Have I Outgrown My InMotion V5F Electric Unicycle?

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The simple answer to this question is no. I have not outgrown my little $399 refurbished InMotion V5F. For my personal needs, I can still get a lot more out of this little guy. It has no trouble taking me to the park with my laptop backpack so I can work there. It can take me to fun little flying spots for my FPV miniquads nearby too.


What have Pat and Brian been up to lately? To find out you can check out the latest episodes of The Butter, What?! Show


The InMotion V5F is definitely holding me back. I hit the 15 mph speed warning quite often. For the most part, I am OK with this. That’s the speed limit on the bike paths at my local park, and I feel like going much faster than this will be the different between being able to jog to a stop when I fall off the wheel vs. landing flat on my face and breaking my jaw.

NOTE: I am aware this isn’t footage of an EUC. I haven’t yet had a chance to get some drone chase footage of one! I’ll update it when I get the opportunity!

I didn’t buy my unicycle to go fast. I didn’t buy it to do tricks. I bought it to take me on the last few miles of my journeys.



My riding friends are outgrowing my unicycle!

My wife has been going riding with me most days of the week since the coronavirus hit. She was riding my old Hover-1 XLS scooter, and I was able to keep up with her, and my V5F has a little more range than the scooter.

She’s upgraded to an Aventon Pace 350 electric bike. The Pace 350 can reach 20 mph with the throttle, and can reach even higher speeds if she pedals. The Hover-1 XLS maxes out at 17 or 18 mph. She’s been using the pedal assist most of the time instead of the throttle, and she’s managed to go 12 miles on the Pace 350 and only use about 10% of a charge.

That’s the bigger problem now. She has significantly more range than me!

Our friend Tanner bought the absolutely insane Gotway MSX Pro electric unicycle, and he’s been riding with us a few times a week. His monster of a machine can reach 37 mph, and at the lower speeds we ride at, he probably has nearly 100 miles of range.

Brian’s Exway X1 Riot Pro skateboard can easily reach speeds over 20 mph too. At least he doesn’t beat me on range, though, right?!

Tanner and my wife can ride pretty much anywhere without getting range anxiety. Last time we rode together, we had to chose a route home where I wouldn’t run out of juice. That was disappointing!

I’m writing this blog post to help me decide if I should upgrade!

I’ve pretty much convinced myself that I’m going to order a bigger EUC. I will most likely do it when I’m finished writing this post. I figure writing things down to explain my reasoning to you might manage to change my mind. I doubt it, but I’m going to give it a try anyway!

I didn’t anticipate riding just for the fun of it

At least not as often as I have been. I expected the unicycle to be just like my scooter. I would take it out mostly when I wanted to go somewhere. I blame COVID-19 for all the fun I’m having just going out for rides.

Until recently, I only rode by myself. Now my wife rides along with me most days, and Brian and Tanner have been joining us a few times a week. We aren’t going out to accomplish anything. We’re going out just for the sake of going out.

I expect this to slow down when it is 105 degrees in the shade every day in July, and it might also slow down if COVID-19 ever goes away. I’m not going to worry about that. I’m just going to assume that riding electric unicycles is one of my new hobbies!

What I like about my InMotion V5F

We already know what I need to improve. The V5F doesn’t have enough power or battery capacity, but there are things I really like about the little guy!

I bought the InMotion V5F because InMotion had a refurbished unit in stock for $399. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to ride a unicycle, and even if I could, I didn’t know how much I would use the thing. At that price, it was a no-brainer to give it a shot.

I really like the weight of the InMotion V5F. It comes in at about 25 pounds. That’s half the weight of my Hover-1 scooter. Tanner’s beefy Gotway MSX Pro is more than twice as heavy. The unicycles I’m looking at are probably 80% heavier than my V5F.

This is a pretty big deal to me. The first time I rode Tanner’s MSX, I leaned into what would have put me into a turn with about a 6’ diameter on my V5F, but it was barely enough to force that big machine to change lanes! The InMotion V5F feels like a Miata compared to these other wheels.

I’m realizing that the things I like about the InMotion V5F all revolve around its light weight. It is easy to carry, and it is so much more maneuverable than a heavy wheel.

My experience with heavy unicycles

I’ve probably only put a ¼ mile on Tanner’s MSX Pro. As someone who learned on a light wheel, riding the MSX Pro was such a weird experience!

NOTE: I can’t decide if I’m supposed to call the thing the MSuper Pro or [MSX Pro]. Both seem to be acceptable, so I’m going to stick with the simpler form.

When I tried to get on, I had a lot of trouble puzzling out just how hard to shift my weight to set the thing level. I put my second foot up, and the wheel was leaning a bit to one side, so I shifted my weight hard to the other side, and MSX didn’t budge. If I leaned that hard on my little InMotion V5F, the thing would have tumped right over!

Turning these heavy wheels is a lot more work, but they are definitely more stable. I’ve taken Tanner’s MSX onto the grass a few times. His wide 18” wheel handles the lumpy terrain so much nicer than my narrower 14” wheel. I also noticed that on his wheel, I can start climbing a grassy hill, come to nearly a complete stop, then lean forward and power up the rest of the hill. My little 550-watt wheel can’t do that!

On the same day I tried Tanner’s MSX for the first time, we ran into our new friend John near the end of our ride. He offered to let me ride his King Song 18XL. I was already tired from riding 10 miles, we were on a narrow sidewalk, and I was nervous about dropping a stranger’s EUC. He said it would be OK if I dropped it, but I still didn’t want to.

I had the same problem mounting John’s 18XL as I did Tanner’s MSX Pro. I figured it was going to feel much like the MSX to me, and I didn’t want to drop it, so I decided not to take it for a ride. I’m only just learning right now that the 18XL weighs nearly 50 pounds, so it is a pretty hefty machine too!

I’m envious of how well Tanner can handle going up steps. No, he can’t climb real steps. I’ve watched him transition from the grass to the sidewalk when the sidewalk is 2” or 3” higher than the grass without any problems. I sometimes get hung up on my smaller bumps, assuming I’m moving too slow.

Which electric unicycles are you looking at, Pat?!

The day I rode Tanner’s MSX Pro, I came home and browsed the selection at ewheels.com. I saw that the King Song 16S was on sale for $1,150. It is currently listed at $1,250. I’m not sure if this is a problem with my memory, or if the price went up.

This seemed like a fantastic fit. I’m getting 14 to 15 miles per charge on my InMotion V5F, and the 16S has about 2.5 times the battery capacity. Even if I ride faster, it should still have at least double the range. The King Song 16S claims to have a cruising speed of 22 mph, which should be more than enough to keep up with Chris’s Pace 350. The King Song 16S’s 1,200 watt motor easily outclasses my V5F’s 550 watt motor, too!

  InMotion V5F King Song 16S Gotway Tesla V2
Weight 25 lbs 38.5 lbs
Cruise Speed 15 mph 22 mph 30 mph
Power 550w 1200w 1200w
Range 14 miles 35-40 miles 40-50 miles
Full Price $699 $1,475 $1,575
Sale Price $399 refurb $1,250 $1,350

When I checked the prices last night, I was surprised that the 16S was listed for $100 more than I remembered, but now the Gotway Tesla V2 is on sale for $1,350!

The Tesla is a pretty big upgrade over the King Song 16S. In fact, it would probably be more fair to compare the Tesla to Tanner’s MSX Pro!

The Tesla has a 30 mph cruising speed, more than 3 times as much battery capacity as my V5F, and its 1,900 watt motor is nearly four times more powerful. It is quite an upgrade over the KingSong 16S for only $100 more.

The InMotion V5F is a steal at $399

If you’re looking to buy your first electric unicycle, and InMotion has a refurbished V5F in stock for $399, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend buying it. You get a ton of value for your money. The trouble is that there are almost NEVER refurbished V5F wheels available in the InMotion store.

At its full price of $699, I don’t think I could recommend the V5F. You can get a King Song 14D with a more powerful motor from ewheels.com for only $50 more.

Another interesting option if you’re on a budget is the Gotway MTen3. It is only a 10” wheel, so it won’t be as stable as the InMotion V5F, but it has an 800-watt motor like the KingSong 14D, and top speed of 23 mph. The MTen3 is quite a value at $599.

I’ve been envious of the MTen3 for a while, but I wouldn’t want my only wheel to be a 10” wheel. Now that I’m about to order a Gotway Tesla, I’m really wishing my extra wheel was an MTen3!

You’re going to bang up your first electric unicycle

I’m so glad I bought the refurbished InMotion V5F for $399 as my first unicycle. This poor thing has so many scuffs, scrapes, and cracks in it just from me learning to ride the thing! Not only that, but I tried to teach my wife to ride it, and Tanner learned to ride my V5F before he even ordered his Gotway MSX Pro.

Everything I read said that the underpowered 550-watt motor on the V5F would make it a difficult wheel to learn on. I’ll never get to learn again, so I have no way to know just how true this is.

I think it is a good idea to learn on a wheel that you don’t care about dropping. That might be a $399 refurbished InMotion V5F, or a used unicycle. That’s what I did, so now I expect it will take quite a while before I make my new Gotway Tesla look ugly!

Why not go all the way up to an MSX Pro?

I believed there was a good chance that my wife would wind up stealing my InMotion V5F from me. If that happened, I would have shopped for a faster, more powerful EUC for myself, but weight would still have been a concern. The Gotway Tesla that I’m contemplating ordering would have been at the very high end of my weight limit.

Chris didn’t learn to ride a EUC. She ended up ordering an electric bike. That means I still have the V5F available whenever I need it. Weight doesn’t matter if I can always just throw the V5F in the car for short rides, right? Why not buy a 55-pound unicycle?

I did think about it. I decided that the MSX Pro is overkill for my needs. I don’t need that much power or range. I’m also hopeful that a 38-pound 16-inch wheel steers less like a truck than the 55-pound, 18-inch MSX Pro.

The Tesla seems like the MSX Pro’s little brother

I’ve decided that the King Song 16S is the Camaro Z28 to the entry-level Camaro of my V5F. The Tesla, MSX, and MSX Pro are like a Corvette, Corvette Z06, and a Corvette ZR-1.

