DJI Spark Portable Mini Drone - Alpine White

I fly Inspires, Phantoms and recently a Mavik 2 Pro at work, but I always thought it would be nice to have my own machine. Wasn't willing to cough up a thousand dollars and up for one. "Ah, I probably wouldn't use it much anyway." Sound familiar? When I saw the spark I thought it would be worth a shot even though it probably wasn't "as good" as the big ones so I got myself one for Christmas. I am very happy I did. I am thrilled by the fact that a $450 (fly more bundle at Amazon's holiday price) had a lot of the same features as the big boys. It may not shoot in 4k or have a three axis camera gimbal or have the same flight time, but I don't need it to. I just wanted to have a drone for fun, and fun it is!!! So far, I have flown this sUAS 81,029 feet (a little over 15 miles) and have never had any issues with it, I would fly more but the temps have been arctic up here. The app did crash once on me while linked to the controller by wifi and when I restarted the app my phone would not reconnect to the controller. The spark was over a thousand feet out and while I had line of sight, that's a pretty tiny thing to be able to tell where it's facing at that kind of range. With no telemetry at all available I just pushed return to home on the controller and it came straight back and landed itself. Phew. Yesterday the temp hit 41 so I played hookie and went flying. I got in 7 flights with my 4 batteries, recharging with the 3 bay DJI charger hooked to a Bioenno BPP120 power pack. I used an OTG cable (has prevented any more disconnects between my phone and the controller) a landing pad, folding signal boosters on the controller antennas and a Nanuk 915 hard case. It was a great day to fly. Over a frozen lake, I easily flew to a horizontal distance of 6,754 feet at an altitude of 35 feet. Never had any signal breakup. A clear day over a frozen lake with perfect line of sight is certainly ideal conditions, but I do believe that the signal boosters helped. I have never gotten that far out with no signal loss without them. There is a lot of heated debate about whether or not these signal boosters work, but for $9, what do you have to lose. I think they help. By the way, if you fly in the cold like I have been doing, keep the spare batteries in your coat until you are ready to use them or better yet, I have a pair of heated Milwaukee Tools gloves. These make great Spark battery warmers. Here are my suggestions for what you should get for a complete drone package: Spark fly more combo. (Yellow of course, who could want any other color?) 2 extra batteries (for a total of 4). Nanuk 915 hard case (Yellow of course, who could want any other color?) Landing pad (you can see mine in the photo, there are tons of them on the market). Camera gimbal protector (I got the FS Labs one) Landing gear (FS labs again. Haven't used them yet because I use a landing pad). Folding parabolic range extenders (I got the Amazon's Choice marked ones.) Micro USB to Lightning OTG cable. (I got one from RCstyle and like it. Some say it extends range, don't know how it could do that but it provides a rock solid connection to the controller). Micro USB to female USB so you can use an Android phone with the controller. Get the DJI refresh insurance for $60 bucks or so. They will replace up to two wrecked Sparks for a year for, I think, about $60 per occurrence. If you are new to flying or like to push your luck, you will probably need this. A couple of over the top items if you really get into it: Bioenno BPP120 power pack to recharge in the field. I've heard the Smatree one is good too, but not as versatile. A phone/tablet holder by MavMount (Mavmount 3.0) This is more pricey than most because it is extremely well made professional hardware made in the US. It's worth it!!! There you have it. I really like this little drone. It has surprising range and capabilities, is surprisingly tough and is a ton of fun. Its the toy that didn't exist when we were kids, indulge yourself now! Happy flying.