Hubsan H107C X4C Mini Drone With HD Camera

Post updated January 2022: For the past six years I have been seriously getting into aerial video and photo work. It has been a major part of my imaging business and I love reviewing products such as the DJI Mavic 3.

I also get products sent to me to review such as the Freewell 8 Day ND Filters which gives me more reason to go out and fly. Reasons to practice Dolly Zooms with a drone for example.

Capturing the world from this amazing perspective never gets boring and opens up a whole new world of imaging. (See funny story later from this mornings practice flight with the Hubsan H107C X4C). The little Hubsan drones are a great place to start for any budding drone pilot.

I used to skydive many moons ago as a young 20-something. One of the things that kept me going back for more was the women views you would get from both freefall and under canopy.

I have a few memorable jumps including one which was the very last load of the day. The sun had just gone down as we took off but by the time we reached altitude, we were the only ones to see and jump into a glorious golden sunset. Brilliant.

As I came into land at Headcorn parachute club, I always made the effort to take in the scenery. Fields like patchwork quilts, sheep running in all directions when they saw us coming in to land etc. Oh, and the local RC club (remote control airplanes) that also used the fields for their hobby.

The aerial footage I have seen over the past two years has really inspired me to get into this new way of imaging. I even put a deposit on a large quadcopter 2 years ago. That came to nothing as I wanted to see what happened with regards to the regulations in the industry. It all looks good now so it is back on.

Anyway, I thought there is no way I am going to learn to fly a quadcopter straight off the bat with a £2-3k set up. So, I looked around for a cheap practice module that uses the same controls.

What a cool little "toy" and this one even comes with a 2mp 720p HD camera installed. Great for practicing (although I thought I'd broken it (see video))!

To set the whole shebang up, you need to:

It really is pretty simple after a few times and you will get going in no time.

In mode 2, you have the usual throttle and turn functions on the left and directional controls on the right (see above). BUT, you can swap this around when you switch to mode 1.

If you have never flown anything like this before, it takes about 3 or 4 6 minute flights to get the basics. After that, you start playing with hovering, spinning and so on and please note:

This little thing is fasssst when you fly it forward at full pelt so be careful!

After a few flights, I got pretty confident with the Hubsan H107C X4C Mini Drone. I found myself able to land it anywhere, even on my children's outstretched hands. I'm still not entirely happy with turning the quadcopter and flying it in another direction as it gets really confusing at the moment.

I've a tendency to always face forward and simply fly to and fro until I get more confident. However, yesterday was the first day in a while where we had barely any wind so I took it over the road to the beach.

Hahaha…

This thing is so fast outdoors with no walls or ceiling to hold it in and the first thing I did, with the camera running, was to shoot it in the air. It went SO fast that within seconds it was just a dot in the sky.

Don’t panic!!!

I couldn't make out which way was forward so inevitably when I started flying it, coupled with slightly stronger winds at that height, sod's law dictated that it should head off out to sea!

Of course, I panicked and just pulled all controls towards me and the thing started to plummet out of the sky.

As it got closer to the water I powered it up again and it stabilized fairly close to the water. However, somehow (durr, I am rubbish at this right now), I panicked again. The Hubsan plopped into the water about three feet from dry land and submerged fully.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave your own experiences and comments below!