With the Tesla, I’m getting 80% to 85% of the performance of the MSX Pro at 65% of the cost. The only math I did to back up this claim is on the price. The other two numbers are a rough guess, but I bet you’d agree that I’m not far off.

If you’ve ever owned a sports car, you know that you don’t get to open them up all that often. Even when you do have the opportunity to be aggressive with the throttle, you don’t usually get to open them up all the way. If we’re both commuting to work, and I’m driving a ZR-1 and you’re driving a base Corvette, there’s nothing different about our commutes.

Even if we get to drive them wide open for a stretch, we’re probably not going to notice the difference. If you take both cars to the track, it is going to be a different story. I know exactly how often I used to get to take my car to the track when I was into that sort of thing.

My Corvette analogy breaks down a bit when you consider that the MSX Pro was just released while the King Song 16S and the Gotway Tesla are models from more than two years ago.

Conclusion

I had already talked myself into ordering the Gotway Tesla from ewheels.com two or three headings ago. It has already been ordered. I have a tracking number, and it is supposed to arrive in three days.

I’m a bit disappointed that I’m upgrading my starter unicycle less than six months after I bought it. I blame Tanner. If he didn’t buy a 37-mph EUC, I wouldn’t be constantly struggling to keep up!

What do you think? Are you already riding an EUC, OneWheel, electric skateboard, or an e-bike? Do you think I made a good choice when I settled on the Tesla? Should I have opted for something even bigger, or will I think even the Tesla is too big? Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

I Was a Guest On The Create/Invent Podcast Again!

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We’ve been under some level of quarantine for quite a while already. Last week, I saw Jeremy Cook tweet about staying at home, and what a huge change this HASN’T been for him. I figured I’d poke at him with the suggestion that they need to do an isolation episode of The Create/Invent Podcast.

Jeremy seemed to think it was a good idea, and he asked if I’d like to be on again. A couple of days later, we were recording another fine episode of Jeremy Cook and Max Maker’s podcast!

I haven’t listened yet, but my wife listened last night. I asked her how I did. All she said was, “You lied to them!”

I was hurt! I don’t remember telling any lies whatsoever!

She said, “When we were riding at the park, I didn’t hear the lady say ‘There goes that guy again!’ You heard her say that!”

She’s correct. This is what I remember as well. I must have goofed up the story a bit. I hope I didn’t ruin it!

Do you think I can remember what we talked about? Here’s what I can recall:

I had a good time. We were a bit rowdy and probably more than a little offensive during pregame. I asked if I should tone myself down, but Max and Jeremy didn’t suggest that I should, though I did do my best not to offend anyone in the audience.

I had a good time talking. I hope you have a good time listening! Go check out my episode of The Create/Invent Podcast and all the other episodes too!

Let me know how I did in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

I Wish Windows 10 Worked Better on Tablets

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A little over three years ago, I bought a Chuwi Hi12 2-in-1 tablet. It was an amazing piece of hardware for the price, even if it was woefully underpowered. It uses the same beautiful display as whatever version of the Surface Pro was current back in 2016, so it looks quite good.

It has a lot of shortcomings. The keyboard is usually OK, but sometimes it has trouble staying connected to the tablet. Did I mention that the Chuwi Hi12 is slow? I knew that before I bought it.

I’m not here to talk about the problems specific to this $300 tablet I bought in 2016.

I used the Chuwi as my portable blogging, web surfing, and social media machine for 6 to 12 months. I occasionally wake it back up for a week or so when my big laptop is just too big and heavy to haul around.

I’m doing that again this week, because I learned that I can fit my Chuwi and Nintendo Switch in my smallest laptop bag; it is a shoulder bag. Loaded up with gear, it weighs 4.5 pounds: that’s lighter than my big laptop! I have no trouble at all carrying that back when I cruise through the park on my electric unicycle.

Every time I bring out the Chuwi, I am reminded of all sorts of things that bum me out about Windows 10. The last few times this happened, I might have written a few tweets and forgotten about it. This week, I’m practicing my social distancing. I don’t have anything better to do. I may as well write about what I’ve been thinking!

I’m not testing anything that I’m complaining about!

It is possible some of these problems were fixed since the last time I tested them. That could have been three years ago. That could have been six months ago.

My Chuwi Tablets

If any of these problems are fixed, you can yell at me in the comments. Microsoft sells their own tablets loaded with Windows 10. The things I’m complaining about should never have been an issue. It is embarrassing enough that they were problems three years ago.

There is a huge lack of touch-friendly software

There are currently 1,784 games in my Steam library. More than a few of those games seem like they would be awesome games to play on a touch screen while sitting on the couch. A reasonable subset of those games already have Android and IOS ports, so surely I will be able to play some of them.

X-COM, FTL: Faster Than Light, and Prison Architect all have Android or IOS ports. I figured they’d work great on my Windows 10 tablet. Nope. You can’t play these games without two buttons on your mouse.

Sure, there were a lot of games I couldn’t even attempt to play due to the specs of my little Chuwi Hi12. Of the ones I could try, the lack of an easy way to right click was going to be a huge problem. I was excited about trying Torchlight, but that wasn’t going to work, either.

Attempting to play Torchlight 2 with the pen

Attempting to play Torchlight 2 with a pen. It was terrible.

The problem isn’t just games. There’s no good Twitter app. The official Twitter app is built for a phone. There’s no good Reddit app. I don’t remember which streaming services were lacking apps, but some were. Of the ones that had native Windows 10 apps, I remember Hulu completely lacking the user profile feature.

I am certain that I would complain less about using a web browser to access these things on a faster Windows 10 tablet, but it would only be a partial fix. The Reddit website is garbage compared to Red Reader on Android.

I don’t understand why Microsoft hasn’t fixed this problem

Remember when Microsoft signed a $400 million contact to make the Surface Pro the official tablet of the NFL. If I’m remembering correctly, TV personalities kept accidentally referring to the Surface Pro as an iPad.

Why haven’t they invested a small fraction of that cash into paying developers to make touch-friendly versions of their software? How much would they have to pay Subset Games to add touch support to the Windows version of FTL: Faster Than Light? They already figured out how to make the game work without a right mouse button on the iPad.

I’m sure you can come up with a list of games you’d like to play while sitting on the couch: Cities Skylines, SimCity, Civilization 5, Civilization 6, or RimWorld.

I’m sure they could throw money at Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and Disney, too. They could make their tablet ecosystem so much better, and it wouldn’t cost anywhere near $400 million.

Why is the on-screen keyboard so terrible?

When I bought my Chuwi Hi12 in 2016, the touch keyboard didn’t even support gesture typing. This was already ages after Swype hit the market, and Android had already supported this in their standard keyboard for quite a few years at this point.

One day, I turned on my tablet, let it spend a few hours updating itself, and my keyboard now support swipe typing. Awesome!

Except it didn’t always work. It would be disabled in some text entry fields, sometimes for no obvious reason. You want to type a search term into the URL bar? Too bad! Nobody should want to swipe to type a URL, so no swiping for you.

A laptop that is also a tablet should be better than a tablet that is also a laptop

Shouldn’t it? That’s what I’ve been hoping.

I’d like to carry fewer devices. Phones and tablets are great for consuming content, but they’re terrible for creating content. Why can’t I have one device that does both?

I need a good text editor and a decent keyboard. Emacs works just fine on the little Chuwi tablet. It gets sluggish at times, though. I know Emacs has some serious inefficiencies on Windows, and those are only exacerbated by the Chuwi’s slow Atom processor and lack of RAM.

Emacs covers a lot of my input needs. I can write blogs and code with Emacs, but being able to edit video on the road would be nice. I would never have the patience to attempt this on my Chuwi tablet, but a proper Surface Pro would do the job just fine.

It is too bad the tablet side is so lacking

The Chuwi is a passable if large e-book reader. I forget which epub reader I tried, but I remember setting the color palette to something similar to the Solarized Dark theme. That worked well enough, so I’m sure I’d be happy using a Surface Pro to read fiction.

I’ve tried sitting in my recliner and using the Chuwi as a tablet to consume content. I’ve forced myself to read and interact with Twitter. I’ve forced myself to browser Reddit; I may have even found a reasonable Reddit app! I’ve forced myself to read the comments on Hacker News.

The Chuwi Tablet

Twitter was a bear, because the Chuwi is just too slow to render Twitter’s web interface quickly enough. Even without the speed issue, using the Twitter website with a touch interface isn’t nearly as good as using something like Twidere on my phone. That point is moot now, because so many good Twitter apps on Android are being deprecated.

I wound up learning after forcing myself to use the Windows 10 tablet for a month or so that it was just easier to consume content on my phone. I didn’t need to figure out where I left off. I didn’t need get myself out of sync or lose an article when I was using my phone in the car and my tablet in the house.

Some of this wasn’t too bad in the old days when I had an Android tablet. My Twitter app tried to keep my spot in sync between devices.

The phone just isn’t as inconvenient today as it was in those days. When I had a 4” phone and an 8.3” tablet, the tablet seemed luxurious. Now that I have a 5.7” phone, the difference isn’t as important.

What do I carry today?

The real answer is that I don’t carry much at all. I don’t often leave the house with anything more than my phone. Sure, I take my FPV quadcopter gear with me a few times a week, but that has nothing to do with Windows 10!

This has been on my mind again because I’ve been learning to ride my InMotion V5F electric unicycle. It has about 12 miles of range, so it has no trouble getting me to the shaded pavilion full of picnic tables near the lake. That’s only a 2-mile ride from my house!

I can ride with a 20-pound backpack without trouble, but carrying less is nicer. I’ve carried my big, heavy Linux gaming laptop with its 16 GB of RAM, i7-7700HQ CPU, and Nvidia 1050 Ti GPU. It is fine. My heavily loaded laptop backpack only comes in at 12 pounds.

