Any other drone pilots about?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Cottontail

♫ Don't Worry, Be Hoppy! ♫
Est. Contributor
Messages
7,184
Role
  1. Adult Baby
  2. Diaper Lover
  3. Babyfur
  4. Diaperfur
  5. Sissy
  6. Little
I've been going through a bit of a midlife crisis lately and decided to take up a new hobby (to prove I was still capable of learning new things, heheh). Went out and bought a DJI Mavic Pro drone. We live on an island, and only a couple of hundred feet from the beach, so after about a week of practicing over land, I decided that some over-water flights were in order. I've now made several flights from house to an adjacent uninhabited island, each of which has involved nearly three miles of flight over water (round trip). What a blast this thing is! I'm totally addicted. Such a neat way to get unique photos, explore unreachable places, etc.

Any other drone hobbyists about? What gear do you have/like?

I'm pretty darned happy with the Mavic Pro, although I definitely need to order a lens hood. If the sun is anywhere near the camera's field of view, the image is immediately washed out or filled with lens flares. Easily fixed, though.
 
I didn't do anything near advanced as you, but when I was out of the house due to Hurricane Irma, I got a drone over at one of our outfitters shops and took it to the sky, to try to catch some footage and stunning sunsets. Sadly though I quit when I was to Shakey to manipulate the ultra sensitive controls, *and the autopilot failed dramatically nearly making me Lose it on the hotel roof
 
LilacCrinkle said:
I didn't do anything near advanced as you, but when I was out of the house due to Hurricane Irma, I got a drone over at one of our outfitters shops and took it to the sky, to try to catch some footage and stunning sunsets. Sadly though I quit when I was to Shakey to manipulate the ultra sensitive controls, *and the autopilot failed dramatically nearly making me Lose it on the hotel roof
Sorry to hear that! I've learned that the autopilots on these things need to be watched closely. The Mavic Pro has a "go home" function where it'll try to return to the takeoff point and land automatically. This point is recorded at takeoff using both GPS coordinates and photos of the ground underneath the drone, but its accuracy can be thrown off by having a poor GPS fix or poor lighting/contrast. Or you can throw it off yourself by moving the drone before it's taken the necessary photos. I've several times had it start to land five to ten feet away from the takeoff point, which is a little fold-up launchpad I bought with the drone. Five to ten feet may be ok, or it may be a disaster. In one instance, it almost came down in tall grass, which would have snarled the props and (possibly) damaged the drone, as it would have fallen several feet to the ground. Fortunately, the controller has a well-marked "pause" button on it, and when I saw the thing heading for trouble, I quickly paused it, aborted the auto-landing, and landed it manually.

ESPF said:
Ha-ha! One of my coworkers has one of those, actually. When I first saw it, I was like, "No way could that thing actually fly." But it works--well, even! Definitely somebody's labor of love, designing that thing.
 
Cottontail said:
. Ha-ha! One of my coworkers has one of those, actually. When I first saw it, I was like, "No way could that thing actually fly." But it works--well, even! Definitely somebody's labor of love, designing that thing.
==
What can be really FUNNY is when people aren't expecting it overhead for the first time and have no references to scale it by... I've had to people ask me on sepret ocashens how big it really is 👅👄👅

- - - Updated - - -

I'm wondering if I could scale one way up to say the size of a VW bug 💕 and ReallyFreak some people out. 😲💩🙈
 
I have a basic drone $39. But need something that can use Cellphone or something.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top