Anybody own a drone?

[Timberridge]

I have a couple r/c planes with ~60" wingspans--takes some skill to fly and land those--though not r/c helicopter type skill. Unless you're doing it for photography, I can't understand why you'd want to fly drones. I haven't had the planes out in a couple years so I'd crash them without some simulator time first.

[XCextreme]

I spent a lot of time looking to getting a commercial UAV operation going in Canada. Mostly for survey/mapping and construction inspection. With photogrammetry you can do some pretty cool stuff these days.

In Canada you need to be 300' horizontal from someone's property or public infrastructure without getting a Special Flight Operations Certificate if your UAV carries a camera. Airspace is not owned but is controlled to different extents by Nav Canada/FAA. I know in the US there is a federal set of rules with a clause that says local law supersedes federal regulations if they are more stringent. The real estate agent story was probably a story of non compliance. Real estate agents are among the worst offenders when it comes to UAV use. One of our local guys put his up in the approach path of the commercial airport to get a picture of a property he is selling. This isn't 100% not allowed but I cant imagine he jumped through the necessary hoops to take that shot.

There was a story a few months back of a guy who shot down a UAV operating over his neighbors property in full compliance with FAA regs. The owner of the UAV sued and won. His story was that the UAV was being used to spy on his 16 year old daughter and it was his right to shoot it down.

[sb]

Drone, bone, ice cream cone.

Cat, scat, in my hat.

Thing, bring, I do sing.

[riser4]

Drone, bone, ice cream cone.

Cat, scat, in my hat.

Thing, bring, I do sing.

Wake, bake, you eat cake

[sb]

Shroom, groom, in the room.

Run, pun, having phun.

Hike, Mike, has a pike.

[muted]

Rumor is that DJI is sending US infrastructure info from their drones to the Chinese government. US Military stopped using their stuff because of this possibility.

The skies have eyes!

[Alaskan Rover]

A neighbor was learning how to use his in my parking lot, had to check it out. What an awesome piece of tech. This one was a DJI, about a thousand bucks. Has collision avoidance (will not fly into things, just stops and hovers), 4 mile range (!), and knows when the battery is running low, so will just fly back home and land before that happens. Folds up into a neat package when not in use. Little noisy. Have no idea what they're good for besides photography, but, what a fun toy.

Lol...my robotic vacuum cleaner does the same thing...when it's done vacuuming or mopping, it will go back to its charging platform in another room (takes its TIME to find its way back lol). But if it's in the middle of a job and its battery low, it will go back to the station and charge (HOWEVER, it won't take itself back to where it was and continue where it left off and the damn thing should !!). So I guess it is sort of a drone vacuum cleaner. Next purchase is going to be a robotic lawn mower. If I can only find a robot window washer....hopefully with a sexy figure. Sheeeesh.

[babybear]

we have an Airdog drone- it's more autonomous in that you wear a watch type device and then it follows you so you don't have to actively fly it.
https://www.airdog.com/
Andrew has used it for a couple fun edits using it - here's one https://vimeo.com/169383135

The co is based in Latvia though so it takes longer to get replacement parts etc
Been a fun little toy though

[ACH]

we have an Airdog drone-

How did you come to chose this particular brand and model?

Shroom, groom, in the room.

Run, pun, having phun.

Hike, Mike, has a pike.

You're on a roll with this huh?

[Supermoon]

My Karma drone will do follows as well I believe. Would love to hear why you picked Airdog over others.

I got Karma drone because I was upgrading my GoPro and wanted to gyro handle, so adding the drone to the whole package and selling my Phantom made the most $ sense.

[babybear]

andrew was a beta tester for Airdog so that's how we ended up with that

[ACH]

andrew was a beta tester for Airdog so that's how we ended up with that

Hard to tell from a picture on teh interwebz I know...
However... It has sort of a fragile look to it, how has it held up?
Flight time?
Does it fold up into a smaller shape for transport?

Sorry for all the questions, the website is surprisingly light on detail for a product of this nature.

[Meathelmet]

I have a couple r/c planes with ~60" wingspans--takes some skill to fly and land those--though not r/c helicopter type skill. Unless you're doing it for photography, I can't understand why you'd want to fly drones.