This seemed like a good excuse to pull the Chuwi tablet out of mothballs. I loaded up my little purse with the Chuwi, its keyboard, my Nintendo Switch, and all sorts of cables and adapters. It still weighs less than 4.5 pounds. That’s less than my gaming laptop weighs on its own.

Would it be nicer to carry a Surface Pro?

Yes, but I can’t justify the price. Your opinion might be different, but based on my needs, even the most expensive Surface Pro is generally a downgrade over my giant laptop from 2017. Do I want to spend $2,000 for a smaller yet more portable screen? The value goes down significantly more for me, because I’d have to run Windows 10 instead of Linux.

It seems like I can get a refurbished, reasonably equipped Surface Pro somewhere in the $500 to $650 range. Something with twice as much RAM and quite a lot more CPU horsepower than my little Chuwi tablet.

If I was having more luck and more fun with my Chuwi tablet, I would probably jump on a $650 refurbished Surface Pro. As things stand today, I don’t believe I would get much use out of it.

Conclusion

This isn’t the first time I’ve considered the idea of upgrading my slow, old, cheap Chuwi 2-in-1 to a Surface Pro. Maybe not a Surface Pro; Dell and HP have comparable 2-in-1 devices, too! This is just the first time I’m bothering to write about it.

If I could play some FTL: Faster Than Light, Prison Architect, or RimWorld on a Surface Pro, that would be nice. Unfortunately, I can’t. At least not without a keyboard and mouse. That makes a huge percentage of the potential value of me evaporate away immediately.

The fact that I prefer a Linux laptop doesn’t help, either. I really want everything I have on my desktop on a laptop, then I want that same laptop to feel like an Android tablet or iPad when the keyboard is unplugged. We aren’t there yet. We aren’t even at a point where I would enjoy the compromise.

What do you think? Do you use your Windows 10 2-in-1 in tablet mode a lot? Do you also prefer your phone for surfing things like Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News? Let me know in the comments, or stop by [the Butter, What?! Discord server][bwd] to chat with me about it!

Upgrade Your Nintendo Switch Joy-Con with a D-pad

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I recently bought a Nintendo Switch, and it is awesome. So far, I’ve finished Super Mario Odyssey, gotten to 2BC in Dead Cells, and made it about half-way through Super Mario Bros. U.

Super Mario Odyssey was a joy to play, for the most part. It is probably my least favorite 3D Mario game so far, but the controls feel great.

That pair of 2D platformers are challenging without a D-pad. I knew this would be a problem when I bought the Switch. In fact, this is the main reason I considered saving myself $100 with a Switch Lite. The Switch Lite has a D-pad. The full-size Switch has four buttons instead.

The four buttons do make for a serviceable D-pad, but the situation isn’t ideal. I was making mistakes all the time in Dead Cells. I could feel myself missing the button I intended to hit during intense situations.

If you want a D-pad for your Switch, what options do you have?

The Switch Pro controller

The Nintendo Switch Pro controller looks like a fantastic controller. I’m not quite sure why its retail price is $70. That’s $10 or $15 more than a Dualshock 4!

If my goal was to sit in front of the TV most of the time, then the Switch Pro controller would be the perfect option. It is comfortable, well made, and has an excellent D-pad.

The Switch has been awesome. I can throw it in my laptop bag or my shoulder bag, hop on my electric unicycle, and ride to the park. I want to be able to use my D-pad on a bench at the park. I don’t want to have to carry a Switch Pro controller around and find a place to set the Switch up on its kickstand!

HORI D-pad controller

At first, the HORI D-pad controller seemed like the best option. Everyone says nice things about its D-pad, and its $25 price tag is quite reasonable.

The HORI controller only works when attached to the Switch. It has no wireless functionality at all.

This would probably work out all right for me. I haven’t really played any multiplayer games that use just one Joy-Con yet.

I didn’t like the idea of carrying an extra Joy-Con just in case I felt the need to play a multiplayer game at the park or while waiting for a plane at the airport.

This seems like a great option, but it just isn’t the option for me!

eXtremeRate Soft Touch Joy-Con Housing

In my opinion, this is the way to go. I’m extremely happy with how this setup feels. The $20 price tag may make this appear to be the cheapest option, but you’ll also have to invest about an hour of your time and a hearty amount of confidence to get this thing up and running!

This is just a set of replacement housings for your existing Joy-Cons. This is awesome, because it means you’re still using Nintendo’s high-quality hardware inside the controller. Everything still feels stock.

The bummer is that you have to take your controllers apart, and these controllers go together like a puzzle. If you’re not confident in your abilities, then you may wind up ruining a $70 Joy-Con. This is unlikely to happen. You may have trouble reassembling everything, but even if you can’t, I bet you can find a friend that can help bail you out!

I had my replacement housing in my hands for about a week before installing it, and I’ve still only replaced the housing on the Joy-Con with the D-pad.

I’ve been using the D-pad for about a week so far

It is such a nice upgrade. It is also a much better D-pad than the tiny D-pad on the Switch Lite.

I was encouraged to do the upgrade because I was having a lot of trouble finishing 1BC in Dead Cells. I could feel so many of the mistakes I was making, and I knew a D-pad would help me out.

I acquired my second boss cell a few hours after installing the D-pad mod. It made such a big difference for me!

The eXtremeRate housing feels quite nice

I’m still playing with only one housing installed. The aftermarket shell is made of some sort of plastic that feels soft to the touch. It isn’t a huge difference, but I do find it to be nicer than the stock Joy-Con on the other side of my Switch.

I’ve used a lot of cheap controllers with crappy D-pads. This isn’t one of them. This D-pad is top-notch.

This doesn’t surprise me. The mechanical parts of this D-pad are all stock Nintendo parts. The pushbuttons on the PCB are still stock, and the rubbery bits are still stock. eXtremeRate’s D-pad just sits on top of the high-quality hardware.

I was a bit worried at first. Most D-pads have a little rocker protuberance underneath. This keeps you from pushing left and right or up and down at the same time. This D-pad doesn’t have anything like that. You can easily force all four directions at the same time.

I understand the reasons why they would do this. They couldn’t add a protuberance to the mold if they wanted to use Nintendo’s rubbery piece. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there are 2-player games where you might need to hit opposing buttons at the same time. I guess you’d still be able to do that with the eXtremeRate D-pad.

This hasn’t caused any trouble for me. Nintendo’s springy rubber under the D-pad is stiff enough that you won’t even notice that there is no rocker. Unless you’re putting a lot of effort in, it feels like a normal D-pad.

Which design should you choose?

I chose the classic NES design. The NES was really my third game console. It wasn’t my last, but it was the last game console of my childhood. It made sense to me to go with the original NES look.

The classic SNES design looks much better. Even though I never really got into the SNES, I should have chosen it anyway. The NES design isn’t quite authentic enough. It is pretty much just a black controller with red buttons.

Conclusion

If you’re like me, and you play a lot of old-school games, then you absolutely need a D-pad. If you want or need a portable, wireless D-pad that you can use while on the go with your Nintendo Switch, the eXtremeRate D-pad housing is most definitely the way to go. It is worth the effort to get it installed!

What do you think? Do you play a lot of D-pad-heavy games? Are you using the eXtremeRate D-pad shell, or are you using something else? Did I make the right choice? Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

Five Weeks with My InMotion V5F Electric Unicycle

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It will probably be closer to six weeks by the time I manage to actually hit publish on this blog post. Math says my electric unicycle (EUC) arrived at my house 36 days before I started writing this paragraph. The 10-day forecast lists rain for at least the next seven days, so I won’t be riding for the next week. Even if I’m late getting all the photos and videos together for this post, I definitely won’t be exaggerating my riding time!

NOTE: While writing this, I clicked past 100 miles on my EUC’s odometer!

I almost feel like I know what I’m doing!

I can ride more than two miles without stopping. I can ride on grass. I can ride on rough pavement, and I can handle bumps and potholes. I can transition from riding on pavement to riding on grass. I can ride slowly and negotiate tight turns. I can get on and off the unicycle without looking like an idiot most of the time too!

I also find myself triggering the max speed alarm on my InMotion V5F quite frequently. This wheel is only rated for 15 mph, and I hit that speed on just about every trip I take now. I’m not unhappy with this limitation, though. I don’t really want to be going any faster than this on my local bike paths!

I’ve managed to travel 6 miles on a single outing. I’ve managed to travel 9.5 miles in a single day.

I’m able to ride with a 12-pound backpack while drinking a latte out of a foam cup. When I started learning to ride, I would get wobbly just trying to adjust my glasses!

Who can ride an electric unicycle?

I’m nearly 43 years old. I weigh about 200 pounds. I’ve never ridden a skateboard. I spent a ton of time riding my bike when I was a kid, but I’ve barely ever even touched a bike since I was 14.

I’m not athletic. I don’t think I have an above average sense of balance. If I can learn to ride a unicycle, you probably can too!

You’re not just going to get on and be riding in an hour. It isn’t intuitive. It takes practice. Lots and lots of practice!

Hey, Pat! What is your use case for the InMotion V5F unicycle?

My hobby is flying FPV freestyle miniquads. I want to be able to load up my backpack and head to a fun spot to fly!

I already have a Hover-1 XLS folding electric scooter. It is a lot of fun, and it does this job well. I’m two houses away from the bike trails that connect many of the parks in my city. I can hop on the bike, ride for ten minutes, fly for a while, then ride home.

The Hover-1 XLS does a great job getting me to nearby flying spots. I have put nearly 400 miles on it already. My problem is that the e-bike is heavy and bulky. It is difficult to get it in the car.

I’m hoping to replicate my success I’ve had with my bike, but I want to be able to start my FPV freestyle miniquad adventures from a location other than my house. I’d like to drive the car 20 minutes away, then ride the EUC three more miles, then fly from there!

You’ve had this thing for a month already! Is it going to meet your needs?!

Yes. I’m still almost entirely convinced that the inexpensive little InMotion V5F is the perfect fit for me.

The InMotion V5F weighs only 25 pounds. That’s half as much as the Hover-1 XLS. The InMotion wheel has a handle on top. It takes me five seconds to toss it in the car. I don’t have to fold it up. I don’t have to figure out how to heft it up and into the trunk. I don’t have to unfold it when I take it out of the car. It is ready to ride immediately.

