Anybody play with drones?

Downeaster

Downeaster

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I've been interested in them but couldn't justify the price of a decent one and was leery of the cheapos.

Been finding bits of shingles in the yard that are apparently coming off the house. Need pix for the insurance claim (which I hope will work out like the garage did...) but I've pretty much given up ladders at my age.

Seemed like a good excuse to finally buy a drone and cleared it with the CFO. DJI Mini 2 SE showed up yesterday, just need to get a 128gb micro SD card and I'm ready to play. According to Professor Ewe Toob, it's a good toy for beginners as it's highly automated and relatively easy to fly, yet has a decent camera and option set.

We shall see...
 
They're cool! JRP shot these with a small drone when he was here.
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Just a sampling of 50 plus he got.
Can't wait to see your efforts.
 
I know invasion of privacy is a huge issue with them. Sort of the airborne equivalent of Squids with straight-piped Harleys...:poke::laugh:

I've been interested in them as a toy for a while but couldn't justify the expense for a good one and wasn't willing to fight with a cheap one. I got permission from the CFO based on the need to get pictures of the shingle damage on the roof of the house. My creaky knees, ladders and 12/12 roofs are not a combination I'm comfortable with any more.

I got a DJI Mini 2 SE. Still not cheap at around $375 but not horrible and comes HIGHLY recommended for beginners as it has a lot of features for the price and much of the control is software based so it's fairly quick and intuitive to learn to fly it.

Got it from you-know-who a couple of days ago, got the micro-SD card from Chinamart today, down loaded the flight software and firmware updates for the controller and drone charged everything up and took it out in the back yard to begin the learning process.

Pretty windy so I didn't get too adventurous, did some makee-learn drills - fly in a square at eyeball height using the "it flies sideways" mode a couple of times, then repeat using the "rotate it on it's axis" mode. Takes a few times to get used to the fact that left/right changes from your point of view as you rotate it 180 degrees, but go slow and easy and it works out. Or, if you get completely disoriented, just let go of the sticks and it stops and hovers while you pull your head out of your nether orifice. Wind stabilization is pretty good, but the gusts were over the threshold so it was dancing around a bit. Landing it manually was a challenge with the combination of wind gusts and my effed-up depth perception.

Did fly it up over the roof and snapped a couple of pix. Okay, but I need to get higher for a better field of view. That's a project for a calmer day.

All in all, I'm tickled and pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to fly, at least for basic operations. Also like that it has three sensitivity settings for the controls: Cine which has the slowest/smoothest response for doing video, Normal and "Sport". I don't see me using the sport mode anytime soon. I was flying in Normal.
 
Downeaster said:
Ah. Unpopular subject, I take it. Okeydokey.
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Not really DE, a friend and neighbor bought one a while back and flew it over, so we just decided to show our ass a bit. They are neat to fly but the two neighbors I know quickly got bored with them and put them up. However, I did see one fly right into the center of a traffic light intersection at about the height of the lights and that's a bit distracting. This particular intersection , while slow speed limit is a bit of a squeeze and wiggle past the left turn lane onto a bridge. Could have caused a problem.
 
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Between salt/sand runoff from the road, skunks digging up grubs and broadleaf weed infestations, my front lawn has been a mess for years. This Spring the skunks were REALLY feasting and what little sod was left is history. That damage you see between the back of the truck and the flower beds is from the skunks.

So, I'm doing what I've been threatening to do for a couple of years. Till the whole sumbitch up, scrape off the dead sod and sand, throw down some fresh loam and reseed.

Then I can spend the next 5 years bitching about having to mow it...
 
