How to crash a drone in 24 hours
I'm just going to start this entry off with this:
I have no will power, I'm extremely impulsive and once I get my mind on something I can't stop thinking about it. That being said.... I bought a drone... Do I need it? Probably not, was it justified? Again, definitely not... Is it awesome?.... It's pretty awesome....
Last week I posted up on Facebook if any friends had a drone that they would be willing to film an upcoming adventure for me... Needless to say not many jumped at the opportunity which ultimately left me in this predicament. I've always wanted one but could never justify the 1000$+ to buy it. Let's be honest there's about 2500 things I could spend that money on that would be much more useful....But this story isn't about me making logical decisions...... I decided "for piece of mind" to check Kijiji out and see what they were going for price wise these days.... Mistake # 1. The DJI Phantom seems like the go to drone for best all around performance, to my surprise they've dropped in price a fair amount... I decided to throw some offers out and see what I could find in a decent price range... Mistake #2..... I got a message that night from a gentlemen selling a Phantom 2 with an H3-3D Gimbal for 600$.... And here's where shit got real... What to do, what to do.....
Long story short, I now have a drone, It's pretty awesome and completely unjustified... but that's what life is all about right!? Make decisions and don't look back.
I ended up taking the drone out to Spencers Gorge that night and seeing what I could do with it.
My initial impression was it's extremely easy to setup and pretty straight forward to fly. The previous owner gave me some sage advice that I now live by when flying this tiny piece of plastic awesomeness "It's not a toy, so don't kill anyone, if you do, you didn't buy it from me".
Needless to say I got pretty comfortable flying it that night so I decided to bring it along on my rappelling adventure the next day. You can see the footage from my first flights below
Turned out pretty decent right!?, The problem is I'm flying blind. Once the drone is 200 ft away or more I can't really tell what I'm filming as I have no FPV feature on my setup (Viewing through the lens of the camera as I'm flying.) Most of the footage is approximate guess work, but hey.. it turned out alright..
I was told that crashing a drone is not a matter of if, but a matter of when... Here's my first and hopefully my last crash.. Thank you to Dylan and Jason for softening the blow with their legs...
All in all it's pretty sweet for an impulse buy... I highly recommend if you're into filming and taking cool pictures... You can pick them up in the 500 dollar range without a go pro... Do your research.
Can't wait to see what I can film on my upcoming trip through the states... Let's hope it stays in 1 piece..