I haven’t taken it on one of these away missions yet, but I rode two miles into the park with my laptop backpack for the first time a few days ago. I didn’t even notice the backpack. I’m not sure I’d want to take my fully loaded 25-pound backpack with me, but my 12-pound FPV backpack will be no problem at all!

I was also hoping I could use the unicycle to help me retrieve crashed miniquads more efficiently. I’m able to ride in the grass pretty well already, so this is almost certainly going to be possible!

What downsides are you noticing, Pat?!

When I ride the unicycle or the e-bike to the park, people are always stopping me to ask me about it. This is awesome, but it didn’t take long before I figured out the most disappointing problem with the unicycle.

Every time someone asks me about the e-bike, I offer to let them take it for a spin. I’d say about 1 out of every 3 people take me up on the offer, and every single one of those people have had success. They all seemed to have a good time too.

I wouldn’t even consider offering to let someone ride the unicycle. It took me 20 minutes or more just to learn to stay on long enough to ride 15 feet. I’ve let friends try, and some of them got scared immediately when they couldn’t balance even while holding on to their car.

The learning curve is the major downside.

Getting over the hump in the learning curve is rewarding

There are several points during my training where I had a great feeling of accomplishment. Just being able to ride 10 feet without holding on to a wall felt amazing, and that took at least 20 minutes of practice!

I can’t explain how to ride better. Something just happens in your brain. You go from barely being able to stay upright on the damned thing to just being able to ride until you decide it is time to stop. Once you hit that point, things seem to progress so much faster.

What’s the payoff here? Almost any adult can ride an electric bike. It is supposedly an awful lot easier to learn to ride a OneWheel XR. Why put in the effort to learn to ride such a difficult mode of transportation?

It comes down to some combination of cost, performance, and form factor.

My e-bike is big, heavy, and cumbersome. My refurbished unicycle cost less, weighs half as much, and performs similarly to my e-bike.

The OneWheel XR beats or matches my little InMotion V5F in almost every measure except price. Where the OneWheel beats my unicycle, it doesn’t usually beat it by a lot. The OneWheel is 4 mph faster, and the published specs say it has 5 miles more range than I’m expecting to see on my InMotion V5F.

Where my unicycle really beats the OneWheel XR is on price. My refurbished V5F cost me $399 shipped. Full price is still only $649. Either price is so much cheaper than the $1,849 price tag on the OneWheel XR. Not only that, but my little $399 unicycle beats the OneWheel Pint’s specs in almost every way at half the price.

The OneWheel XR is the upper limit for a OneWheel too. There are plenty of unicycles, like the Gotway Nikola, that can reach speeds of nearly 40 mph, and these machines have a range of something like 70 miles on a charge. They’re big, heavy, and ridiculous.

I think the best part about unicycles is the number of available options. I’m riding one of the smallest, cheapest unicycle options. There’s a lot of choice, so there’s more likely to be a wheel that meets your needs at a price you can afford.

What about an electric skateboard?

My friend Brian has an Exway X1 Riot Pro longboard. It looks like a lot of fun, and the price, performance, and range of his skateboard are all quite good. Better still, his e-skateboard has as much range as my InMotion V5F, but it weighs about half as much!

Brian’s Exway X1 Riot Pro Skateboard

My biggest problem with skateboards is the tiny wheels. You feel every tiny bump in the road, and there’s no chance you’re going to ride well on grass.

They closed a short stretch of the bike path for construction at my local park, and you have to sneak through 20 feet of grass to bypass the closure. On my electric unicycle, I’m able to just ride through the grass as though it were pavement.

A refurbished InMotion V5F is a no-brainer!

I keep saying this. I’ve written it several times, and I’ve said it to quite a few people in person.

I ran into a EUC enthusiast while I was riding at the park last week. I forget which wheel he’s upgraded to, but he told me he started with the InMotion V8, and he was wondering why I chose the V5F.

I told him I was waffling on whether or not I should buy a EUC at all, then I saw a refurbished InMotion V5F in the InMotion store for $399. It was cheap enough that I couldn’t pass it up. I can tell by the face he made that he was quite surprised at how low the price was.

You’re going to fall off your new EUC. It is going to hit the pavement, and it is going to hit the pavement a lot. You have no idea what you’re doing. My InMotion V5F has so many scars!

If you can snag a $399 InMotion V5F, I would highly recommend doing it. I haven’t seen one in stock since I bought mine, though.

I don’t think I would pay the full price of $649 for a brand new InMotion V5F. The InMotion V8 is a pretty significant upgrade for a few hundred extra bucks. There is also the King Song 14D in this price range.

Lots of people recommend starting with a used electric unicycle

This seems like fantastic advice. My wheel has been dropped on the pavement so many times. I’ve dropped it. My friends have dropped it. My wife has dropped it. I’ve definitely dropped it the most, though!

Your first wheel is going to acquire quite a few battle scars. Why make your $2,000 purchase look ugly? Start with something cheap, right?!

I checked around. I couldn’t find any unicycles for sale. I’m not currently seeing any electric unicycles listed on Craigslist anywhere in the Dallas/Fort-Worth metro area.

Do you regret purchasing one of the cheapest, slowest electric unicycles?

I’m starting to hit the speed limit warning beeps several times on every trip I take. I believe the warning goes off at 15 mph, and the WheelLog app tells me my top speed has been 16.4 mph.

If your goal is to go fast, the InMotion V5F is probably not the right wheel for you. I don’t want to go fast. I want to be able to ride a few miles with my backpack, and I want to get to my destination faster than walking, and I don’t want to be tired and sweaty when I get there.

For my use, the 15 mph speed limit of the InMotion V5F is almost perfect. If something goes wrong while I’m riding at 20 mph, I am almost definitely going to fall. The slower I ride, the more likely I am to stay on my feet in the event that I need to rapidly dismount. I think I can run for a few paces at 15 mph, but I’d be in trouble at 20 mph!

I should mention the Gotway MTen3

The Gotway MTen3 looks like it would be a great fit for my use case. At $599, it costs less than a new InMotion V5F. It has a higher top speed, more range, and it weighs a few pounds less too.

The only downside is that 10” tire. The bigger the tire, the smoother the ride.

I lucked out when I snagged the InMotion V5F for $399. That made the decision easy for me!

If I had to buy new, I would have had to choose between the InMotion V8, the Gotway MTen3, and the King Song 14D. I would have been very tempted by the MTen3!

Have you gotten hurt?

I have fallen off my EUC a lot. I have yet to land on anything other than my feet.

During the first few days, I wasn’t always good at falling. Sometimes I would dismount, and the wheel would swing around and drive directly into my right shin. That shin was pretty bruised up, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a serious injury.

Conclusion

If you can walk, run, and ride a bike, I have every confidence that you can learn to ride an electric unicycle with a few hours of practice. I am confident that you can go from barely being able to stand on the thing to riding down sidewalks and through parks in two or three weeks.

Learning to ride a EUC has been fun, and now that I’m able to ride pretty well, just riding is a lot of fun too! This thing is a handy mode of transportation, and I’m excited about having it available to me.

What do you think? Did I choose almost exactly the right EUC for my needs, or am I going to be wanting to go 40 mph on a Gotway MSX Pro in a few months? Are you already one of the rare unicycle riders, or are you looking to buy your first EUC? Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

I Finally Bought a Nintendo Switch

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I had a Nintendo Entertainment System when I was a kid. Depending on how you measure, this would have been my third video game console. I’ve been a fan of just about every game in the Super Mario Bros. series ever since, and I do my best to play through every important game in the series.

The last Nintendo console we owned was the original Wii. Super Mario Galaxy parts 1 and 2 were both fantastic. New Super Mario Bros. Wii was awesome, as was the extremely well executed fan-made hack titles Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Nintendo Switch in the dock

I’ve been contemplating finding a used Wii U for a few years just to play New Super Mario Bros. U, but this wasn’t high up on my list of priorities. I’m skipping ahead in the story a bit, but I should mention that an updated version of this game exists on the Switch, so I no longer have a reason to need a Wii U!

Our niece and nephew are going to be visiting us next month, and I’ve been saying we should have a recent gaming console on the TV to help keep them entertained. There are a handful of PlayStation 4 exclusives that I’d like to play, so I figured it was a toss-up between the PS4 and the Switch.

While chatting about this choice I needed to make with a friend of mine, he said, “Dude! You should just borrow my PlayStation 4!” That PS4 is running in my living room right now. In theory, this solved my problem, but I bought a Nintendo Switch two days later.

Should I buy the Switch or Switch Lite?

If you’re the same sort of gamer as me, you’ll be drawn directly to the Switch Lite, and it will have almost nothing to do with the much lower price. I play precise platformers like Super Mario Bros. or Super Meat Boy. I play old-school shmups like Gradius and Zanac; these are the sort of games I play on my custom arcade cabinet. I’m currently up to 4 boss cells in Dead Cells on the PC, and Dead Cells is available on the Switch.

These aren’t the only types of games I play, but these are some of my favorites, and they all have one very important thing in common: they all require a good d-pad.

Nintendo Switch on my desk

Last month, I played some Dead Cells on a friend’s Switch with the joy con. It felt clunky. Sure, you can use the four buttons on the left controller as a d-pad, but I didn’t enjoy it.

The Switch Lite has an actual d-pad, and it feels pretty good. You’re telling me that I can save $100 AND have better controls at the same time? Sure, the screen is a bit smaller, but that also makes the entire Switch Lite with controllers roughly the same size as the full Switch without its joy cons attached. It seemed like a no-brainer to me. Sign me up for a Switch Lite, right?!

I didn’t buy a Switch Lite!

Chris’s favorite game ever is the original The Legend of Zelda, and she is excited about being able to play Breath of the Wild on the big screen. She’s also interested in being able to spectate.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the lack of a d-pad. I’ve played four or five games of Dead Cells so far. I ended the first life early, because Breath of the Wild had finished downloading. On my second play, I made it past the concierge and died in the Stilt Village. One the fourth or fifth play, I got my first boss cell and completed 0BC.

