Hi all –
I am typing this from a job and location I am soon to leave. I am 33 and have flown only Air Hog helicopters on and off for about 10 years (would buy about 1-2 a year because they don’t last long). They were hard to fly but I got pretty good at them.
I found myself this past August hating my (well paying) job and thought , “there’s got to be something I can buy to make this job worth it.” So I wandered into a hobby shop and was surprised – I had not paid any attention to the progress of quad copters over the years. Over about a two week period, I bought a small in house FPV quad, a more rugged “backyard” FPV quad, and then finally, the Phantom 4.
For a few weeks these got my mind off of how much I hated my job, but even these did not do the trick. I was excitedly waking up before sunrise to take my P4 out to locations in my area to film things at sun rise.
This is going to sound completely cheesy, but it was one very foggy morning with the P4 that made what I needed to do in life crystal clear. It was very foggy, so I decided to go to the large (empty) park across from our house and simply fly it above the fog and then straight back down with no horizontal travel.
I remember looking at my iPad screen when the fog suddenly disappeared, the sky cleared, and the sun was visible and being overwhelmed by emotion. Again, this sounds cliché but later at work I kept thinking the fog was where I was at and the sun was the “light at the end of the tunnel.”
I contacted a former boss and told him I made a mistake – see I felt stuck because we just moved here (wife and kids) and bought a house. I would owe them money to leave now. I felt chained. But within 24 hours of talking to my former boss, he told me to contact another guy I had worked with who was about to have an opening. After calling him, he said I was a sure thing and the interview would be a formality.
I feel better already. The new plan is to rent out our new house and head on back. Its less money but on per hour basis I do believe it’d be a 50% raise.
A week into owning the P4 I already had the police called on me once. The best place to fly here is this large state park with a beach. *Someone* of course thought I was taking pictures of girls on the beach and an officer drove up (literally drove over grass to get to me) and told me to land it and leave. Despite knowing I was legally in the “right,” I know better than to argue with a cop.
I looked at the footage I had of the beach – I was so far away (about 800 ft horizontally, about 300 ft vertically) that I could not even tell what was a person or a few large birds.
I’ve been reading posts on this forum for about a week now and am very interested in drone law. I think people are ignorant. When I bought a telescope (a 10 inch) several years ago and took it out, a neighbor actually told me not to point it at their windows. I replied that if I wanted to look in your windows, binoculars would be better because a 10 inch scope would not be very useful for that. I think it’s the same thing with drones. If you want to spy on someone your best off getting binoculars. Even an iPhone camera from the edge of their property would be better.
Have a good afternoon! We are going to be moving to suburbs of Atlanta (I will of course insist on living more than 5 miles from an airport
)
I am typing this from a job and location I am soon to leave. I am 33 and have flown only Air Hog helicopters on and off for about 10 years (would buy about 1-2 a year because they don’t last long). They were hard to fly but I got pretty good at them.
I found myself this past August hating my (well paying) job and thought , “there’s got to be something I can buy to make this job worth it.” So I wandered into a hobby shop and was surprised – I had not paid any attention to the progress of quad copters over the years. Over about a two week period, I bought a small in house FPV quad, a more rugged “backyard” FPV quad, and then finally, the Phantom 4.
For a few weeks these got my mind off of how much I hated my job, but even these did not do the trick. I was excitedly waking up before sunrise to take my P4 out to locations in my area to film things at sun rise.
This is going to sound completely cheesy, but it was one very foggy morning with the P4 that made what I needed to do in life crystal clear. It was very foggy, so I decided to go to the large (empty) park across from our house and simply fly it above the fog and then straight back down with no horizontal travel.
I remember looking at my iPad screen when the fog suddenly disappeared, the sky cleared, and the sun was visible and being overwhelmed by emotion. Again, this sounds cliché but later at work I kept thinking the fog was where I was at and the sun was the “light at the end of the tunnel.”
I contacted a former boss and told him I made a mistake – see I felt stuck because we just moved here (wife and kids) and bought a house. I would owe them money to leave now. I felt chained. But within 24 hours of talking to my former boss, he told me to contact another guy I had worked with who was about to have an opening. After calling him, he said I was a sure thing and the interview would be a formality.
I feel better already. The new plan is to rent out our new house and head on back. Its less money but on per hour basis I do believe it’d be a 50% raise.
A week into owning the P4 I already had the police called on me once. The best place to fly here is this large state park with a beach. *Someone* of course thought I was taking pictures of girls on the beach and an officer drove up (literally drove over grass to get to me) and told me to land it and leave. Despite knowing I was legally in the “right,” I know better than to argue with a cop.
I looked at the footage I had of the beach – I was so far away (about 800 ft horizontally, about 300 ft vertically) that I could not even tell what was a person or a few large birds.
I’ve been reading posts on this forum for about a week now and am very interested in drone law. I think people are ignorant. When I bought a telescope (a 10 inch) several years ago and took it out, a neighbor actually told me not to point it at their windows. I replied that if I wanted to look in your windows, binoculars would be better because a 10 inch scope would not be very useful for that. I think it’s the same thing with drones. If you want to spy on someone your best off getting binoculars. Even an iPhone camera from the edge of their property would be better.
Have a good afternoon! We are going to be moving to suburbs of Atlanta (I will of course insist on living more than 5 miles from an airport
)
