The Official Release of the F210 Racing Drone From Walkera

Introduction

User crit­i­cism of the Run­ner 250 prompt­ed devel­op­ers to cre­ate a com­plete­ly new rac­ing drone — the Walk­era F210. In a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences, the high strength of the frame and the cam­era are adapt­ed for flights in low light con­di­tions. The line does not over­lap with the Run­ner 250 as it comes with a 210 frame.

Peculiarities

• Unique aero­dy­nam­ic design
• Super strong and light­weight mate­ri­als
• Equidis­tant posi­tion of drone beams
• 700TVL FPV video cam­era adapt­ed for shoot­ing in low light con­di­tions
• F3 open source flight con­troller
• Pow­er­ful brush­less pow­er plant
• Weight with bat­tery 560 grams
• Flight time up to 9 min­utes

Equipment

The devel­op­er offers six con­fig­u­ra­tion options:

1. F210 BNF + addi­tion­al bat­tery (with­out Devo 7 con­trol equip­ment)
2. F210 RTF + addi­tion­al bat­tery (with Devo 7 con­trol equip­ment)
3. F210 + FPV remote DEVO-F12E + extra bat­tery
4. F210 + FPV gog­gles Gog­gle 3
5. F210 + FPV gog­gles Gog­gle 4 + extra bat­tery

Includ­ed RTF:

• Walk­era F210
• 2 × recharge­able bat­ter­ies 4S 1300mAh with XT60 con­nec­tor
• Devo7 remote con­trol (pow­er not includ­ed)
• Charg­er
• 4 × rotors (2CW/2CCW)
• 4 × spare rotors (2CW/2CCW)
• Tool
• Dou­ble-sided tape
• Train­ing Jack Cable
• USB cable (for con­nect­ing drone to PC)
• Drone man­u­al + CD man­u­al for Devo7 (in Eng­lish)

Packed very well and with high qual­i­ty, such box­ing is not afraid of falling and blows, every­thing will be safe.

Specification

Drone

Rotor diam­e­ter:

128mm

Dimen­sions (L×W×H):

182×182×103mm

Drone weight with bat­tery:

560gr

Remote con­trol:

DEVO7

Receiv­er

DEVO-RX713

Flight con­troller:

FCS-F210(F3)

Video trans­mit­ter:

TX5825(FCC)/TX5824(CE)

On Screen Dis­play (OSD):

OSDF210

Motors:

brush­less type WK-WS-28–014A (CW/CCW) 2500KV

ESC:

F210-Z-24 20A

Drone Pow­er:

4S 14.8V 1300mAh 40C LiPo

Max. flight time:

9 min­utes

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

-10℃ to +40

Camera

Cam­era:

700 TVL

Hor­i­zon­tal res­o­lu­tion:

700 TVL

Col­or ren­der­ing sys­tems:

PAL/NTSC

Video out­put:

1.0VP‑p/75Ω

Pow­er con­sump­tion:

DC 12V

video transmitter

Image trans­mis­sion:

5.8GHz wire­less

TX5825(FCC):

4 chan­nel

TX5824(CE):

8 chan­nel

Out­put Pow­er TX5825(FCC):

200MW

Out­put Pow­er TX5824(CE):

25 MW

Appearance

Appear­ance is the “call­ing card” of the drone and with­out exag­ger­a­tion reflects the full poten­tial of the F210. The FPV cam­era is locat­ed in front, cov­ered with a plas­tic shield made of fair­ly strong plas­tic. All sup­port­ing ele­ments of the drone are now made of car­bon fiber. It is safe to say that he is not afraid of falls and blows. A pow­er­ful front-fac­ing LED light works in tan­dem with a cam­era adapt­ed to shoot­ing in low light con­di­tions. Every­thing is done in exem­plary qual­i­ty and unique rac­ing style, tak­ing into account aero­dy­nam­ics.

Motors

The drone is equipped with pow­er­ful Walk­era WK-WS-28–014A 2500KV brush­less motors work­ing in tan­dem with 20A high-per­for­mance ESCs. They are locat­ed on four 3mm car­bon beams equidis­tant from each oth­er, which allowed the devel­op­ers to achieve the best sta­bil­i­ty and con­trol­la­bil­i­ty for this mod­el in all pilot­ing modes. In prac­tice, they pro­vide “crazy” dynam­ics for a ser­i­al rac­ing drone. It is unlike­ly that the clos­est com­peti­tors will find a stock rival capa­ble of show­ing a sim­i­lar flight poten­tial.

Camera

On board the drone FPV video cam­era 700TVL with a view­ing angle of 120° adapt­ed for shoot­ing in low light con­di­tions. In prac­tice, it pro­vides an exem­plary qual­i­ty of flight from the first per­son. Oper­ates in tan­dem with a 25mW (for CE) or 200mW (for FCC) ana­log video trans­mit­ter.

The posi­tion of the FPV cam­era can be adjust­ed. The max­i­mum angle (for expe­ri­enced pilots) is 45º.

CL anten­na with SMA con­nec­tor is mat­ed with a flex­i­ble coax­i­al cable.

Most of the elec­tron­ics are acces­si­ble from the bot­tom of the drone. For exam­ple: 5.8GHz VTX and OSD with 2.4GHz receiv­er. To access them, unscrew the three screws at the bot­tom of the drone.

