RC India

Is the subject line misleading?

I am all set to come on vacations next month and preparations are in full swing..Oh!! I am going to spend 35 beautiful days in my home town "Goa" and another 10 in Chennai.

Ok! coming to the point, I've heard a lot of chatter that airport customs are now harassing people for bringing RC equipment, specially quads and radios.
Is that true?
So as of last night, I sat with my Walkera and dismantled it completely, packed all the important parts in bubble wraps, broke down the radio, removed all the switches and the antenna.

So out of 35 days, 1 days will be spent on assembling her back at home.

The first picture is the original, straight from the box<
The second is after it got a beautiful paint job "matte Black"
and the rest follow.

I am attaching some pictures

I de-soldered the ESC's and took out the Main controller. I will personally hand carry the main controller as This is the most important part.

Motors along with the ESC's are tucked together, all in bubble wrap.

Lastly, all my trains are packed too, I am planning to get them to India and sell them off as I have no time to manage them. The layout maintenance is seriously a huge task.

I wonder has anyone considered having the more expensive quadcopters broken up and sent in individual packages?  All you need is a reliable friend in a country where they aren't illegal to import, have them reduced to as many components as required and shipped to you.  I did something similar with a friend in America as it was costing me a small fortune in shipping for used digital cameras. By having them sent to my friend from all over the US, she would wait until there was a decent box full and then ship them to me.

That's actually the reverse of what you need, but I'm sure you get the idea. I'm sure many of you know someone in another country who could do this for you, obviously they would need some knowledge of quadcopters, but it's a thought I had which would definitely work and wouldn't upset customs officials. Plus coming from a regular street address wouldn't arouse any suspicions. If you particularly wanted the original box I imagine sending it with only the quad's frame inside as a gift.

TBH, I get my quad every time I come to India on vacations, I never been stopped, maybe because my Airport is GOA..just my 2 cents.
BTW, Im planning to get my custom baja this time, at 22kgs its gonna be a pain in the B

I wonder if anyone has managed to grab the Xiaomi Mi Quadcopter yet. I watched a video on YouTube showing the footage from one in 4K and without doubt it's the best footage I've seen from a relatively inexpensive quad. I was actually saving to buy a DJI and it would have taken more than another 6 months before I could afford one and knowing DJI the price would have shot up by then.

As soon as I looked at more footage I placed my order, less than half the price of the DJI Phantom 3 it would have to be the bargain of 2018, in my opinion of course. Is DJI a big seller in India and is it a hobby machine or for the commercial users? I must admit I took a quick breath when I ordered the spare battery, I've never paid more than $50 for any LiPo and this one costs $110. But DJI batteries are quite a bit more I believe.

Just a friendly word of warning, we have a fictitious character here in Australia, his name is Murphy, he can be found living in many homes and he's the guy who ensures that if anything goes wrong it will go wrong at the most inopportune time and in the biggest way. He's the guy who makes "Never" happen every day.  In short, you never say "never", because as soon as you do, it did. He's haunted my life all my life. If everyone got away with breaking any law, he makes sure I'm the only one who gets caught breaking it. He's renowned for what's called Murphy's Law and I believe the same law in the UK is known as Sod's Law. I've heard he has relatives in many countries using alias's. Do you have such a person in India? Be careful when you say you've never been stopped by customs, because if Murphy hears about it, you'll get stopped. Don't give him the opportunity, never say never. :-)

i know murphy!
Thanks to interstellar!
 ;D ;D ;D ;D

Stay away from him, once his foot's in the door you'll never get rid of him and if you have an unmarried sister lock her up :-)

Why is it every time I post on a thread, it dies? Sorry Controlflyer, I didn't intend to kill your thread. but I certainly did it and rather quickly, my apologies. I'm stuck in bed under Doctor's orders and it's darned boring.  I've flown every plane in my flight sims and browsed Ebay for bargains and was simply wanting to talk to someone. I'm not sure if it's because I'm ancient or because I'm an Aussie. People here don't appear to be as friendly as when I first logged 5 years ago.

