For me, personally, the Typhoon H started out with a bit of an advantage: it's a hexacopter, and I'm a big fan of hexacopters, for reasons both personal and professional. Our home-built flagship – RQCX-3 “Raven,” now largely retired but still our first choice for certain mission profiles – is a hexacopter, and she proved utterly reliable during several years of flying through some of the most challenging and perilous conditions you could ever hope to imagine.
Also, I like the redundancy that comes from having six rotors. Even without the sort of clever flight logic Yuneec built into the Typhoon H, a hex can in theory keep flying if it loses a single motor, ESC or propeller. Also, hexacopters can lift a heavier maximum payload than a comparable quadcopter, and I do like powerful aircraft.
And, finally, I think hexacopters just fly better... You're giving the flight controller 50 percent more points of thrust to work with, so it just makes sense that it's able to deliver more stable, fluid flight when compared with a quadcopter.
So, I'm excited to see a mass market camera drone arrive that is something other than a quad, and Yuneec certainly seems to have taken full advantage of the opportunity, adding retractable landing struts, a collision avoidance system, an upgraded 4K camera – and even more to come.
It still flies like a Yuneec: at a very stately, deliberate pace. It packs more speed and power than the earlier Q500, but still not enough to really tear up the sky – which isn't necessarily a quality you want in a camera ship. Smooth and steady is preferred flight mode for that mission profile, and the Typhoon H delivers it in spades.
-Lucidity
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