I might be considered old to a lot of people out there, but I’m still a kid at heart and I’ve always had a soft spot for any kind of RC toy, especially things that fly. I personally own an E-Flite BladeCP helicopter that is quite a bit of fun, but very hard to master, and of course through my life I’ve had quite a few different RC toys. Today for review I have an RC Flying toy that is the first of its kind, it is from WowWee, and it’s a flying Dragonfly, what makes it very special and unique is the fact that it actually flaps its wings to fly. I’ve got tons of pictures for you and a whole slew of movies as well of the Dragonfly in action, so continue on to learn more about a very cool toy…
WowWee FlyTech Dragonfly
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
WowWee FlyTech Dragonfly
FlyTech Dragonfly is the worlds first radio-controlled flying insect. With its ultra-light, dual-wing design and high-flex, crash-resistant structure, the dragonfly is an easy-to-fly aeronautical marvel. Use the dragonfly indoors or outdoors, controlling its speed, direction and height with the 2 channel digital proportional remote.
Features:
Unique indoor flyer: Capable of maneuvering in tight spaces, FlyTech Dragonfly brings radio-controlled flight into your home.
Innovative flying action: Based on an ornithopter design, FlyTech Dragonfly flaps its wings like a real insect. The dragonfly can take off from any smooth surface, soar, dive-bomb, hover and glide silently for soft landings.
Strong and flexible: Built using a durable carbon-fiber structure, FlyTech Dragonflys impact-absorbing flexible body and wings can take a lot of punishment.
Ultra-light design: Light weight design protects home interiors.
Light-up LED eyes: Its eyes alert you of the dragonflys status by blinking, pulsing, or shining clear and bright.
2 channel digital proportional remote: Control wing speed and tail rotor speed; remote is also the charging base.
Two skill levels:
-Beginner and advanced.
-Includes a tail stabilizer for additional control.
Available in 2 frequencies.
Specifications:
Wingspan: 16 inches (~40 cm)
Power: Rechargeable lithium polymer battery
Flight time: Up to 10 minutes on a single charge
Battery requirements:
6 x AA batteries (not included)
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A Better Look at Things
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As with any review we take a look at the packaging first off, after all if you want to buy it, you’ll need to know what to look for on the shelf right? Besides that, I like to examine the package, as most times the looks of the package will make or break a product, humans are visual creatures and if something doesn’t look good it will most likely be passed over. That being said, today for review I got the Green version of the FlyTech Dragonfly, there are two versions or colors, green and blue, the color corresponds to the frequency the Dragonfly uses to fly so you can have two of them flying at the same time, you and a friend. The front of the box has a nice large window where you can get a good look at the Dragonfly itself, there is a bit of art on there as well, along with the frequency, 49Mhz, in the bottom right corner.
The back of the box has a whole lot of information about the Dragonfly, and some cool pictures or diagrams pointing out all the major features of the Dragonfly and its remote.
The side of the box features a nice built in handle along with quite a bit more information to read as well.
Here’s another picture of the front and top of the box, you can see the top of the box is actually part window as well, allowing the buyer to get a very good look at the contents of the box.
Opening everything up we find that the outside box is actually just a slip cover type of deal, the real box housing the Dragonfly is half cardboard and half plastic. Behind the box I found another bag containing the user manual, extra set of wings, tail ribbon and extra tail propeller, inside the box along with the remote was the antenna separately.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
The antenna is the telescopic kind that screws into the remote control, and can be easily removed for transporting safely.
The Dragonfly comes pre-assembled with a set of wings that look very technological, with wires and circuits printed on them. The spare set inside the plastic bag actually looks like a real Dragonfly’s wings.
The wings feel very delicate, made from a very thin film of plastic, but I can assure you they are very sturdy, I crashed quite a few times. The wings have thin support struts inside of them to allow the Dragonfly to actually flap its wings. These support struts get attached to the Dragonfly when changing out the wings if need be.
Here’s a shot of the remote, antenna, Dragonfly and the spare tail propeller.
The remote is a two channel type, it sort of resembles a Playstation or Xbox controller actually, at least that was my impressions of it. The left side is the throttle, it is spring loaded and snaps back to off when let go, this is a nice safety feature so the Dragonfly won’t get broken or left on. The right side controls the tail propeller which makes the Dragonfly turn right of left. Above the power switch is a small LED indicator that comes on when powered up or charging your Dragonfly.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
In the center between the control joysticks is the power button, on the outside of the power button is a ring that can be turned right or left to trim the Dragonfly, essentially this adds or removes more power to the tail, if the Dragonfly is turning to the right to much you’ll turn the dial to the left a bit, and vice versa.
On the bottom side of the controller is a switch labeled ‘Beginner’ and ‘Expert’, leaving it is Beginner mode is recommended for everyone until you get the hang of flying the Dragonfly. Switching it to Expert mode actually puts more power the the tail when you push the joystick, doing this allows you to perform tricks and make sharper turns etc, but you really need to learn how to fly it first.
