Never flew my multi copters during the wind so I decided to take them up during a very windy day. It appeared that my quad was having problems handling the wind gust and crashed. What's the most wind you have flown with your multi-copters?

Quad vs DJI Hexa copter in 18 mph plus winds (3 min 45 sec)

DJI F550 Flamewheel Hexacopter Flying in High Wind (10 min 46 sec)

not sure what the wind speed was, but I had to pitch about 75% just to hold position

Damn thing was a rocket ship when I spun it around though

BlackStar8 - YS-X6 - Strong wind (2 min 3 sec)

22 mph with strong gusts.

Vuelo Quad Agus (4 min 27 sec)

These videos are great. Are any of you using a KK2 board?

I just built a hex using the kk2. It's pretty stable in ZERO wind. But in anything else, even 4 mph, it's basically un-usable for aerial photography purposes. I can't take my eyes off it for a second to keep it in one spot. No smoothness at all. I'm not sure where I'm going wrong.

I built my quad specifically for filming in 20+knots. Although I do not yet have a decent mount set up for my camera (and consequently no decent footage), I have had no problem flying in these winds. I have no experience with anything other than a quad but my design criteria included being as streamlined as practical which to my mind means keeping the number of arms down. I also went on the large size to minimize the influence of gusts (>1m, AUW ~4.5Kg). Higher pitch props also allow better thrust at higher wind speeds. I use the APM2.5 controller.
In my experience it is turbulence that really limits the max wind speed. Flying in a built up area when the wind gets up turns your quad into a real handful. In nice clean air you can handle a lot higher wind. My rig is for chasing kiteboarders around so I am flying in big open spaces over water where the wind has no obstacles to cause turbulence. A general rule of thumb to avoid turbulence caused by upwind obstacles is to stay at lease 7x the height of the obstruction down wind.
Here is a picture from my quad in approx 20knots nice clean air (shot in wide so you can see the props pitched forward maintaining position):


Here is a video from a tricopter (not mine) flown in 15-25knots:

Quad n' Kite FPV ROO Kitesurfing (3 min 4 sec)

Originally Posted by jimovonz

I built my quad specifically for filming in 20+knots. Although I do not yet have a decent mount set up for my camera (and consequently no decent footage), I have had no problem flying in these winds. I have no experience with anything other than a quad but my design criteria included being as streamlined as practical which to my mind means keeping the number of arms down. I also went on the large size to minimize the influence of gusts (>1m, AUW ~4.5Kg). Higher pitch props also allow better thrust at higher wind speeds. I use the APM2.5 controller.
In my experience it is turbulence that really limits the max wind speed. Flying in a built up area when the wind gets up turns your quad into a real handful. In nice clean air you can handle a lot higher wind. My rig is for chasing kiteboarders around so I am flying in big open spaces over water where the wind has no obstacles to cause turbulence. A general rule of thumb to avoid turbulence caused by upwind obstacles is to stay at lease 7x the height of the obstruction down wind.
Here is a picture from my quad in approx 20knots nice clean air (shot in wide so you can see the props pitched forward maintaining position):


Here is a video from a tricopter (not mine) flown in 15-25knots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxQzin3wUhI

nice place you got there.. do you kite as well? where bouts is this?

Originally Posted by AliB

nice place you got there.. do you kite as well? where bouts is this?

Thanks - Yes this is a great spot. Yes I kite... and also work for Switchkites This spot is the Maketu Estuary in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand: http://goo.gl/jqtCS

Maketu is featured in a lot of our videos.

Originally Posted by jimovonz

Thanks - Yes this is a great spot. Yes I kite... and also work for Switchkites This spot is the Maketu Estuary in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand: http://goo.gl/jqtCS

Maketu is featured in a lot of our videos.

ahh awesom. that spot does look incredible, little bit nicer than the UK
you guys must be stoked with how Mark J is riding at the moment... deffo showing the world what the kites can do!!

Ali
www.alibarrett.co.uk

Yea here's my video that I made a few months ago. I was flying my quad round trying to get some good video. When a gust of wind took my quad away, My quad has a F450 frame with 920Kv motors and 10x4.5 props. I have my naza system with gps on it too.

Some people ask me if I was doing FPV. And the answer was no. I was flying by line of sight.

The big question people ask me is, why didn't I just bring it down? Well if I'm fighting the wind with almost full throttle and Im that high off the ground, What you think will happen if I would cut back on the throttle? The wind would have took my quad away and I wouldnt have gotten it back and if I was lucky to find it. It would have been so much damage that I couldnt repair it from that height. I saw just enough of the quad to see it tilting and as long it was tilting in my direction I kept fighting.

Once I got to the ground I packed it up and went home.

Almost Lost My Quadcopter (6 min 6 sec)

Wow! Amazing you got it back.

Originally Posted by chuenwe

Wow! Amazing you got it back.

Yes I did,

Thank God.

Trying to revive this topic
As I already posted earlier today, I have a small HJ 450 "alien" like quad which doesn't like wind too much.
Due to this I am considering some 650 mm motor to motor copter.
Now to my question:
How would a same 650mm quadcopter compare to a hexacopter ?
I guess that due to bigger motor to motor distance it should be more stable than my little quad, but by how much ? I want to transfer all my stuff on the other frame, and if you guys thing a 650 quad (folding) should handle wind fine it woud cost me less, if not, I need to buy additional 2x sunnysky x2212/980kv+2xhw 30A esc...
Thanks, and looking forward to your opinions

More motors can help handle winds better because it has finer control from more motors. But if you have strong enough motors, fast enough ESC, you can handle wind just as well.

Stretched Talon 750 under 26 mph wind gust (3 min 13 sec)

It isn't really much if you have the GPS flying for you.

@iiinsaiii
Haven't actually read the text, just clicking videos. When i saw this one, i was thinking, "That's not so bad... wait... why's he flying like that... that's not how FPV looks like... OMG he's flying LOS!!!"

The worst was when i was fairly new, before i got my FPV gear. Much like iiinsaiii, I flew the quad too high until the wind carried it off and the only thing that kept me from crashing was the autolevel (that's all the KK2 had), i had to work out which direction it was facing but eventually got it back.

Yesterday, i was flying FPV and even tho i had the quad going full tilt, it was barely moving. When i flew back tho, i was going really fast while under 30 feet and zoomed past my groundstation and the construction site, that was fun I don't have a speedometer, but looking up waypoint on google earth, i've closed my cruising speed at 45kph up to 60kph. Since the quad was barely moving, it's probably close to that at about 30 feet off the ground.