It occurred to me, looking at the comments on my recent drone post, that I’ve written an article about drones – but that the little device itself didn’t figure (well – it was so much less interesting than what Steve does with one!)
So I’m setting the record straight with a few shots of mine (which is the same as the one Steve was flying the day I interviewed him, although most of his drone images were taken using a larger and older model.
The key factor is that it’s very light – at 249 grams, it’s light enough to be flown without a licence – although the licencing process isn’t as onerous, I think, as that for driving a car in the UK. There’s an amazing amount of technology packed into a small body, and the only thing that may be a significant debit is that it doesn’t keep watch all round for potential obstacles – I believe that more expensive models are able to avoid flying into trees.
The basic motto for flying any drone is to look, see and think about safety and annoyance value. There’s technological aid here: as soon as you link the drone and your mobile ‘phone, the satnav system identifies if you are in an area where drone use is restricted or prohibited: I found this out at a lovely location in Oxfordshire, quite close to RAF Brize Norton. A red warning came up that I should not fly without official clearance, so I put the kit away and reverted to a more conventional camera.
Anyway, here are some pictures showing how small and neat a drone can be: starting with a shot of the serendipitously-named Arizona Sky flying it, and continuing to a shot of the folded drone on a photographic magazine for size comparison, a shot of the ‘unfolded’ drone, and one of the shots Arizona took while flying it.
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