Perhaps there's an equally ancient RC'er who's in the same situation who' like to chat about RC, I'm into all RC types, the only one I know nothing about are helicopters.  I've built dozens of them for other people and I have a few myself, but I can't fly them, well actually I can fly them, usually in 30 second intervals and always ending in a crash.  I did manage to keep one in the air for about 4 minutes, ...   ....   It hovered extremely well and the only reason I stopped was because the battery went flat, and then it crashed. I love building them, in fact I have one almost completed, but I'll either give it away or sell it to someone with better coordination than myself. I can fly anything else from a real Cessna to an ultralight and any RC plane or quadcopter, but give me a heli and you can kiss it goodbye, and any car in the vicinity will know I've been there,  from the dents.  Why is it, when something crashes, it always has to crash into the most expensive car.  Seriously, put me in the middle of a supermarket car lot on a Saturday morning, whatever I fly will seek out the closest Rolls Royce or Lamborghini and smash into it. The old rust buckets, it keeps well away from, just the expensive ones are it's target. Also notice how any flying object is automatically attracted to windows and never the brick wall surrounding it. I'm convinced window glass has magnetic properties.

Anyway, I have to be off, the Doc is due to call in.  All the best to you all.     Stu

The thread was pretty much dead, until resurrected by you.

And is that a problem? Does it make the subject any less valid?  I might add that I had walked away from this thread, until it was resurrected by you. Were you actively involved in this thread or did you simply pop in to leave the one comment regarding me "resurrecting" it?  :giggle:

You took it the wrong way or maybe I didn't convey it properly. I meant that it isn't because of you that the thread is dead. It was dead before you had resurrected it and has now come to it's destined fate. I do agree that you can't import quads/drones without doing a lot of work. I was thinking of importing a quad myself but didn't due to the risk factor.

Obviously a thread is only dead when it's been buried or rather deleted. Clearly it isn't dead when two people are posting to it. There's one thing you've yet to learn. If you want something bad enough you'll find a way to get it. Everything in life carries a certain amount of risk, it's how far you're prepared to go which makes the difference between winning or losing.

You have to sit down and think about those risks and decide to plan to minimize those risks. Have you considered breaking a quad down and having it sent as parts? You're allowed to import motors, props, electronic boards and spare parts aren't you? I'm not saying you should buy them as spare parts. Just for interest's sake I sat down and worked out how much a a quadcopter would cost if you bought it in pieces.  Three to 4 times the actual purchase price of the complete quad it worked out to.

Do you know anyone living in a country where quads can legally be imported? Why not ask them if you could have a quad sent to them and they pull it apart and send it to you in parts? OK it means a little work for whoever you choose and it's going to cost freight for those parts to be sent, but you end up with a full quad. It's all down to how much you want one.  If you're allowed to have parts come into your country who's to know they're for a quadcopter?

Have the motherboard, a motor, ESC and prop sent in one box, another motor, ESC and GPS boards in another, Nuts, Bolts small parts, another motor, ESC and prop sent in another.  And so on until all that's left is the shell.  Put that in a box and send it as a spare part. If it's opened, all they'll see is a bare quadcopter, is that illegal? 

You could course simply buy all the parts you need from BangGood and build it yourself.  It's an easy thing to do, anyone who's built their own could help you put one together.  If you can use a soldering iron and know very basic electronics it's rather easy.  Buy a NAZA flight controller, download the setup software and there's plenty of tutorials on YouTube.  If you want to call yourself an RCer then buying a quad ready made doesn't make you an RCer. Build your own and earn the right to be known as one.

There's no excuse for you not having your own quadcopter, only money will dictate which one to buy.  That old saying of "Where there's a will, there's a way" could never be truer. Heck if you think it's too much, send me a message and I'll help you build the quad.  If you're unsure of the terminology use YouTube and you'll learn by watching endless videos on how to build them. Plus of course it's fun and the end result will be something you can proudly say "I Built That" when you fly it.