Flown drones quite a bit for my own project in the last years. As it was quite a hassle to fly them in difficult weather & dodgy locations, it never came across for me as "fun" either. The risk of crashing them was acutely present all the time, kills the buzz, I presume..

But, saw some weeks ago peeps flying them with a VR headset and it was kind of intriguing.. Should get my hands on a proper kit in the coming weeks so lets see how that will go.

[iceman]

I own about 14 FPV(first person view) quadcopters......

Seems like a lot.

[Bushwacka]

I have a couple r/c planes with ~60" wingspans--takes some skill to fly and land those--though not r/c helicopter type skill. Unless you're doing it for photography, I can't understand why you'd want to fly drones. I haven't had the planes out in a couple years so I'd crash them without some simulator time first.

yeah timberridge. Flying a fully automated drone versus a full rate mode Quadcopter are different stories.

with that said for aerial photo Drone are superior than planes. RC planes are awesome though, I fly those first person view as well.

The thing about first person view quadcopters is they are literally the most capable flying things on the planet. There is no real fun in flying a quadcopter drone, everything is automated basically but there is a ton of fun in fly fpv quadcopter.

Since they are first person view we are able to fly in area that a line of sight RC plane could never fly.

FPV RC planes are badass though. After watching this guys video I had to learn how to fly one.



Ironically I find the planes much easy to fly because they inhenertly self level even my flying wings. My quads do not self level at all(which is lets me do acro) and my quads are MUCH faster than my planes.

I love how chill my planes feel though. FPV open up smaller spaces than LOS and IMO is much more fun and safer. Here is my Tiny Biplane(18 inch wing span)



Here is my 30 inch bank and crank plane



I also have 50 inch flying wing but my back yard is too small for it. No video of that, but the plan is to use 900mhz control and 2.4 ghz video so I can have about 5 miles of range and get some sick HD footage with it.

[Bushwacka]

Flown drones quite a bit for my own project in the last years. As it was quite a hassle to fly them in difficult weather & dodgy locations, it never came across for me as "fun" either. The risk of crashing them was acutely present all the time, kills the buzz, I presume..

But, saw some weeks ago peeps flying them with a VR headset and it was kind of intriguing.. Should get my hands on a proper kit in the coming weeks so lets see how that will go.

technically our headset are R not VR As in reality nothing virtual about it.....

So beside the point that flying FPV is pretty freaking fun, and people are grabbing amazing footage of their flight with HD cameras. A good FPV pilot can easily out perform the best automated drones right now.

FPV is being used to get some really creative shoots that are more than just about the pilots skill.

This is a good showcase of a video that is impossible to get with a drone but and FPV quadcopter does an amazing job.

[Meathelmet]

technically our headset are R not VR As in reality nothing virtual about it.....

ZING!

True! Been pounding VR/AR/MR on my keyboard too much lately..

As it seems that you have been flying "quite" hard core sets, how has your body reacted to that? You get nauseated easily or can you build up tolerance like some people can with VR?
I personally haven´t had that much problems in VR, some poorly designed stuff has caused queesiness but generally things have gone better after certain acclimatisation of the brain.
But that FPV shit seems to be quite hardcore, cant imagine doing that more than few minutes at the time...

You have come up with some solutions how to keep the lunch in your stomach?

[babybear]

Hard to tell from a picture on teh interwebz I know...
However... It has sort of a fragile look to it, how has it held up?
Flight time?
Does it fold up into a smaller shape for transport?

Sorry for all the questions, the website is surprisingly light on detail for a product of this nature.

yep it folds up and the propellers come off for carrying in a backpack.
personally the color scheme of it makes it look more fragile to me too- ours is yellow and purple. maybe it's a euro thing!

