I definitely have the drone purchasing disorder.
Setting up alerts for fpv gear on eBay way always a bad idea
2 Likes
And when the gear comes, how crap is it??? Good thing is there’s always some parts you can salvage…
My fpv sickness disorder manifests itself by trying to get family holidays to happen in places where there’s going to be good flying…i.e. Brecon beacons, dolomites maybe? Abandoned multi storey car parks…
1 Like
I’ve been lucky so far but still have a box full of spares that I’m planning on building a drone out of over winter.
Let me know how the multi story holiday goes. I’ll see if I can get that one past the mrs… 
If you lead with your head as opposed to your heart eBay can be a great source if you bid accordingly.
Some notable purchases of mine include a Parrot Anafi Fly-More package. At the time this retailed at Argos for just short of £900, I purchased it for less than £150 as spares or repairs. When it arrived many of the accessories supplied were still factory sealed. And to get it working all I needed to do was reseat the cable connecting the PDB to the main controller board. Prior to purchasing I checked out the seller and found he was a dealer of Amazon returns, and close scrutiny of the photo’s showed a partially obscured Amazon return label on the box. I made my bid on the assumption that this drone had been returned due to a manufacturing defect, and quite possibly a QC issue at the point of manufacture.
My last purchase was a Blade 200QX. This is a really fun little hobby grade quad that will do full acro and even 3D. I paid the grant total of 99p. It was faulty but this was an easy fix as the previous owner had accidentally soldered a motor incorrectly.
If there’s something that grabs your eye on eBay do your homework before committing yourself. Start with the seller. Check their history, see what other items they are selling and have sold. Really scrutinise the pictures, meaning download them and go over them with a fine toothed comb. If the item is listed as faulty see if there’s a description of the fault, then Google the fault. Faults are rarely isolated and can be quite common to that model. I bought a Blade Chroma, with the CG03 4K camera that was advertised as faulty. The seller said that it flew very erratically, and he’d been quoted £250 by Horizon Hobbies for replacement of the main board. I paid £100 for the complete kit and box full of accessories and spares. When it arrived I used a bit of switch cleaner on the controller gimbals, recalibrated the controller, and it has performed faultlessly ever since. I’d looked through the forums associated with this drone and found that dirt in the gimbals was a common cause of erratic flight behaviour.
3 Likes