I have to be honest. The fake d-pad isn’t as bad as I expected, but it does take some getting used to. It is definitely better than playing Dead Cells with the analog stick!

We haven’t even had the Switch for 24 hours

I’ve played through one level of Super Mario Bros. U. I believe I just started my fourth kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey. I’ve beaten the Hand of the King in Dead Cells and acquired my first boss cell. Chris has made some progress in Breath of the Wild, but I don’t know how to describe how much! We’ve also played some Tetris 99, which happens to be quite cool!

When I was writing that heading, I assumed we’ve had the Switch for two days. I had to check my email. All the confirmation emails from Nintendo for my game purchases happened yesterday. Only 22 hours ago!

If you buy a switch, you will be sending a lot of money straight to Nintendo!

As has been the case for a long time, the best games on Nintendo’s consoles are made by Nintendo. The switch costs $300. So far, we’ve spent $200 on Zelda and Mario games. I imagine we’re going to have to buy Mario Kart, and it will be difficult to avoid Super Mario Maker.

It looks like you can get a PlayStation 4 for roughly the same $300. I can tell you with great certainty that I would not even be able to spend $200 to $300 on games today for the PS4, let alone on first-party titles.

Nintendo Switch joycons on my couch

Most of the games I would eventually buy for the PlayStation 4 will go on sale. Sales on Mario and Zelda games are few and far between.

This isn’t meant to be a complaint, and I am comparing apples to oranges. These just happen to be the two consoles I was debating the merits of for the last week or two!

What am I going to do about the lack of a d-pad?

The most obvious answer is the Switch Pro Controller. Let’s not ask why it costs nearly twice as much as a Sony DualShock 4 controller. Let’s talk about whether it is a good fit for my needs!

Why would I play Dead Cells with the Pro Controller? I can just continue to play Dead Cells with my DualShock 4 on my computer. If I’m playing Dead Cells on the Switch, I want it to be portable!

I’m not ruling out the idea of buying a Pro Controller. I just don’t think it does a good job of solving my problem.

There are some options for joy cons with d-pads. HORI makes an officially licensed left joy con with a nice-looking d-pad, but it doesn’t support wireless operation. This would probably get the job done, but it seems like it could be limiting when on the go.

There are some replacement shells available for the stock joy con that swap out the four individual buttons for a d-pad. I think this eXtremeRate Classics shell looks neat, because it is available in designs that mimic either the original Nintendo or Super Nintendo controllers!

I think modifying the stock joy con is the way to go. I don’t want to lose the wireless functionality. I can play on the porch. I can play on the TV from the couch. We wouldn’t have to give up the two-player joy con option when on the road, either.

I need to do more research, and I’m not exactly in a hurry to start taking apart my Switch. I’m having enough fun playing games that don’t even need the d-pad for now. I’m sure I’ll get antsy at some point, and I’ll be wanting to play a bunch of Dead Cells!

I didn’t buy my Nintendo Switch from Amazon!

Not too long ago, Nintendo refreshed the Switch hardware. They both play games exactly the same, but the new edition of the hardware has an updated CPU and GPU. The updated hardware isn’t faster, but it is much more efficient.

Nintendo says the original hardware has a battery life of 2.5 to 6.5 hours while the new hardware can manage 4.5 to 9 hours. I had heard this stated as being a 2-hour increase in battery life, and it didn’t sound like a big deal, because I thought the improvement was from something like 6 to 8 hours.

Going from 2.5 to 4.5 hours is HUGE. You need the new hardware. Most of the listings on Amazon either have the old part number listed in the description, or they don’t actually say one way or the other.

I don’t normally like to waste my time shopping in brick and mortar stores, but two extra hours of battery life seemed worth a trip to Target!

If you want the much better battery life, look for model numbers starting with HAD. The model numbers that start with HAC are the old ones! I’m sure that in a few months, this won’t matter. For now, though, many vendors still seem to have old stock!

Conclusion

The Nintendo Switch is fantastic, but I am certain you’re already aware of this. As I’m writing this, I can hear my wife hollering at Mario in the other room. She’s playing New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, and it sounds like she’s having a good time.

I’m already tempted to buy more of my favorite games. 10tons Ltd. makes some of my favorite top-down shooters, like Neon Chrome and JYDGE. I’ve been wanting to play Time Recoil and Undead Horde, and I will definitely be picking these up for the Switch. I already have quite a few games in my library that I need to make some progress on, so I’m doing my best to wait!

What do you think? Should I have bought a Switch a long time ago? Am I missing any important games? Am I going to stop worrying about the missing d-pad in a few weeks? Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

Two Weeks with My InMotion V5F Electric Unicycle

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I don’t know if I’ve been riding my electric unicycle for two full weeks yet, but I must be getting close. I know the refurbished Solowheel Glide 2 that I ordered was supposed to arrive on a Thursday, and as I am writing this, it is currently Thursday. This seems close enough to me!

NOTE: It took nearly 5 days to get the photos, videos, and links added to this blog post. I wrote most of this on Thursday, but it didn’t get polished up and published until Tuesday!

I didn’t think I’d be posting an update so soon, but I feel like something is really starting to click for me. In a week or two, I’ll probably be riding without giving it much thought at all. I’d like to write down how things are going while I’m right in the middle of things, and while everything is fresh in my mind.

What do you mean when you say things are clicking? How do you know?!

Riding a self-balancing electric unicycle (EUC) is a lot like riding a bike. You can’t explain how to do it, and while you’re doing it, you shouldn’t be thinking about what you’re doing. Your subconscious should be balancing for you, just like when you walk or run.

When you go from wobbling around a bunch to riding smoothly, something has clicked in your brain. You can’t really explain why you’re riding smoothly now, or what you’re doing differently.

The first time you stop wobbling and start riding your EUC smoothly, it will be an exhausting experience! You will be tense. You will be working much, much harder to balance than you need to. You will work up a sweat, and you’ll be tired after riding a few hundred feet.

After a little more practice, something else will click in your brain, and you’ll be able to ride a mile without quickly becoming exhausted.

The arches of my feet get sore!

Two days ago, the farthest I could ride was about half a mile. Leaning forward and putting my weight on my toes makes my feet sore. Do I need to build muscle in these parts of my feet? Am I doing something wrong? Am I just not getting enough circulation to my feet?

I think it is a combination of all three.

When I tried pushing past half a mile, I was getting into trouble. I found it more difficult to turn, and I had a lot more trouble safely dismounting. I stopped trying to push past the discomfort.

Something changed yesterday

I went on three practice rides yesterday. The first two each added up to a total of 1.6 miles. I dismounted approximately every half mile. I don’t really need to rest when I stop. I just need a bit of walking to loosen my feet up.

Then I decided to take one more practice ride before dark. I very nearly made it 1.1 miles without dismounting and without any significant foot discomfort! I was turning and following the narrower and bumpier parts of the path with much more confidence than usual.

I did have to dismount somewhere around the one-mile mark. There was a gentleman walking towards me on the narrower part of the path. I’m not confident enough in my abilities to stay on my half of the sidewalk, so I decided it would be best to walk past him instead.

I was catching up to him on my return trip, so I took one more break before finding a slightly different route to go home.

This was my longest journey so far!

Smooth and level pavement is so much easier to ride on!

The first place I rode my InMotion V5F was the parking lot of our local abandoned golf course. It seemed fine at the time, but I didn’t realize how much more challenging it is to ride there. It is ancient, bumpy asphalt, and the whole parking lot is on an incline.

I live in Plano, TX, and the bike trails through our parks are phenomenal. They’re wide and super smooth. After riding on the bike trails, going back to the golf course the next weekend was quite a surprise! Getting started going up the incline of the golf course parking lot is challenging. Riding down the incline is a bit scary at first. Riding across the incline isn’t all that easy, either!

This shouldn’t surprise me. I have to ride on the street past three houses to get to the bike trail from here. I don’t notice the difference on the way to the trail, but the contrast is huge when I’m riding home!

Our streets here aren’t like the terrible asphalt and blacktop of the streets where I grew up in Scranton, PA. They’re fairly smooth concrete, but they’re not as smooth as the bike trail.

Switching back to the street does feel like more work, and there is a bit of a hill coming up the street to my house. I tend to lose speed when I make the turn onto my street, and I used to have trouble building it back up. This is probably due to my wheel being rather underpowered.

When you’re learning to ride, try to find the smoothest parking lot that you can!

You’ll need to learn to ride on rough, uneven surfaces with bumps and potholes, but you don’t need to learn right away.

Don’t forget to check your tire pressure!

When my InMotion Solowheel 2 arrived, the first thing I did was pump up the tire. I inflated it just past the recommended 40 PSI. I figured it would be like my bike tires, and it would lose air fairly quickly, so it wouldn’t hurt to get ahead of that by a few PSI.

I checked the pressure again yesterday, and it was down in the mid-20 PSI range. I was surprised that I lost more than 15 pounds of pressure in less than two weeks! Maybe this is normal. Maybe I have a slow leak. Who knows. I will keep an eye on it.

Why the pressure is low isn’t important. What is important it that I learned just how much easier it is to ride the wheel with adequate pressure!

The unicycle was much easier to mount on my somewhat roughly paved street. I was able to get up to speed more with noticeably less effort. I was able to turn around on my street with less effort.

I’m not an expert. I’ve seen it recommended that new riders should lower their pressure down to 20 PSI. I understand why this might help. You will have more rubber in contact with the pavement. It should be easier to balance. It probably takes a bit more effort to turn, so you won’t be accidentally changing direction.

If lowering your tire pressure is a good idea when you’re just starting out, I would have to imagine that you should only do this for a very short amount of time. Once you can get on and ride in a straight line, I think you should go straight up to full pressure.

Once you’re able to ride, you don’t need the wheel fighting your purposeful inputs.

Was an electric unicycle a good choice?