It held up well for awhile and then it had a bad crash skiing this spring and perished but that was still in the beta stage.
The follow options were good but we had to be careful going from a wide open area to a tree'd area etc bc you set the height for it to fly before you start off and if the height needs change (bc taller trees etc) you'd have to stop and reset so it took a little thought prior as to the best places to use it where you can let it go before having to adjust

He'll be doing some commercial shooting next week though and that will be using a DJI.
airdog just released the next iteration on kickstarter tho so hopefully we get one of those (and the colors are less laker-ish)

I can take pics of it folded up when I get home if you are still interested

[Bushwacka]

ZING!

True! Been pounding VR/AR/MR on my keyboard too much lately..

As it seems that you have been flying "quite" hard core sets, how has your body reacted to that? You get nauseated easily or can you build up tolerance like some people can with VR?
I personally haven´t had that much problems in VR, some poorly designed stuff has caused queesiness but generally things have gone better after certain acclimatisation of the brain.
But that FPV shit seems to be quite hardcore, cant imagine doing that more than few minutes at the time...

You have come up with some solutions how to keep the lunch in your stomach?

I have never used a VR set. It took me forever to stand while flying FPV. Personally I still prefer to sit while flying but some of the large planes require standing to launch. At least quads can basically take off anywhere and you do not have to be near it.

To be honest as well our quadcopter produced tons of power out of a fairly small battery. 100+amp out of 500 gram total weight quad. Our flight times are short. Full throttle racing can be as short as 1:30 minutes and just messing around can be 3-6 minute depending on the quad specs and battery specs. The other thing is when starting FPV it will be a struggle just to stay upright and not crash into things, so when I started getting sick wasnt really an issue. As i got better I would start to get queasy but that has basically gone away now(but I have flown EVERY day since about june of 2016) its basically second nature but I am quite awful compared to the really good pilots.

The other nice thing about FPV is can be cheaper than owning a photo drone. Last I checked DJI mavic are like 900 dollars. A complete set up in FPV is MUCH cheaper than that and once you have a goggle, and transmitter adding different quads is not such a bad thing honestly I build to many and really could be fine with like 3-5.....

but here is the cost of an FPV set up.

Transmitter = 200 dollars
Goggles = 100 I personally like single screen where as most prefer dual screen which are ton pricier IE 300-500 dollars.

Quad 120-200 for a decent 5 inch quad

Batteries +plus charger 150 dollars

Soldering Iron+tools 50 dollars. no matter what your get you will break it. Typically doesnt cost much to fix but you need to stuff and know how to fix it.

[Alaskan Rover]

I guess technically, flying a quadcopter on a National Wildlife Refuge Special Permit area that doesn't allow motorized vehicles would be illegal? Would a smartphone-piloted quadcopter be considered a "vehicle"? Or is that a legal grey area?

The quadcopter I'm thinking of barely makes noise beyond a low buzzing.

[Bushwacka]

I guess technically, flying a quadcopter on a National Wildlife Refuge Special Permit area that doesn't allow motorized vehicles would be illegal? Would a smartphone-piloted quadcopter be considered a "vehicle"? Or is that a legal grey area?

The quadcopter I'm thinking of barely makes noise beyond a low buzzing.

If you launch from outside the area you are fine, but you are unable to launch from inside the area.

[iceman]

I guess technically, flying a quadcopter on a National Wildlife Refuge Special Permit area that doesn't allow motorized vehicles would be illegal? Would a smartphone-piloted quadcopter be considered a "vehicle"? Or is that a legal grey area?

The quadcopter I'm thinking of barely makes noise beyond a low buzzing.

How about, "No"? Is there a big problem with "No"? Cut it the fuck out you moron. Stop thinking about what you can get away with and start thinking about the intent of the place. You of all people (unlike most people I actually read your posts) should undersatnd this intuitively and should not require explanation or castigation to get you to think right.

Get your brain right man.

[Bushwacka]

How about, "No"? Is there a big problem with "No"? Cut it the fuck out you moron. Stop thinking about what you can get away with and start thinking about the intent of the place. You of all people (unlike most people I actually read your posts) should undersatnd this intuitively and should not require explanation or castigation to get you to think right.

Get your brain right man.

can a plane fly over a vehicle less area?

[sb]

Kewl stuff Bwacka

[Supermoon]

can a plane fly over a vehicle less area?

Probably not below a certain altitude.