Flying high.

Flying High.

My son bought a drone. We've been talking about this for a year or so and he has been waiting for the technology to improve before buying (ie waiting for the price of technology to come in line with our budget). He decided to jump this winter - before the bean counters and legislatures get their noses into it and mess it up for everyone.

Phantom II Vision+ with new prop guards

He settled on a "DJI Phantom 2 Vision +" (flying camera). After he had a chance to fly it around his house and town a bit, he dropped it off at my house. He warned me to read the manual before trying to fly and then he left - it wasn't a good day for flying.

After reading the manual and going through the assembly and pre-flight checks (about 10 minutes) I set it on the back deck and fired it up. I lifted it off about 10 feet into the air - hey this is easy - and then brought it down for a landing. I brought it down too hard and it bounced into a flower border.  The propellers were digging into the leaves and I was afraid it would damage itself so I shut down the copter (the shut down procedure is the same as the start up procedure so I must have held it too long so after the props stopped they immediately started spinning again. I didn't realize what was going on so I panicked and turned off the controller (bad move).  I was afraid to try to grab the thing and the manual warned against getting close while it was running. As I watched, it powered up and took off - completely on it's own (I had no control). I was sure it was possessed but there wasn't anything I could do but watch it climb straight up (somehow avoiding a tree in the neighbor's yard) forty feet into the air and then slowly settle down to a soft, perfectly executed landing at the spot on the deck where I had first turned it on. Then it shut itself off.

And this was exactly what it was supposed to do. When I turned off the controller it sensed a loss of connection and when this happens it is programmed to auto-home. This is a fail safe in case something happens it will always return home. It has shown me that it is smarter than I am. The Packer game had just begun so I packed it in for the day.

First 'selfie' from flying camera

It took me another week to get up the nerve to try again. I had re-read the manual and was sure that everything was fully charged and communicating properly (the controller, the copter, the camera, the wi/fi, and the iphone app). This time I knew what all the blinking light codes meant and I had memorized the flight training routines (Download Pilot training manual) and found an open place in the parking lot next door to our house for a launch site.

After about 10 minutes I had run through all the routines and got the nerve to face it around and take my own picture.  The camera is controlled by the iPhone app and the screen is small - and icons smaller - so I had to trust the copter to stay where it was while I searched the screen for the shutter button icon. The copter is very stable, it turns out, and it holds it's position wherever you stop it.

Lower angle view of back yard.

By now I had been flying about 20 minutes and the lights were blinking red - which means the battery is getting low. So I brought it in for a nice soft landing and carefully shut it down.

Since then it's been windy and cold so I haven't had another chance to fly. My next thing will be trying to fly while watching the video feed on the iPhone screen instead of watching the copter.