I feel like I’ve written this section of the blog three times already, and I have. Most of this isn’t my opinion. I’m just regurgitating published specs of OneWheels, Exway electric skateboards, InMotion EUCs, and my old Hover-1 XLS e-bike.

All these options have advantages and disadvantages. Absolutely anyone can ride my e-bike, but is difficult to put in the car. The OneWheel XR is much easier to ride than an EUC, but its specs say it isn’t quite as capable as my $399 InMotion V5F at more than four times the price. Brian’s Exway X1 Riot Pro electric longboard has similar range, but weighs a lot less than my unicycle, while still costing less than half as much as a OneWheel XR.

You’re probably not going to look as cool riding my unicycle or folding scooter as you will riding a OneWheel or skateboard. I’m sure that’s an important factor for some of you!

None of that data directly answer the question. Was an EUC a good choice? For me, it is the perfect choice. The range, speed, and weight of the InMotion V5F are all perfect for my use case. I may need to put quite a few hours in to make use of my wheel, but I am not bothered by that at all. I’m having a blast learning!

The unicycle I chose was the least costly option. It will handle grass, dirt, and gravel almost as well as a OneWheel. It will cruise even more smoothly on pavement than the Exway X1 longboard.

If you really do need a ton of range, the unicycles have you covered there, too. For a few hundred dollars less than the price of a OneWheel XR, you can get an InMotion V10F with 40 to 60 miles of range! If you want to be able to go 35 MPH, there are $2,000 unicycles from Gotway that can manage that, too.

Was the InMotion V5F a good choice?

I haven’t stopped researching unicycles. Now that I’ve been riding a bit, I feel like I have a better understanding of what I should be searching for on Google, and what I should be reading and watching.

If you can get a used EUC for a good price, I think that is a fantastic idea. Everyone says that a more powerful wheel is easier to learn to ride, and my gut says that they’re right. I’ve read in several places that you should be able to find an older 800-watt unicycle for $200 to $300. I haven’t figured out where to find these deals!

Tanner rides my InMotion V5F electric unicycle

The bigger, more expensive wheels look like a ton of fun, and I can totally see the appeal of something like a Gotway Nikola or the InMotion V10F. I’m also pretty certain that these aren’t the wheels for me.

If your goal is to go out riding for riding’s sake, these heavy, powerful wheels would be awesome. If you’re looking for a ride to take you on the last mile of your journey or commute, then you probably don’t want to lug around a 40- or 50-pound unicycle!

I’m extremely pleased that there was a refurbished InMotion V5F in stock for $399 shipped. We are beating the absolute snot out of this poor thing. The aluminum pedals have hundreds of scuffs and gouges in them. The padding is getting torn up. The plastic shell is a mess of scrapes and scratches.

You almost definitely don’t want to learn to ride on a $2,000 unicycle.

Is the InMotion V5F fast enough? Does it have enough range?

I’ve learned something very important in my many failures at riding my EUC. When something goes wrong at jogging or running speed, it is quite easy to hop off, jog for a bit, and stop without falling over. I have no trouble aborting a ride while going 10 MPH. I’m 200 pounds, about 6’ tall, and I am in terrible shape!

I imagine I can dismount at about 15 MPH if I had to, but the faster you’re going, the more likely you are to have to actually fall. I can reach those less safe speeds on my V5F, even though I’m 40 pounds over the recommended weight. For me, the V5F is definitely fast enough.

I’m less confident about the range. If we assume the battery percentage readout in WheelLog is accurate, my last few days of riding would give me about 10 miles on a single charge. I’m averaging just under 10 MPH while riding with top speeds of around 15 MPH.

I also just learned that this was with an underinflated tire. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if a properly inflated tire gave me an extra 2 miles.

Is that enough range? For me, it should be. Twelve miles is about as far as my e-bike can go, and that always seemed quite reasonable. I haven’t managed to ride more than 2 miles on a single trip yet, and that is with at least three stops. It should be quite a while before I can make it 6 miles out and then need to make it 6 miles back!

I think it is safe to say that I don’t have enough data to understand the real-world range limitations of my InMotion V5F at this time, but what I’ve learned so far seems to suggest I will be doing just fine!

What’s next?

I’m trying to ride every day, and I feel like I’m getting more comfortable and capable each day, too. For most of my short time so far riding the unicycle, I have had to stop when transitioning from the road to the bike trail. The transition from the road is a 4’ or 5’ wide rough brick ramp with a wooden post in the center. I didn’t feel confident lining up that turn, squeezing into the gap, and transitioning to the weird bumpy bricks. I’ve negotiated this transition without much trouble that last three or four times I rode, and I get better at it every time.

I suppose that leads me into what’s next. Practice, practice, and even more practice! I’m good at riding fast, at least for some definition of fast. I’ve been trying to make an effort to slow down. I set an alarm in WheelLog to let me know when I’m going over 12 MPH, but that’s still plenty fast enough that the wheel acts as a gyroscope to keep you up.

At even lower speeds, you have to work much harder to stay upright. I’m trying to ride more at those slow speeds. I’m not sure exactly how slow they are, but I have a good idea of what it feels like!

Conclusion

I am extremely pleased with my purchase. The refurbished InMotion V5F at $399 was cheap enough that even if it was a mistake, at least it wasn’t an expensive one, and I absolutely believe that it wasn’t a mistake. I feel that the InMotion V5F will be a fantastic last-mile vehicle for me, and it has been a ton of fun already!

I’m already having no trouble managing to ride about a mile. The V5F’s light weight is making it easy to throw in the back of our little SUV. My friend Tanner has been able to push the little V5F hard enough going up an incline to get the top-speed alarm to go off, but I have yet to hear it in my riding, so I think the maximum speed should be plenty for my immediate needs!

What do you think? Are you riding an EUC or a OneWheel? Do you think I made a good choice? Do you think I’m going to be wishing for more speed in a few months? If I’m eventually hankering for more speed, do you think I’ll still be as appreciative of the light weight of the V5F as I am today? How long do you think it will be before I can run the battery down in one riding session?

Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

I Bought an Electric Unicycle: I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

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Hello! My name is Pat. I’m 42 years old. I’m about 6’ tall and weigh 200 pounds. I’ve never ridden a skateboard, and I bought an electric unicycle. It has been in my possession for nearly a week. I am the opposite of an expert.

Maybe you’re an older, tubby guy like me, and you are thinking about looking at e-bikes, e-skateboards, OneWheels, and EUCs. I’m here to tell you that I believe in you. I am confident that you can ride one of these unicycles.

I chose the InMotion V5F SoloWheel Glide 2 electric unicycle (EUC)

Don’t just go out and buy what I bought. I did even more research after I started learning to ride, and I found out that everyone says your first wheel should probably be a used wheel. They say it is easier and safer to learn with a heavier, more powerful unicycle. It sure sounds like you can find beefier unicycles than mine for $200 or less on the used market.

I checked Craigslist for used unicycles before I ordered my refurbished InMotion V5F. I either don’t know what to search for, or there just aren’t any unicycles for sale near here!

That said, I’m quite happy with my choice. I bought my refurbished unicycle directly from InMotion. It was $399 shipped. They said it would have fewer than 150 miles on it, and the app says it had 13 kilometers on the odometer. It had a few scuffs, but nothing serious.

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My electric unicycle arrived. I tried it out in the back yard before I plugged it in to charge. Getting on is tricky. It probably too a half dozen attempts before I could ride ten feet while holding onto the side of the house. I've never ride a skateboard, but I did have an actual pedal powered unicycle what I was a kid. I've already ride this thing farther! It weighs 25 pounds, has 15 to 20 miles of range, and a top speed of 18 mph. It is as fast as my ebike, has more range, and weighs half as much. Should be much easier to load this into the trunk for #fpvfreestyle adventures! #fpv #fpvracer #drone #drones #droneracing #droneracer #fpvdrones #fpvrace #multirotor #quadcopter #fpvfreestyle

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I own a Hover-1 XLS folding electric bike. I wanted something lighter, easier to put in the car, but with similar or better range.

I looked at the OneWheel XR. These cost $1,899, weigh more than my unicycle, and they have less range. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I might look cooler riding a OneWheel, though that is unlikely. They also seem to be much easier to learn to ride. For less than $1,899, I could have bought InMotion’s biggest, fastest unicycle.

I also looked at Brian’s Exway X1 Riot Pro longboard. The Exway weighs quite a bit less than my unicycle. It has about as much range as my e-bike, but not as much as the InMotion V5F. The X1 has a higher top speed, but I doubt I’d ever be able to use it.

That 14” wheel is so smooth!

Learning to ride a skateboard like Brian’s Exway X1 was tempting. The weight is right. The range is good. The price of an Exway X1 Pro is pretty comparable to a new InMotion V5F, and Exway has cheaper models that would suit my needs, too.

The giant diameter of the unicycle is what really sold me. The $399 price tag might have been a big influence, too, but the giant wheel really does make the unicycle a great fit for my use case.

When I followed Brian on his skateboard last month, he told me that could feel every bump on the bike path. Every time you transition from one slab of concrete to the next, the skateboard’s tiny wheels get caught up a bit. The 7” air-filled tires on my Hover-1 XLS don’t feel those bumps, so I figured a 14” wheel would do even better.

I would also like to be able to ride on grass. Electric skateboards can kind of manage this, but not really. I’d like an electric vehicle that I can ride out into the field when I crash my FPV freestyle quad 1,200 feet away.

I’ve already ridden my InMotion V5F on the grass, and it moves along just fine.

How proficient are you after a week, Pat?!

I haven’t quite had the EUC for seven days, and I didn’t ride it the first two days. I also didn’t keep track of how many hours I’ve put into this. I can say that I don’t feel like I’ve spent all that much time at all, so most definitely fewer than eight hours. I’d guess something more like four hours.

Friday: I farted around in the back-yard, and my skills plateaued rather quickly. I used the side of the house to help get myself up on the unicycle, and I propped myself up while I moved 10 or 15 feet along the wall.

The narrow sidewalk next to the house was beyond my skill level. I couldn’t ride in a straight enough line. This problem ended my practice.

