With Melbourne (Australia) entering the ninth week of its sixth lockdown, thirty-six weeks under lockdown since the outbreak began last year, and the prospect of at least another two months of harsh restrictions ahead of us, residents have just six reasons to legally leave their homes. Piloting a drone isn't one of them.
I needed to fly my drone, but then a flash of inspiration came to me: In-house drone-flying!
Why hadn't I though of this sooner? I could slowly navigate my drone from the bedroom to the living room to the kitchen, then turn around and do it in reverse. Sure, I'd have to be super-careful, and maybe lock my young-ish kids in the bathroom (it's a small house), but the absence of wind inside would allow for precision flying and there was absolutely no risk of becoming lodged in a tree or ending up at the bottom of a reservoir.
I knew that I'd be flying in ATTI-mode, but the first hiccup was the discovery that I couldn't use Tripod-mode while in ATTI-mode. As you know, Tripod-mode slows everything down and allows you to navigate tight spaces with a little more confidence. No matter, I launched anyway - from my kitchen bench.
Okay, so that notion I had about there being no wind inside the house was just silly. Flying outdoors you don't get a sense of what 1.38 kg of continuous air-displacement actually represents. Imagine an industrial-strength fan pointing downward in a small room... there's back-wash, there's turbulence, and it's like you're outside on a windy day, but without GPS assistance.
For about twenty seconds - with my box of tissues blown off the bench and the kids' art-work being stripped from the fridge door piece by piece as the magnets gave up the struggle - I bravely battled the controls, just trying to stay in one place.
Moral of the story - don't do it, at least not with a Phantom. A Mavic Mini, on the other hand...
I needed to fly my drone, but then a flash of inspiration came to me: In-house drone-flying!
Why hadn't I though of this sooner? I could slowly navigate my drone from the bedroom to the living room to the kitchen, then turn around and do it in reverse. Sure, I'd have to be super-careful, and maybe lock my young-ish kids in the bathroom (it's a small house), but the absence of wind inside would allow for precision flying and there was absolutely no risk of becoming lodged in a tree or ending up at the bottom of a reservoir.
I knew that I'd be flying in ATTI-mode, but the first hiccup was the discovery that I couldn't use Tripod-mode while in ATTI-mode. As you know, Tripod-mode slows everything down and allows you to navigate tight spaces with a little more confidence. No matter, I launched anyway - from my kitchen bench.
Okay, so that notion I had about there being no wind inside the house was just silly. Flying outdoors you don't get a sense of what 1.38 kg of continuous air-displacement actually represents. Imagine an industrial-strength fan pointing downward in a small room... there's back-wash, there's turbulence, and it's like you're outside on a windy day, but without GPS assistance.
For about twenty seconds - with my box of tissues blown off the bench and the kids' art-work being stripped from the fridge door piece by piece as the magnets gave up the struggle - I bravely battled the controls, just trying to stay in one place.
Moral of the story - don't do it, at least not with a Phantom. A Mavic Mini, on the other hand...
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