Hello, I am very new to quadcopters, but I would like to start now. For my first quad I would like some sort of small FPV quad with a decent battery life and range. I would also like it to be durable because I know that I will crash a lot. Price is no obligation here. Do you have any recommendations? Thanks
First off, I strongly suggest starting out with a small "toy grad" quad such as a Hubsan Quads so you can get a feel for flying them. Starting out totally green with a full sized quad will probably leave you grounded with your quad down for repairs a lot best case, and worst case you could hurt somebody if you put a quad in the air without at least some basic knowledge of how to fly it. That being said, I'm going to have to make some assumptions here as you were not very specific on a few things. First off, I'm going to assume you get something RTF including a radio that you don't have to build. Also, you didn't say what you wanted the camera for, AP or FPV. I'll assume you're interested more in AV for now. Lastly, you didn't specify what you consider to be "decent range". I'll assume 1000' or so would cover it. With those assumptions, and if price is no object, you are probably talking about a Phantom Vision. It's got an integrated video system which transmits video back to your iphone or Android device, it's got a 20+ minute flight time, and I think the effective video range is about 1000'. It's probably not the greatest on the durability/repairability front though since it's got a plastic unibody design and a good crash may break it and could require replacing the body. You also need to be careful throwing out phrases like "price is no obligation" because you could literally spend anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to several thousand dollars on these things. My advice would be as follows: 1) Get a small micro-sized quad and fly the hell out of it until you can work the controls without thinking about it. 2) While you're learning to fly on the micro, dive in and start learning as much as you can about this stuff. Watch some videos on YouTube, join some forums such as RC Groups and Read Read Read! The more you know the better chance you have of getting something that fits your needs. 3) Once you've done 1 and 2, you will most likely have a much better idea of what you want to buy.
Great advice from Akcobra, you could start with a Walkera LadybirdV2 or Hubsan Quads X4, like AK says fly the hell out of them (you will crash but parts are cheap). If you don't want to solder get the Ladybird it's so easy to repair. Then maybe move up to a FPV version of either to learn some more.
