On Top of the World from the Safety of the Ground

The four blades spun to life and up it went, lickety-split. The monitor soon displayed the whole neighborhood and far beyond. I was now a drone pilot.

Most of us know what a drone is. Technically, it’s an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). But they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The common ones are referred to as vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). They are quadcopters, with two blades spinning clockwise and the other two spinning counterclockwise. From tiny drones that can be flown in a house to huge military drones that drop bombs, there are drones of all sizes.

They are called drones after male bees who mindlessly do nothing but wait around to possibly mate with the queen bee. Sounds a lot like some men today. The buzzing sound they make is also akin to a droning sound. Drones were first used in WWII for target practice.

When my nephew Jeremy demonstrated what his drone could do, I promised myself that I would buy one when I retired. It would be a dream come true. I could virtually fly and take photos and video from high above while my feet stayed safely planted on the ground. With drones, the sky truly is the limit and there’s a lot of sky.

I was impressed at how nimble and fast they are. A drone can climb straight up several hundred feet in a matter of seconds. The onboard camera is adjustable so you can see straight ahead, straight down, or anywhere in between. You can rotate the drone 360 degrees. It can use GPS which allows you to program it to fly to specific locations, even stopping to take a photo.

I was researching them on the internet when Jeremy asked me if I was interested in buying his. I figured that if I waited long enough, he might sell it to me. Jeremy has reached the age where he had too many toys and needed to focus on family and work.

So it didn’t take long before I was the owner of a DJI Phantom 3 Professional. Jeremy only buys the best and, even though this is now an older model, it still has a lot of bells and whistles. Plus, it included extras such as crash guards, lens filters, and some stuff I haven’t figured out yet.

But there’s a catch. While I pride myself on being able to figure out tech, I’ve reached the point in life where I don’t have the energy to immerse myself in new things that take a lot of study. Seniors aren’t necessarily afraid of tech. They just don’t want to spend their remaining time on this planet focusing on the details of getting something to work. Keeping things simple allows us to try a lot of things while we still have time. The drone is a prime example.

I’ve already learned some valuable lessons. First, this drone is too big to fly in the house. The hacked-up back of a formerly nice leather lounge chair is evidence of that. Also, the battery for the drone does not last long enough for me to gain a lot of confidence flying it – maybe 20 minutes. I have two batteries but, of course, you have to land it to change the battery.

Another thing – you control the drone with the controller joysticks and monitor it with a smart phone (too small) or a tablet (which can be unwieldy). You also soon learn to stand in a shady spot because the screen glare is intolerable.

Recently, I was just getting comfortable maneuvering the drone when I realized my tablet’s battery was really low. I hadn’t counted on that. The drone’ battery was down to 30%, too, so I figured I better land it and do some recharging. I pressed the button that brings it right back to where it took off. However, I forgot that when you do that, it automatically climbs to 400 feet before moving over the landing spot. This is to avoid trees and buildings. It’s a very nice feature except that I lost sight of it and prayed it would actually come home before its battery died. It’s supposed to come home on its own when it reaches a low battery threshold. I’m not yet confident enough to test that.

There’s so much to think about and so many options that I wondered what I had gotten into. You don’t have a lot of time for intense experimentation before the batteries die. You need to buy a license to fly one and there are a number of regulations, such as flying near an airport.

The Red Wing airport has a restricted zone that pretty much covers most of Red Wing. Turns out that there are a lot of small airports all over the place. At least the Red Wing airport has an online form you can complete that allows you to fly up to 400 feet in the restricted area, except probably right near the airport. They frown on that.

I’m not giving up. I attended a community ed class on drones which helped but was too short. I plan to watch a lot of YouTube videos and read more articles on the subject. I’ll learn more with each liftoff.

I could drone on, but I need to charge some batteries.