The drone thread

[Dozer]

I'm eagerly awaiting delivery of a GoPro Karma. I scored a great price on a new one with a Hero 5 included, pretty chuffed!
I hoped I could get some conversation going with Rotorburn people who use drones. I've grabbed some info about the rules of where you can fly and gotten the "Can I fly there" app, keen to know the in's and out's of what you're doing with your drone guys?
In regards to the Karma, I believe it now has the Follow me function where you can carry the remote and it follows you? Cool! I also wanted to use the gimbal on my chest mount so if anyone has some advice on how to secure that, I'm all ears!
Chuck me some of your cool videos too, really keen to get amongst it.

 

[hellmansam]

I went to an info session at work (big mining) the survey dept are using them for a few interesting things. The main thing I took away from it is make the effort to be 100% clued up on the rules and regs, aviation stuff is covered by federal laws and some pretty stiff penalties.

Huge potential for awesome footage of stuff like MTB, the drone perspective does wonders for surfing.

 

[steve jobs' pancreas]

Huge potential for awesome footage of stuff like MTB, the drone perspective does wonders for surfing.

not for me I reckon, probs the opposite effect

 

[Calvin27]

Been droning with my mate for about 10 years. He does all the tech stuff - I'm more like a glorified spotter haha. Built about 4-5 drones before the industry caught up and now rocking a spark. He's got some of the pro stuff that he uses as a side gig.

Regs are one thing, general awareness of dangers is another. One time we flew in a deserted place and the thing crashed bad. Was going to ditch it but the fact that it was bushfire season suddenly made us realise what a shit idea it was to fly. Those batteries could have cause a real big problem. Anyway into the thick snake bush to retrieve - it took about 45 minutes and that was with nothing more than giving the props a whirl every now and then and trying to locate it by sound.

 

[Mica]

Should be an entertaining thread.

Fly them for work (surveying) and just bought a tello for some fun at home plus sliding in under the 100g category for some work things.

Best to know the rules and regs though there’s a lot of grey areas but commonsense dictates a lot of it, something a lot of people lack.

With the right approvals and certification you can pretty much do anything (we’ve flown and mapped a RAAF base before).

If you’re only into the MTB side of it you’ll be pretty safe as no too many people around the areas we like to be, it’s when you’re around others it matters. General rule is 30m clearance from others and that’s a cylinder not a sphere (ie 40m up but directly above encroaches).

 

[Tubbsy]

 

[bear the bear]

I keep threatening to fire my Construction Surveillance Officers in jest and replace them with a drone.... then they remind me the drone can't get down into trenches to inspect hydraulics.
Though I am trying to convince our MD to buy one for use for time lapse of the greenfields estates we do.

 

[downunderdallas]

The main technical issue at least in WA is you are not meant to fly in a National Park (I think that is the case in most or maybe all states) which is where the overwhelming majority of our trails are. Also lots of trees, bit tricky there but good test of skill especially as I only have a relatively cheap and moderately durable phantom 3 std.

I only use mine when I travel, want to get a Mavic Air for that reason. Got some great footage (non MTB) in Tassie when there last.

 

[Dozer]

So, I got my Karma, pretty cool features and a really nice kit. I set it up and charged the batteries and thought I'd give it a test run in our car park area close to work. Read on...........

We have a long gravel section with parking undercover on each side so assume its open air for two car widths then the cars are back in under cover. I set the drone in the open on the gravel, did the tutorial on the remote and thought pffft, easy as! I established the connection between remote and drone and got the signal that it was ready to turn and burn! I fired it, hit the auto take off button and it lifted a few feet off the ground. Far out, its noisy and actually quite big! I had a small fiddle with the joysticks to control it; went up and down and side to side.....................then it happened. A message popped up on the screen, something blinked and flashed and popped and fizzled and I shit myself! The drone went haywire and started to try to find the place to land that it took off from. In that process, it was totally all over the place and zoomed over my car under the steel awning and smashed into the nearby wall and down the side of my car.

Fuck.

What was it? 15 seconds in the air and I'd barreled it into the nearest solid surface and smashed the propellers off it. It was at that point that I realised that you should not fang these things around near people as that could have been very messy.
I picked the drone up, found all the smashed bits and luckily for me, it was just a few snapped propellers. It came with spares and I bolted them on, moved out into a wide open area and took off again. It is actually really intense to operate! I was really nervous! I kinda got the hang of it but even now more than before I thought it needs to be practiced and honed A LOT.
I used it again later that arvo in our yard which is all cement and high steel walls. I got some messages saying there was too much interference with the connection and it just sat on the ground. I moved it up into our garden and got a good connection then took off again only to have it lose connection and need to return by itself to where it took off. Shit! That's a bloody nervous time! It goes very slowly but does not have any way of detecting obstacles so it could potentially smash into something. Again, I need to be pretty clued up on how to steer it.
Later that night I was able to install the updates which make it easier to fly as it can follow me, I can set two points for it to stay between, minimum height etc. I aspire to be in control enough to fly it under some tall trees to film some jumps and stuff but thats gonna take some time to practice.
All in all, I'm pretty chuffed though, the range it says its capable of some impressive numbers and in the right place it'll be a really cool thing to have.

 

[Mica]

Happy flying! Good to get a lesson first up before you over confident and really mess it up. My stomach sinks quite often flying mine.

My first flight of my little tello involved getting it stuck in a spiders web up a tree, which I was luckily just able to reach with a stick. There’s certainly an art to flying them

 

[Jpez]

Interesting parallel just occurred to me reading this thread.
I used to play around with very expensive RC helicopters. Up in the thousands and some speed machines could reach close to 300kph. We kind of felt like hardcore nerds.

Then drones came along and suddenly there was a sub forum in OUR helicopter forum for Drones. People hated them and predicted all sorts of grief with people that didn’t really know what they were doing picking these things up at Kmart and causing accidents and regulatory bodies putting extra restrictions on us and worst of all we had put in the hard yards to learn how to fly these ridiculously difficult things. We had a licence to fly. We had Skill godammit! And now anybody can pick up a drone and fly it.
Well the sky didn’t fall in I guess.

Kinda like Ebikes hey..

Just an observation. NOT talking about ebikes in this thread. Just found it interesting the similarities.

 

[Flow-Rider]

The expensive RC helicopters are easy to fly they have self stabilising features built into them, it's the cheaper ones where you need skill to adjust every movement in the air.

 

[downunderdallas]

I used to fly RC planes and then bought my drone, couldn't believe how easy it was to fly. The concept of being able to just take your hands off the sticks and the thing just adjusts itself and sits there was amazing. Having patched up numerous RC planes after less than perfect landings it's amazing how easy the things are to fly and Jpez I still have a chopper in the shed, could never fly the thing very well in awe of the way some guys can control them like a puppet on a string!

 

[Jpez]

The expensive RC helicopters are easy to fly they have self stabilising features built into them, it's the cheaper ones where you need skill to adjust every movement in the air.

Uh no. The stabilisation like the Vbar helps but it still took me months to learn to hover well let alone fly it with control. When you start flying towards yourself the controls are reversed. Flying upside down changes everything again. So it becomes muscule memory.
Now drones on the other hand. They are easy to fly.

 

[Flow-Rider]

Uh no. The stabilisation like the Vbar helps but it still took me months to learn to hover well let alone fly it with control. When you start flying towards yourself the controls are reversed. Flying upside down changes everything again. So it becomes muscule memory.
Now drones on the other hand. They are easy to fly.

I own a V2 and a Mercenary that I've modified, the more expensive RC helicopters have a built in gyro that works more effectively and automatically trims the blades without you even knowing. That's why the better control units cost over $300.