Recollection> Drone, first was in WW1 with simple gyro and turns counter, a small biplane with a fairly good sized bomb, ...fast fwd to Marylin Munroe and Radio Plane in Burbank, and target drones and all that stuff, and der V1 ! ... the craft has now come to age and functional utility. But the private observation drone we see now was preceded by model airplane guys fitting cameras and suitable electronics...like in their basements...I remember they flew over some of the richandcorruptandfamous and I think there were actions at law. That was maybe 25 years ago, early net, sorta. Meantime there was a fella in Kiwi who builds pulse jets and flying things,,,and he was asking for sponsors to build the "$5,000 Cruise Missile"... http://www[dot]aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml note dot. I'm not shilling -

Anyway, weunz is looking at a thrilling and highly stimulating time ahead...thinking of Carlin's freak show on acid... Using suitable radio/scanner I hear copchatter often about drones, but they mostly use a helio.

I like the pictures you put up, Gary. A utilitarian machine. I toy with the idea of a tethered balloon, but there's too much on the plate.

Best!
 
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One of the reasons I like living here: You see my front yard in the above pictures. I'm in "town" with paved street, fire and police just down the road, post office 25 yards from my front door.

The above picture is my back yard. Nothing but trees and deer shit for miles...

BTW, the little bit of blue in the extreme upper LEFT of the picture of the front yard is the harbor. Salt water. A finger of the Atlantic Ocean, essentially. Don't get much better than that in my book.
 
I bought a DJI Mini 3 a few months back, cost $1600Aust and that was with the kit with three batteries, extra props and what not.

I did play with cheap helicopters and planes for a while, but got sick of crashing into everything and dropping the helicopter into the drink, gets expensive after a while.

Straightmout of the box, without even reading the manual (who does that) it was super easy to fly. It has obstacle avoidance, follow me , find my drone and POI. Damn good little drone.

I'm very wary of flying it out of site, so, have limited it to 300m distance and 20m ceiling.

The camera is very, very good and the drone still flys great in windy comditions without affecting the videos I shoot.

I took it out yesterday, along with the wife (she can see a needle in a haystack at 500m, very handy for drone spotting). Flew it over the scrub looking for a small pond thingy that shows up on google earth. Found it and went for a walk. Should have filmed it.

I did get some good close up footage of a roo and her joey the week I got it, and also of the wetlamds the day I took it home.

The video storage is very small, even with a card, so you have to have a couple of cards.

Crashed it a couple of times inside the house and into trees trying to fly using just the view screen. The general public don't know how lucky they are I didn't decide to become a commercial pilot.

i just had a thought, I could use it to do a fly around video of my 74TX650a
The bag that came with the kit is pretty useless, very small!. So I bought a larger one on ebay for $30. Has room for three batteries, drone, remote, charger, leads, harness, etc, etc, etc.

I might take it out tomorrow over the wetlands and see if I can find my downed helicopter I dropped six months ago, could be in the reeds somewhere around the pond.

Here's some footage I filmed a while back over the wetlands, they're about 100m from our house. I was surprised to see I managed to capture a couple of Brad and Angelina doubles on the ground watching.


I just had a thought: I could do a fly around video of my 74TX6501
 
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The card is 256 gig. I think the video was made before I bought the card, not sure, can't remember.

I managed to get up really close to a mob of roos a while back, completely forgot about the video. There are two mobs on the video, unfortunately, they don't like the noise the mini 3 makes, so, it is difficult to video them. I might try the zoom wheel and see how close I can get with that.

The birds are funny, every time I send it up, a flock of birds circle it.

I'm currently wrestling with the mini 3 trying to download via a cable, but the damn computer won't pick it up.

I managed to download the video off the card to my pc. I'll try uploading it from my PC, but the thing is so old it takes a week to upload anything.
 
These drones are great when walking through the bush, if you get lost, just send it up to see where you are. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no sense of direction and being a very firm righty, tend walk in very tight circles. The last time I walked through the scrub I got lost but didn't have the drone with me, so ended up exiting the scrub about 5klm from home.
 
I'll have to try some video. I've got a 128GB card in it at the moment, be interesting to see how much it will record. Video tends to be a storage hog.
 
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