Credit again to my wife for opening the door to new things. As we know, she introduced me to life outside of the pen and paper, thus here I am in the electronic world of “blogging”.
Well, she has lifted us higher. Introducing to you the Solo 3DR drone.
AKA: VADER
(I had to explain the name of course. “No babe, not Vedder, Vader. You know, Darth Vader. The villain in the black suit in Star Wars? “.
….silence.
It’s okay, I understand the confusion because Eddie Vedder is my favorite singer, but really??
Hilarious stuff. We obviously have our strong suits.
This little gem comes highly recommended.
Now before you rush out to your local electronic store, take a step back and do your research. Not every drone may fit your needs. The 3DR is a great start-up drone but trust me, some things they have on the shelves practically come with flight attendants.
The basic specifications for the 3DR can be found here:
https://news.3dr.com/solo-specs-just-the-facts-14480cb55722#.qg1uytddg
Welcome back.
Now that you reviewed the Solo3DR specifications let me give you our experience thus far.
The Solo 3DR was good for us because we found a deal of course. Best Buy was selling the drone for $399 with an extra battery and propellers.
We also already owned a GoPro3 which the drone is compatible with. This saved hundreds of dollars because some drones can only be purchased with the camera which makes them more expensive. My wife is addicted to bigger, better, and more when it comes to anything with photography so she later traded in our Hero3 for a Hero4.
Now, we are beginners so we did not want to go big and end up sinking this thing into the Pacific Ocean, so we found a reasonable buy for the quality. Remember that you need to set up your drone with FAA guidelines (you will learn the ropes). There are applications that give you fly zones and from our experience, people are more apt to accepting a female pilot and the southern states were quite fond of ours. To each their own.
I’m pretty sure my brother became officially addicted when we took our new toy back East for a family visit. (yes, she has a special carry on luggage for Vader).
Meanwhile, I’m paying 50 bucks for the extra carry on for our “family”.
Here is some flight footage over my hometown.
Pilot: Brian Lima http://www.brianlima.com/ (Shameless brother plug)
Location: Purgatory Chasm, Middletown, Rhode Island
This was our first over water flight, and trust me, I was shitting ice bricks in my pants because my wife practically held a vigil before we left the house with her baby, and it was 0600 and 12 degrees.
The flight went as planned. Beautiful arial footage of the rising sun over the glistening waters off of Sachuest Beach in the early morning hours on a brisk December day!
Good thing I failed to record the footage of our test crash.
You will learn the ins and outs but please, always make sure you are recording. I have lost so much great flight footage making this mistake, but our test crash was a blessing.
Give me a break, I’m still learning life outside of Microsoft Word, remember.
Knowing my binary code illiteracy, I’m pretty sure my wife has the settings (of which I have little patience to figure out) set to low.
I have not raced this drone with my truck yet, but I’m certain I have not gone 55mph, which it is capable, but, I have reached max altitude of 400ft because the controller promptly told me.
Oh, and she will find out anyway, but you better believe my brother and I took the 20-25 minute battery life to the final second!!
Yes, the flight times can be quite short, so I highly suggest getting a deal with an extra battery and always having one on hand. If you can have a charging station near by, even better!
So as you have heard, these things crash, and I’m happy to announce my wife was the first to do so.
Where you ask?
Well she almost took out a window to a friends home in Las Vegas when she was shooting a newborn baby video for them. She was trying to get a “Stork View” coming into the front door and misjudged the entry width.
Good times.
Did she give up and quit? Nope, she pulled away in my truck to the nearest Best Buy and came back with back up propellers and blade guards.
Highly recommended accessories.
Crack a blade, pop a new one on. Flying close to a crowd of people or animals chasing the new prey, pop on some blade guards.
Oh, and I was not fooled about the “misjudged” stork entry. I was there.
Ray Charles could had driven a truck through the entry way and she fly’s like Maverick.
The mistake: the controller can be tricky.
Recommendation: label the controller (up-down)(left-right) so on and so forth
Well, I hope you find a birds eye view in your world soon!
Feel free to share your videos and pictures.
HAPPY FLYING!!
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