24 September 2009 21:18 GMT / By Chris Hall
Air2Air today launched the DraganFlyer X6 helicopter in the UK. This awesome little radio controlled helicopter has three pairs of rotors and is heaped with sensors to assist stable flight.Constructed from luscious amounts of carbonfibre, it has three quiet motors driving those paired rotors and the on-board sensors include a barometer, which will let you hover the helicopter based on barometric pressure.
There is also a GPS onboard that will feed-back a trace of the location to the base station and let you always know where the Draganflyer is and where it has been.
But this isn't just a funky helicopter, it is really designed to be mounted with a payload, and you can choose from an HD video camera, 10-megapixel stills camera, low light camera or a thermal imager.
Control is via a hardcore radio controller and you can have a master and slave unit, letting you control flight with one and the camera with another, although you could do it all from one.
We especially like the base station and the fact that you can have a wireless transmitter accessory to hook-up for a live video feed. It's the stuff that geek dreams are made of.
The basic kit, comprising of the X6 airframe, the camera (Panasonic Lumix LX3), handheld controller, wireless base station and software will cost you £21,585. Gulp.
Ok, so it isn't designed to be a toy, with useful commercial applications like inspecting difficult to reach locations, birds-eye view shots or traffic monitoring, it even has some Police service time under its belt.
The battery gives you around 20 minutes of flight time (without a payload), it will max out at 30mph and climb to a maximum altitude of 8,000ft.
Now 007, you will be careful, won't you?
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