Saturday: I took the EUC with me when I met my friends to fly at the local abandoned golf course. The parking lot there has some incline to it, which definitely slowed my progress. It didn’t take long before I could get up on the unicycle by holding on to the car, then ride 100’ or more in a straight line.

I managed to turn and ride rather a few times, but on Saturday, I never made it back to my starting point. Coming down the hill was scary and difficult.

My friend Tanner did better than me. Saturday was the first time he’d ever seen a EUC in person. By the time we went home, he was able to hop on without holding on to anything for support, and he was circling the parking lot.

We used about 1/3 of the charge of the battery on Saturday.

Sunday: We were back at the golf course again. I learned how to climb onto the machine without holding on to something. I am not successful every time, but I’m getting there. I rode much farther on a single attempt, and I was able to make a lap around the parking lot.

At this point, Tanner was doing top-speed runs. He managed to get the V5F to squawk at him, because he was going too fast.

Monday: I was rained out, I think.

Tuesday: Our city has some amazing bike trails running through its park system, and I happen to live about two doors away from those trails. I was able to ride to the trail, and follow the trail. I did stop a few times on each trip, but only one of those was due to the wheel getting out of control on me.

It was cold and gloomy. I didn’t go too far. I was worried that I would get tired. On each trip, I went about half a mile out. At the beginning of the trail, there is quite a long stretch going down hill. It is enough of a hill that my e-bike can only climb it at about half of its top speed.

It was scary going down that hill the first time. Going up the hill on the way home was murder on my feet!

Wednesday: It is cold and damp outside, so I’m writing this blog!

Riding the unicycle is REALLY tiring at first!

I didn’t mention this above, but I didn’t practice nearly as much as I anticipated on Saturday. I was going to be out there flying for three or four hours, and I didn’t bring any water. It was warmer than I expected, and riding the unicycle was much more tiring than I expected!

I knew that if I rode too much, I’d get thirsty.

Once Tanner started to get the hang of it, he was making laps around the parking lot, and he was sweating quite a bit. Once he got more comfortable with riding, he wasn’t using much effort to ride at all.

For your first few miles, you’re going to be tense. You’ll be balancing hard when you don’t need to. You’ll be waiting for bad things to happen. We got through the worst of that rather quickly.

I’m no longer sweating or getting thirsty when I ride. I am not doing so well going up hills, though. Each of the three times I rode home from the park, I had to stop at the top of the hill.

My feet start to hurt quite a bit from all that heavy leaning forward I have to do to get up the hill! I hope this will get easier as I ride more, and I’ve heard that it might help if I put my feet an inch or two closer to the front of the pedals when I ride. We’ll see how that goes!

My electric bike is awesome because anyone can ride it

Most of my friends poked fun at my e-bike. It is big. It looks silly. I’ll look like a goof when I’m riding it. The first time I took it to the park when we went flying, every one of them rode my bike, and they all had smiles on their faces the entire time.

Whenever people on the bike trail at the park comment on my Hover-1 scooter, I offer to let them take it for a ride. Some of those folks accept the offer, and every single one has been able to ride the bike.

Nobody will be able to ride my unicycle. It takes 10 minutes of practice just to figure out how to stand on the thing.

This is a bummer.

Conclusion

I’ve already written about my new electric unicycle three times in less than a week. At least I’m spreading the words across two different sites, right? I’m just too excited!

My next goal is to be able to ride with a small backpack, so I can take my flying gear to the park with me. I’ve already charged some batteries for my diminutive TinyHawk Freestyle, and my little 9-pound backpack is filled with gear and ready to go. I’m just waiting for some warm, dry weather.

I’ll try to keep my excitement off the blog until I manage to discharge the entire battery on a single trip. In the interim, you can follow my EUC shenanigans on Twitter and Instagram!

What do you think? Was the InMotion V5F a good choice for my first unicycle? Do you think I’ll need to upgrade in the future, or will this meet most of my needs just fine? What should I have bought instead? Do you think I’ll ever use my e-bike again? Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

What Should You Bring When You Go Flying FPV Miniquads?

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We’re not going to talk about any of the obvious stuff: quadcopters, batteries, goggles, or radios. We’re going to talk about all those ancillary things you might want to pack in your backpack when you meet up with your friends to spend an afternoon flying!

Almost nothing in this blog post will talk about anything specific to flying quadcopters.

You should bring a chair

When I go flying with my friends, it isn’t just to go flying. It is to spend time sitting around shooting the breeze. If you’re going to spend a few hours talking, you should have somewhere comfortable to sit. If you prefer to fly while sitting down, that’s another good reason to bring a chair.

Most of my friends keep folding chairs in their cars. I try to pack lighter than that. I have two types of similar-looking chairs that fit well on my backpack, and they don’t weigh a lot.

Moon Lence folding chair

My favorite is the Moon Lence ultralight folding chair. It is light, compact, and extremely comfortable. Make sure you get the newer model with the large feet, because you don’t want to sink into the grass or dirt!

Moon Lence Folding Chair

The Moon Lence chairs are rather inexpensive: $37 for one, or $55 for a pair. So far, I have torn the fabric on three of these chairs. They come with a lifetime warranty, and I haven’t had any trouble getting replacements.

The CLIQ Chair

This one just confused me. Brian ordered a mess of these chairs during their Indiegogo campaign, and I just spent five minutes trying to find them on the Internet. I had to go out to the car to make sure. My folding chair is called a Go Chair, but it has the same logo as the CLIQ chair, so I’m assuming they’ve rebranded!

This chair looks like it should be just as comfortable as the Moon Lence chair, but it isn’t. It has the same basic shape, but it is a little off. Whenever I sit on it, I feel like I’m going to slide out. If you park it on a very slight incline, it feels awful.

NOTE: How do I not have an action shot of this chair in use?! I will correct this soon!

So why would you spend three or four times as much on a chair that is less comfortable? Well, let me tell you why!

The CLIQ Chair packs up tidier and much more quickly than the Moon Lence chair. It looks cleaner in my bag. If I’m riding my electric bike, I usually stop to fly at three or four different places. It is nice to be able to unpack and repack the chair in about 10 seconds. It is OK if it is less comfortable. I’m only sitting in it for 15 minutes or so at a time.

Upon reading this section, I realized that I’m being a bit disingenuous here. When the Moon Lence chair is properly folded and stuffed into its carrying case, it may look even tidier than the CLIQ Chair. I rarely pack it up this neatly, though. I collapse the Moon Lence chair’s legs, fold over the seat fabric a few times, then wind the whole thing up in its Velcro strap.

You need a big stick!

I carry a Mr. Longarm painters’ pole in the car. It is about 8’ long, and it extends to almost three times that length. We use it to knock quads out of trees, and it works quite well.

There’s a similar pole on Amazon that I wish I had instead. It is a 6’ pole that extends to about four times its length. Having just as much reach while saving 2’ in the car would be awesome.

If I’d prefer the pole from Amazon, then why do I keep a Mr. Longarm in the car? I got stuck in a tree, and we needed a pole as soon as possible. We went to Lowes and picked up a Mr. Longarm, and it has been in the car ever since!

Alternative quad retrieval tools

I also keep a basketball in the trunk. It is easier to carry, and if your quad is only stuck 10’ or so up in a tree, the basketball is heavy enough to knock it loose.

I also keep a 300-yard spool of 50-pound test fishing line in my backpack. It is light enough that you can fly the strand up over the tallest tree using another quad. If you do it right, you can attempt to floss the stuck quad down.

This is a bit riskier, because you might get a second quad stuck in the tree.

Get yourself a nice Thermos!

I have two. A 24-oz and a 68-oz Thermos Stainless King. They keep my water quite cold, or my coffee quite hot, and they do it for a long, long time.

My 24-oz Thermos is quite beat up. I’ve used it as a quad retrieval tool! It still works well enough, but the dented spots must be close to the inner wall, because they usually feel pretty chilly when the Thermos is filled with ice water!

It doesn’t matter how you bring your drink. I prefer to load up a Thermos with ice and water, especially on our 106-degree summer days here in Texas. Just remember to stay hydrated!

Sunscreen and bug spray

I don’t know where you fly, but I’m in north Texas. There’s lots of sun here, and we have more than our fair share of humidity. If I spend much time outside, I turn a bright red color. I’ll also be eaten alive by mosquitoes.

I used to keep a bottle of sunscreen and bug spray in the car. I still do, but I also recently learned that single-use sunblock and insect repellent is available. This is genius!

Bug Wipes and Sunscreen

I keep two or three of each in my backpack. I use travel packets of Banana Boat sunscreen. These would almost remind you of fast food ketchup packets. I also use Bug X Insect Repellent towelettes. They work exactly as you would expect.

Be careful if you’re going the single-use route. I had to shop carefully for individually wrapped insect repellent. Most products were a resealable pouch that contained 10 or 20 wipes. That wasn’t at all what I was looking for!

I prefer insect repellent with DEET. It is probably nasty stuff, but it is actually quite effective.

USB cables, power banks, and hand warmers!

Cables are handy. My ancient phone still uses micro USB. My GoPro HERO5 Session and HERO6 Black both use USB C. My flight controllers all have micro USB ports. I do my best to make sure I have cables to charge or interface with all these devices. It is a bummer when your last GoPro runs out of juice, but you still want to fly!

My Hand Warmer Charging Some Lipo Batteries

On a whim, I bought a little USB hand warmer contraption last month. The pink model was on sale, so I figured it was worth a try. I figured I could power it up and stuff it in the compartment where I store my flight packs to keep them warm. On the coldest days, I’ve been transferring it from one hand to the other while I keep my hands in my pockets between flights.

It is actually pretty handy. I haven’t used it to keep my batteries warm yet, but it does double duty as a USB power bank, so I have used it to charge TinyHawk batteries and my phone!

You need a good way to carry all your stuff

The best bag to carry your drone gear is the one you already have. Just because I think my $200 backpack is one of the best things I ever bought to help with my hobby doesn’t mean you should run out and upgrade!