The default video trans­mis­sion fre­quen­cy is 5733 MHz, chan­nel #8. The fre­quen­cy can be set man­u­al­ly using a three-posi­tion DIP switch on any of the eight avail­able chan­nels. There is also anoth­er two posi­tion DIP switch that acti­vates and deac­ti­vates the on-screen dis­play (OSD).

Food

By default, the drone comes with a high-per­for­mance lithi­um poly­mer bat­tery — Walk­era 4S 14.8V 1300mAh 40C LiPo. Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion pro­vides a max­i­mum flight time of 9 min­utes. In prac­tice, this time was in mixed mode: 7–8 min­utes, in the “Gas to the floor” mode: 3–4 min­utes. Charg­ing time from the sup­plied charg­er is 90 min­utes. When the volt­age drops below 14V, the buzzer turns on, which is impos­si­ble not to hear.

The XT60 con­nec­tor is locat­ed ver­ti­cal­ly. The drone bat­tery, as you can see, does not com­plete­ly occu­py the com­part­ment, which gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to install a larg­er capac­i­ty bat­tery. Bat­tery com­part­ment wall thick­ness: 1.5mm, exe­cu­tion mate­r­i­al: car­bon.

Control

The unchanged Devo7 is not a bad 7‑channel remote, but it is very heavy. It can also be not­ed that the equip­ment itself is pow­ered by eight AA bat­ter­ies and, as prac­tice has shown, they do not last long. There­fore, the con­trol over the charge lev­el of the trans­mit­ter with this type of pow­er sup­ply must be con­stant! Pro­vides a dis­tance of up to 700 meters in an inter­fer­ence-free area.

Note the fact that as soon as the con­nec­tion with the drone is lost, it uncon­trol­lably gains momen­tum to the max­i­mum. Fail­safe mode, like on the Walk­era Run­ner 250, is not adjustable here.

Test Drive

The pow­er on the remote con­trol is turned on first, and only then the pow­er on the drone. Link­ing the drone to the remote con­trol will be accom­pa­nied by beeps and LED flash­es on the back of the quad. The com­ple­tion of the bind­ing will be indi­cat­ed by a per­ma­nent­ly lit red LED on the left side of the LED block, and the beeps will stop.

In order to acti­vate the drone motors, you need to:

1. Enable Remote
2. Turn on the drone
3. On the remote con­trol, move the left stick to the left (see illus­tra­tion below). Acti­va­tion will be indi­cat­ed by a red light LED on the right side of the LED block with sound. Now two red diodes are lit on the block. The drone is ready to fly.

Be care­ful when you pick up the remote when start­ing to run. The drone is very fast and if acti­vat­ed care­less­ly, the user risks harm­ing him­self and oth­ers!

Flight qualities

Dri­ving the F210 proved to be very easy. The drone will impress any crit­ic with its speed and maneu­ver­abil­i­ty. Ver­ti­cal trac­tion at a height. If you lose con­tact with the drone, you can watch it take off into the sky with max­i­mum accel­er­a­tion, fol­lowed by a fall from a great height. Keep in touch! We hope that this bug will be fixed by the devel­op­ers in the near future. FPV sig­nal is excel­lent. Dis­played infor­ma­tion FPV dis­play does not over­load. Fan­tas­tic per­for­mance of flips. When the volt­age drops below 14V, the buzzer turns on, which is impos­si­ble not to hear.

Price

The devel­op­er offers the drone in 4 dif­fer­ent bun­dles at the fol­low­ing prices:

1. F210 BNF + addi­tion­al bat­tery (with­out Devo 7 con­trol equip­ment) — $369
2. F210 RTF + addi­tion­al bat­tery (with Devo 7 con­trol equip­ment) — $399
3. F210 + Gog­gle 4 FPV gog­gles + extra bat­tery — $558
4. F210 + FPV remote DEVO-F12E + extra bat­tery — $569

Conclusion

Walk­era F210 from $369

Func­tion­al­i­ty

5/10

Flight time

5/10

flight qual­i­ties

10/10

com­pact­ness

5/10

Equip­ment

9/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

9/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Exe­cu­tion qual­i­ty
• Aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly designed design
• Durable (car­bon base)
• Flight per­for­mance (fast and sta­ble)
• Fly like a rock­et with a GoPro
• FPV Qual­i­ty
• Flight time
• Ready for a com­plete upgrade
• Flies out of the box (RTF)

Minuses

• Not reg­u­lat­ed by “Fail­safe” (yet)
• Heavy stock con­trol equip­ment
• Remote con­trol bat­ter­ies run out very quick­ly

Super drone, if not per­fect, then cer­tain­ly excel­lent. In any race will be a wor­thy oppo­nent. Not adjustable “Fail­safe”, but this will be resolved by the devel­op­ers in the near future with a firmware update. Large range of adjust­ments. The risk of los­ing radio con­tact with the drone if you are fly­ing with­in a radius of 400 meters is extreme­ly small. Very durable. Decent FPV sys­tem. Ready to fly out of the box. Suit­able for both an ama­teur and a pro­fes­sion­al, giv­en that the pros love to man­u­al­ly con­fig­ure the PC and work with a sol­der­ing iron in order to fur­ther upgrade the quad.

A photo

Pho­to with Walk­era F210 drone.

Video

Video with Walk­era F210 drone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries