Hello everyone! I’m back home from a terrific weekend in Washington, D.C. where I attended the Dad 2.0 conference. I have so much to share with you all, and you will hear more about my escapades throughout the week I’m sure, but I need to start at the beginning with the coolest thing I got to do. Namely, drone piloting.
It was a tad unnerving to be walking into a hotel lobby full of people who, until that moment, had only known me in a virtual sense. When you meet someone in the flesh for the first time, but have had many interactions with them online, what do you say? “Nice to meet you.”? “Nice to see you.”? “Hey old friend!”? And what if they all liked you from a distance but hated you up close? Or what if they never liked you from a distance either, but had been being polite because it’s the internet and everyone is kind and gentle there?! Well, no matter. I was there. I needed to enter that lobby so that I could get on the bus and head to the drone farm.
The drone farm is not really a thing. The drone people had just rented out a farm for us to fly around, since you are not allowed to fly drones in D.C. for some odd reason. One would think that the Pentagon and the White House would love unmanned, remotely piloted aircraft buzzing around nearby, but apparently this is not the case. So I headed out with a group of 50 dads (who were all very nice after all) on a long bus ride to Waytheheckoutthere, Virginia.
Our first obstacle to overcome was a large grate that the bus driver refused to drive across. The entrance to the farm contained a large cattle grate to keep the cows in, but it also kept nervous buses out. Why he wouldn’t take a chance on being stuck out in the middle of nowhere I cannot say, but we all had to get out and walk down the muddy path to the barn where our hosts lay in wait for us. Actually the owners of the farm did not wait for us. They drove up and down the pathway in their car, apologizing for the walk and asking us not to blame them for the cattle grate. We all conceded that such a thing was reasonable to have at a farm, and instead blamed the cowardice of the bus driver, who we were sure could have backed into the field opposite, gunned the engines, and cleared the grate at 70 mph if only he had been slightly stupider.
Well, the walk was not so bad, and the barn full of delicious BBQ was a fine reward for our trek. I was having a great time, and I hadn’t even seen the drones yet! They started calling our names, and since I was not in the first round draft picks, I ate food. Just as I was swallowing my last bite of seconds and was wondering how I was going to eat any more, I heard my name shouted out above the din. I sprang out of my seat and tried to sprint casually toward the drones. And OH, what drones they were.
Best Buy had set up this whole thing, so they had matched us with official drone pilots from 3DR and we got a full overview before we were allowed to get our sweaty palms on the controls. The drones we were going to be flying were the 3DR Solo drones (Google It) and they were magnificent. Unlike many drones, which come with a built in camera, these drones will fit your GoPro camera, and there are camera adjusting controls on the control pad. So right away, I was able to get some sweet cinematic shots as the thing just hovered in front of me. Hovering is the default mode, by the way, so if you get distracted while flying it will not crash to the ground. Good news for ADHD people such as myself. Cake is delicious.
The modes on the control panel are so useful. The controls themselves are easy enough to use, especially for a gamer like myself, so I was easily zooming and swooping about the farm in seconds, but there are also times you don’t want to be focusing on the controls, which is where the sweet features come in. For instance, “Follow Me” mode. I set the thing to follow me, and it used the internal GPS to know where I was going, so no matter where I went I could not outrun that drone. Very useful if, say, you are in a car, or on a boat, and want some shots while you are in motion. And “Orbit” mode will circle you as you fine tune that camera angle!
My favorite, by far, was the feature that allowed me to fly the drone directly into my face. Well, okay, not all the way into my face, but I got it to hover pretty tight in front of me, and then I had it switch to “Selfie” mode. For a really dramatic selfie, you just push a button and that Solo drone will do an epic fly away while focused right on you, and then you can bring it back in to where it started from, which is slightly more exhilarating. The drone’s parents would not let me bring it quite as close to me as I would have liked, but this was probably for the best. They did not want me to write a post called “Smacked in the Face with a Solo Drone,” although that would have been a fun post to write as well.
When my time was up, I reluctantly handed the controls back so that someone else could have a turn (sharing!), but I was already imagining the sweet footage I could get of my church, and all of the videos I could make with that beautiful piece of equipment. They have just lowered the price from $1000, to $800, and we already have a GoPro… Hmmmm, let me check my music budget…
Well, anyway, before I go misappropriate funds and get fired, here is some actual drone footage from my test flight, which I’m sure you will not enjoy half as much as I did making it!