Obviously the controller is white in color with black accents.
Both sides of the controller features rubberized, textured non-slip grips.
Moving around to the front of the controller, this is where we find a sort of hidden door, inside that door is the charging cord for the Dragonfly. On the top of the front of the controller is a small silver circle, that circle is actually a magnet that can be used to hold the Dragonfly in place while charging or storing. Pushing on the magnet will make the spring loaded door open up to reveal the charging wire. Under the door you’ll notice a hole, that is where the antenna is inserted.
Here’s a couple shots of the charging wire inside the controller and pulled out ready to charge the Dragonfly. The plug on the end of the wire gets plugged into the bottom of the Dragonfly to recharge it from the batteries inside the remote, doesn’t take long, about 15-20 minutes for about 10 minutes of fly time.
On the bottom of the remote is where we find the battery cover secured with a screw. It might be a pain to have to remove a screw to get at the batteries to change them, but believe me you don’t want them falling out and having to chase after eight AA batteries. My E-Flite BladeCPs remote does not have the screw on the battery compartment, and quite a few times I have picked it up and the batteries have fallen out, so I can attest to having the screw on the battery compartment being a very good thing.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
Here’s a quick shot of the Dragonfly with the Remote assembled and antenna extended fully.
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for, pictures of the actual Dragonfly. The body of the Dragonfly is made from lightweight carbon fiber, making it very durable.
The Dragonfly has small wires for legs, overall the entire thing is very lightweight, it has to be to be able to fly.
I mentioned before about the wings but here you can get a good look at the ‘wires’ and ‘resistors’ on them, cute concept art I guess, trying to make it look robotic of sorts.
The tail is made from a very thin piece of carbon fiber as well.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
The tail has a rectangular hole in it actually, the tail propeller spins up through it.
On the very tip of the tail is a small piece of plastic as well, this is actually used to attach the tail ribbon to it, the tail ribbon is used to slow down the Dragonfly for better control doing indoor use.
On the underside of the tail we find a thin metal rod that actually supports the tail. On the end of the tail is the tail rotor.
The tail rotor is protected by a round piece of wire that actually also acts like landing gear for the Dragonfly.
The eyes of the Dragonfly are actually LEDs, they light up with different patterns to let you know the status of the Dragonfly. They blink slowly when charging, are solid when powered up, and will get dim as the battery wears down.
Here’s a couple close up shots of the Dragonflys head and legs, or front landing gear.
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A Better Look at Things
Continued:
Flipping the Dragonfly onto its back is where we’ll find the power switch and the charging port.
There is also a mating magnet on the Dragonfly as well to attach to the remote controller.
The on/off switch is very small, and directly below it is the charging port. I really would have liked to have seen some sort of cover on the charging port, you don’t want dust, dirt, water or anything getting in there.
The Dragonfly flies by flapping its wings as we already know but the system itself is rather cool, it really does look like a Dragonfly in action.
I thought about possibly opening the Dragonfly up, but it seemed pretty much impossible without destroying it so here’s a couple close up shots of how the wings work. You can see from the picture how each wing is attach in one place and then connected to the motor inside the Dragonfly, there is a pivot point behind the wings allowing for them to flap freely.
I did find a site where someone took apart their Dragonfly and posted the pics of the insides HERE
Well that’s that… Let’s move on to the next section where I have a couple more picture and a whole lot of movies for you of the Dragonfly in action…
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Installation, Testing and Movies:
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Before we do anything with the Dragonfly it needs to be charged. Takes about 15-20 minutes and you get almost 10 minutes of fly time on that charge.
The Dragonfly is made to be an indoor toy, but you really do need quite a bit of space until you really learn how to fly it, once you learn how to control it and get into Expert mode, then you can fly it in smaller confined spaces as it can make sharper turns. My friend, Wayne Albright, has access to the local community center where we took the Dragonfly a few days in a row and shot lots of video footage with both of us taking turns flying and filming. Wayne was really a beginner at it, but after flying for a few minutes he got the hang of it, the hardest part for him and for me as well was the fact that when the Dragonfly is flying towards you the controls are reversed, but this is that way with any type of RC toy. I took my E-Flite BladeCP with me as well to play with during charging cycles of the Dragonfly, but I ended up crashing it pretty good… Oh well, and Waynes’ friend Barry came over as well to check out the Dragonfly, he was very interesting in it also. If you are curious I’m the guy in the hat with the pony tail, Wayne is the ‘scruffy’ looking one and you only get to see a glimpse of Barry when I fly the Dragonfly to him to catch.
I made all the videos fairly short, as it does get kinda boring watching someone else have all the fun. I did make a few shorter videos of certain things I wanted to point out, which I’ll make note of before the video.
