haven’t noticed any difference in battery life whatsoever, so it’s not like the tiny bit of additional weight. This adds to the drone already is pretty heavy, but that tiny bit of additional weight has zero impact on the battery consumption. As far as i can tell so, i don’t think that’s a big issue at all and then the other question.

We got a couple of other weird ones. A lot of people wanted to know why aren’t they plastic. I mean why aren’t they carbon fiber. I kind of explained that already i don’t think carbon fiber is a good idea. I wouldn’t necessarily be against the carbon fiber frame, because i think it does build integrity into the structure where it’s going to resist a lot of that crack. But putting them here means that i’m going to transfer all the energy that hits this front leg, all the way to the back leg and it’s not going to share it with the brace. So i like the fact that it’s plastic, because it’s going to give you a little bit of flex a little bit of wobble, so that’s pretty much it for that. So the short answer, Suppongo, è: should you install this in your fpv drone? It depends. It really depends on what kind of flyer you are if you’re new to fpv flying, buy these the money you’re going to spend on. These is going to save you a lot of money in repairs, because you can change the arms but it’s a pretty big deal, buy and put them on, and when you get really comfortable and you’re like a wizard out there, flying and you’re never crashing anything. Take them off when you want not a big deal, you can pop them off with a couple of screws. If you’re an experienced, fpv flyer – and you like to work, like i say without a net, then you don’t need them: they’re extra right, their extra weight, their extra size, their extra cost, Se sei, brave and you’re flying the drone – and you feel comfortable flying the drone.

Don’T worry about putting them on so totally up too, but i think that for the vast majority, especially camera flyers that are moving into this fpv world, that aren’t as good at fpv and it’s impossible to be intuitive about fpv you’ve got to get in there. You got to fly, you got to crash a bunch. You got to get used to the way it flies you’re that kind of person. You should definitely have these on your drone, because it’s going to save you, i think a lot of money in repairs down the road, so that’s pretty much my two cents and again i hope, you’ve enjoyed this clip that’s pretty much. All i had for today. I’Ve got a link below if you want to go check these out in the dji site. I’Ve got a link to the fpv drone as well. I’Ve got a lot more clips coming on the fpv drone on the mavic air 2 sul mini 2 and a bunch of other drones that we’re going to be reviewing, as well as a ton of other high tech stuff that we’re going to want to talk About on the channel, so if you haven’t subscribed yet hit that subscribe button down there on the bottom and join the drone valley family, we have so much cool content coming and i’m going to be starting the giveaways again pretty soon on the channel. So you definitely want to get in on those and that’s pretty much it for today.