I agree prop guards are just parasitic drag .My experience with skyviper says The motors and gears will be destroyed long before any real damage will occur to props.
I agree. The props are indestructible, but the gears not so much. After snagging tree branches a couple times I’ve stripped the front right prop gear. I bought a SV on ebay for parts and replaced the gear. I need to shim the motor for improved gear mesh. I’ve learned to hit the kill button pretty quick if things get out of hand. A ‘short’ fall doesn’t seem to do any harm.
These SV’s weren’t really engineered to be used for as long as we’re pushing them. No matter how many replacement parts you get, the plastic shaft for the large gear will wear out over time and cause it to wobble. There’s really nothing you can do about that. It probably should have been a metal shaft.
I still love them though. There at the right price point.
Yesterday afternoon , there was a brush fire in the Ravine about 400-500 yards from were I live . That luckly the fire dpt. was able to quickly get a hose line around and stop quickly . So after supper I decided to launch SV on a quick survey of the area to see if I could capture the location fire area. Drew up quick mission with Tower on my Table with 20 waypoints and a couple of 60 and 100ft circles at 125 ’ altitude t and headed out to local park to launch . Total distance flown was 1.6 miles time little over 10 mins Viper went to Critical battery just as it was landing . Simply amazing for a $ 100 “toy drone” Check out video here;