The first video is a me flying the Dragonfly around a bit…
The real key to flying the Dragonfly is the take off, if you launch it wrong it just really does not fly right, in the following video you’ll see me launch the Dragonfly wrong, but I do get it to recover, something that took quite a bit of practice to achieve, I learned that you can recover from a bad launch, but the key is the launch, especially when first starting out. The Dragonfly will bob up and down, essentially stalling out, you need to really play with the throttle to get it out of it.
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Movies:
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This next movie is another just flying around a bit, you can make the Dragonfly skim across the ground and take off again. It might sound loud in the videos but it really is not.
The Dragonfly is very sturdy and tough, I’ve crashed it numerous times and it really just only has some scuff marks on it, I was always afraid I was going to tear the wings but never did.
Here’s a movie of Wayne flying it a bit after he learned to control it better, you’ll see he actually cuts the throttle and the Dragonfly drops, but he throttles it up and recovers nicely.
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Movies Continued:
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Here’s a short clip, about 10 seconds long, but the point here is that you don’t have to launch the Dragonfly be hand, it can take off from the ground, but only if the surface is nice and smooth.
To illustrate a good launch, I filmed Wayne doing it, you can see you need to sort of give it a little push, almost like you would a paper airplane.
and here’s a little clip that features me flying the Dragonfly to Barry so he can catch it, with practice you can easily control where you want the Dragonfly to go and when.
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Movies Continued:
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and here’s four more movies just flying around a bit… The fourth video is actually flying in Expert mode, you’ll notice how the turns are sharper and tighter…
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Movies Continued:
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You remember the tail ribbon right, from the very beginning of the review? You’ll notice that most of the videos were shot without the tail,these final two are with the tail on. You’ll notice that the Dragonfly sort of struggles a bit, it really does add weight to the Dragonfly and slow it down. In the second video I did have it in Expert mode as well.
You can see that it can be quite a bit of a challenge to fly the Dragonfly, even with my experience at flying RC Helicopters which are extremely difficult to master, I had trouble flying the Dragonfly. The learning curve is a bit high on the Dragonfly, but as with anything, practice makes perfect.
I did take the Dragonfly outside in low wind and it flew fine, actually the wind helped it out a bit to gain altitude and speed. If the wind is more than 2 mph then the Dragonfly just gets swept away, and I almost had to climb a couple tress to get it, thankfully I got it out by flapping the wings and of course the wind helped a bit as well.
I have to throw in a bit of an editorial here at the end of all of this, some people complain about the Dragonfly and it being hard to fly and not really able to use indoors, I say deal with it. The WowWee Dragonfly is a really cool toy, it’s the first of its kind, something that is sure to be copied by quite a few overseas companies, but you can’t expect perfection the first time out. Yes it has flaws, but what doesn’t? There is nothing out there that is perfect, in the society we live in everyone seems to focus on the bad things without every really looking at the good things, and this pretty much pertains to everything and anything. Our society has become so cynical, and frankly I’m sick of it, pretty much everyone looks at something and the first thing they see are the flaws, why do we do that? This even pertains to people, ask someone about someone else and the first thing they will tell you is the bad stuff about them, why? I’m the type of person that tries to find the good in anything and everyone, yes sometimes it just isn’t there, but most times the good does outweigh the bad. People need to stop focusing on the bad or flaws in everything and everyone, and just get real, (for lack of a better phrase) get real, and understand that nothing out there is perfect.
Back to the Dragonfly though, it’s something totally new, never before seen, don’t expect to pick it up and be a master at it, I’ve put in quite a few hours with it and am pretty good but still not that good, I’ve got more learning to do. Anything like this needs to be learned and mastered before a final judgment can be passed, and I feel my 50+ hours of flying time with the Dragonfly allows me to give you my honest and learned opinion of this product. Yes it can be improved upon, but for being the first of its kind it is quite an exceptional piece of machinery and technology, I’m truly impressed with the WowWee Flytech Dragonfly.
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Summary:
I think I really just said it at the end of the last section, I am truly impressed by this exceptional piece of machinery and technology. The WowWee Dragonfly can provide children of all ages many hours of fun, in my testing and crashing, I found the Dragonfly to be a very resilient toy, I logged over 50 hours fly time, and probably three times as many crashes, never once did I do any real damage or have to use the spare set of wings. For the price it is very much worth the money, it is extremely well made and loads of fun to fly.
DragonSteelMods gives the WowWee FlyTech Dragonfly a 4.5 out of 5 score, and our Recommended Award as well.
Pros:
-Cool toy!
-Fun to play with
-Works well
-Fast charging
-Very durable
-Includes extra parts
-Remote is Dragonfly base and charger in one
Cons:
-Can’t swap batteries
-Can’t replace battery
-Doesn’t work well outside in wind
-High learning curve
-Requires a lot of space to fly
-Hard to get charging wire out, need small fingers or tool
DIGG IT!!!I would like to thank WowWee / FlyTech for the chance to review the Dragonfly and for their continued support of DSM.
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