Well I was toying with the idea of getting a little lightweight quad for a while for some racing, I've been following the progress of the ImmersionRC Vortex for a while and promised to be all that I was looking for. So when the guys over at HobbyRC (based near Blackpool) got them in last week, I got my order in sharpish. It was delivered next day even though I ordered past 3pm which is good. I already had a Tx (Turnigy 9XR) so just ordered the Vortex and an EzUHF Rx (the vortex doesn't come with one) and some extra 3S lipo's (not quite ready to rev it up to 4S yet!).

Now unlike the DJI Phantom or it's ilk, this is by no means the easiest thing to fly, I'd definitely recommend flying a hubsan x4 or the phantom in manual mode first, there's no fancy GPS mode to help you out with these things. But what they do offer is complete and utter racing madness, take a look at this video which is what convinced me to get one in the first place.



They have just released a GoPro and Mobius camera mounts for them too, the vortex already has an anti vibration camera mount on it, but I want to get a mount to angle the camera properly. The quad comes with it's own FPV camera transmitter already (32 chann I think, works fine with my Blackpearl FPV monitor anyway) and a really decent OSD too. Infact the OSD is where you can configure the whole thing without even needing to connect it to a PC at all. In the box you get spare props and other crash kit stuff too, and the whole thing folds down to neatly fit in your backpack.

I was surprised at just how fast these things are, in a matter of seconds at full pelt it's pretty much out of my line of sight. Another friend got one at the same time from HobbyRC and he'd never flown a quad before, suffice to say he's crashed it sooo many times today and apart from the rx falling off (he just mounted it with velcro ) it still lives and flies fine so they can take a bit of a beating.

Really can't rave about it enough, if you fancy a change from the tranquil DJI experience then give these things a go, they are sooo much fun. Got to say a big thanks to the guys over at hobbyRC.co.uk too, I had some issues connecting it to the PC to flash firmware and they were really good explaining how to get the Rx/Tx into firmware mode. Got a few friends coming up for the weekend in a couple of weeks and we're all going to go racing