That said, I use two different backpacks depending on the situation. Nine times out of ten, I carry my giant ThinkTank FPV Airport Helipak. That name is a mouthful, and so is the bag. It is ginourmous.

An Old Photo of My Backpack

When fully loaded, my backpack weighs about 25 pounds. That is with two or three 5” freestyle quads, a pair of 3” Kestrels, eight 6S batteries, a dozen small 4S batteries, my goggles, Taranis X9D+, my giant field-charging battery, and all sorts of tools and spare parts inside. That also includes the CLIQ Chair and my 24-oz Thermos in the side pockets.

Everything I need to fly for several hours is in that backpack, and I have enough spares to survive a few heinous crashes. I don’t always need to bring that much gear along with me, though.

When I take my electric bike for a ride to the local park, I usually bring my AmazonBasics DSLR backpack. I have to pare down a lot when I take this bag, because it is so much smaller, but that’s the entire point.

With the smaller backpack, I am able to my Taranis, Fat Shark goggles, and one of my chairs. Then I either bring a 5” freestyle quad, one or two of my Kestrels, or my Emax TinyHawk Freestyle and a bunch of batteries appropriate for the quad I’m carrying.

With the TinyHawk, the backpack weighs about 8 pounds. With the 5” quad and six batteries, it weighs about 12 pounds.

Conclusion

When I’m out flying, folks often ask me about the stuff I’ve brought with me. I figured it would be a good idea to do a write-up about it. That way I can point people to this blog post if they need to find any of the gear I pack with me!

The next post in this series will be about the gear I pack in my bag that is very specific to the hobby: tools, chargers, and things.

As for this list of gear, do you think I missed anything? Am I carrying something I forgot to list? Am I not carrying something important, because I don’t even know it exists? Or am I just forgetting to pack something important in my own backpack?

Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!

What I Learned From Just Two Attempts at Cinewhooping

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I am stretching the truth just a bit when I say I’m recording footage with a cinewhoop. I’ve been messing around with the idea of mounting my GoPro HERO5 Session on my 3” and 4” Kestrel freestyle quads, flying them slow and smooth, and running the footage through ReelSteady Go.

The biggest problem with this setup is that I don’t have prop guards. I’m thinking about designing some prop guards to fit the Kestrel, but for now, I’m happy enough to maintain a safe distance from the soft targets!

I’ve only set out to record proper cinewhoop footage on two occasions. The first attempt was following Brian Moses around a lake while he rode his Exway Riot Pro electric skateboard. A few weeks later, I attempted to follow my friend Alex while he rode his Onewheel around a parking lot.

I did some testing and tuning in my front yard before attempting to follow Brian, and I did more testing and tuning before I followed Alex. This means I’ve put more than two batteries through my cinestyle setup, so I do have a bit of practice!

My 4” Kestrel is working well, my 3” is problematic

I’ve tried a few different configurations with my 4” Kestrel and its Emax 1606 motors. I’ve tried Emax Avan 3.5x2.8x3 and 4x2.5x3 props. I’m pretty sure I get smoother footage on the 3.5” props, but I haven’t used them since my earliest tests.

I’ve tried my 4S 650 mAh freestyle batteries, an old 4S 1,300 mAh battery, and an old 3S 1,300 mAh battery. My little freestyle packs are pretty beat up, but I can manage about four minutes of skateboard follow footage with those batteries.

The two bigger batteries both work great, and they both provide similar flight times. Seven to eight minutes chasing skateboards is no problem with these packs. I think the 4” Kestrel feels better for cinewhooping on the 3S. It is easier to maintain a stable altitude, but it isn’t tremendously easier.

My 3” Kestrel with its 1306 motors and HQ 3x2.5x3 props isn’t doing well with the GoPro. It feels fine in the air, but it is transferring too much vibration to the GoPro. I haven’t gotten clean output from ReelSteady Go with the 3” build yet.

Is the gyro in my 3” Kestrel going out? My 3” Kestrel is mostly made from the original prototype parts. Those arms are weak compared to the 4” Kestrel. Maybe they’re getting a little soft with all the crashes they’ve survived. Maybe the 3” props just transfer a different frequency that resonates with something. I just don’t have the answer yet.

I’m supposed to use an extremely soft mount for the GoPro HERO5 Session

I might have lucked out with my Session 5. It is pretty beat up now, so maybe its gyro is loose enough inside the case that it is soft mounted, because I’m having very little trouble getting clean video out of ReelSteady Go.

Even in the rigid TPU mount on my 5” freestyle build, ReelSteady Go has no trouble smoothing out my cinematic footage. It only has trouble there when I fly backwards or run into propwash.

I’m excited that the built-in soft mounts on my 4” Kestrel seem to be enough to keep ReelSteady Go happy with the footage from the GoPro HERO5 Session. I just have it strapped to the top plate with a battery strap!

I’m hoping this is the fault of my Kestrel frame and not some luck I’m having with my particular GoPro!

Plan your route before shooting

When I filmed Brian on his skateboard, I told him to make laps around the pond, and I would follow him. Then I immediately proceeded to do a bad job.

I took off to late, and I didn’t really understand how fast he was moving. I flew about ¼ of the way around the pond before realizing that I would never catch up, so I turned around and landed near myself. That ate up nearly half my battery!

As you can see in the video, I did a reasonable job picking him up as he started his second lap, but I had to abort after about 90 seconds. If I kept going, I wasn’t going to make it back. In hindsight, I realized that I should have just kept going. Brian is a smart guy. If I flew ahead of him and landed in the grass next to the path, he would have recovered the drone for me!

What could we have done better at the lake?

There are so many things we could have done better! Nurk has a lot of good cinewhooping tips. Maintain a stable altitude. If your flight could be done by a guy carrying a gimbal, why are you flying? Go through obstacles that a guy on a gimbal wouldn’t be able to.

I’m better at maintaining altitude today. It took me a few batteries to get the feel for the throttle response on the 4” while carrying a GoPro!

I realized half-way through my chase that I could just as easily have been riding a skateboard and carrying a gimbal. I needed to do something a skateboard couldn’t do, so I gained a bit of altitude to get a higher shot.

With planning, we could have done so much better. I should have flown over the water. I should have flown through the covered seating next to the dock. I should have gotten a strafing shot with water between Brian and myself.

It wouldn’t have taken much to elevate my first cinewhoop chase video to the next level.

Always shoot in 4K!

I haven’t remembered to take this particular piece of advice, but I’m pretty sure it will be extremely valuable!

My old GoPro Session isn’t in the best of shape. The screen doesn’t work. The back cover is falling off. The button on the back is gone. Not only that, but it is paired to my old phone, so it is very difficult for me to change settings!

I usually leave it set to 1080p SuperView with the flat color profile. This is just fine for my freestyle footage, and it wasn’t a problem when following Brian on his skateboard.

That wide field of view and low resolution was terrible when I chased Alex’s Onewheel. Alex was quick and nimble. I had absolutely no idea which path he was going to take around the parking lot. Trying to make smooth course corrections meant I was separated from him by quite a distance most of the time.

When I was editing the video, I wound up cropping in quite a bit. I didn’t have the extra resolution available to make that look good, though. Do I want blocky, grainy video, or do I want a good view of the action? I did my best to compromise somewhere in between.

If I recorded at 4K with a tighter field of view, I wouldn’t have had to crop as much, and even if I still had to crop, I wouldn’t have given up so much quality.

I think I did a better job following Alex

I didn’t manage to stay in tight most of the time, but I think I managed to take some more interesting lines. At the start of the video, I flew over that pile of landscaping stuff. When Alex rode under the covered valet area, I took an exit over the wall where someone on a skateboard wouldn’t be able to follow.

We didn’t choreograph anything. Alex rode around, and I followed him with my cinewhoop.

Just like the flight with Brian a few weeks earlier, a little planning would have gone a long way!

I might have to pick up a GoPro HERO6 Black

There’s something different about the HERO6. I don’t know if it uses a different gyro chip, the gyro is mounted differently, or the filtering is just better, but the HERO6 Black is supposed to work just fine when strapped to a vibrating quadcopter. No need for any of this soft-mount nonsense!

I’m about to go off on a bit of a detour here. Before the GoPro HERO8 Black was released, my plan was to switch all my quads over to TPU mounts that fit the HERO7 Black. That mount will work for the 5, 6, and 7.

That would give me a lot of options. I could fly the GoPro 7 when I need hypersmooth, or when I just need to want to capture better footage. Then I could fly the GoPro 5 when I’m just knocking around the golf course for fun. Why risk smashing a $400 GoPro when you’re flying the same lines that you fly every week?

The GoPro HERO8 goofed up my plans. They changed the form factor. That means when I upgrade from my HERO5 Session, it will be time to go straight to the newest camera and just hope I don’t smash one every month!

My recent if limited cinewhoop adventures have me rethinking things. I am going to ignore the HERO8 Black for the time being. I just ordered a refurbished GoPro HERO6 Black with a two-year Asurion accidental damage protection plan. My plan is to get cinewhooping with this over the next couple of days, then figure out how I’m going to be mounting and swapping between a Session 5 and HERO6 Black on my 5” over the weekend!

I look forward to more cinewhoop shenanigans!

Cinewhooping is more fun that I expected, and I didn’t think it would be so easy to capture such amazing cinematic footage. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been putting in 10 or 20 packs per week for most of the past three years. I should be pretty good at this by now!

As I said, I ordered a HERO6 Black, and I’m excited about trying it out. I won’t be terribly surprised if that simple change smooths out the footage on my 3” Kestrel, and it will be a general upgrade for all my cinewhooping, so I’m super excited about it!

Brian wants to take another stab at recording some cool footage of his new skateboard. If the weather cooperates, we might work on that over the weekend.

I think I’m doing a pretty good job on my first few attempts at cinewhooping. What do you think? Do I need more practice? Do you agree that my footage will reach the next level by just applying what I’ve learned from these first attempts? Are you cinewhooping? Do you think I’m crazy for not using prop guards?

Let me know in the comments, or stop by the Butter, What?! Discord server to chat with me about it!