First Flight

It's been a while since I've written here informally. My last few posts have been "somewhat sporadically spaced" if you will (I'm all about that alliteration lyf) and they haven't been a particularly good representation of my day-to-day as they once may have been many moons ago. Hopefully, this post will spell a return to form but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Over the past year or so, my close friends and I were looking at new hobbies to try. There were talks of traveling beyond the Perth metro area as one proposal (if you could call that a hobby). Pharmacy school ensured that we were planted in Perth for most of our uni days and the notion of visiting landmarks around Australia piqued our interest.

Another hobby we talked about was programming, fueling our interest in technology and exploring our fascination of how it can make our lives not only more fun, but more productive too.

Finally there was the discussion of remote controlled devices which eventually led to the topic of drones. Initially I was hesitant to embrace flying a drone for a hobby, as I had the misconception that they were all really expensive and liable to fail at any time. I saw it as a thousand dollars (which in retrospect is a severe underestimate of how much drones can really cost!) way up in the air waiting to get rekt wrecked in some inconceivable way.

As amusing as it may seem now, the experience I gained from embarking on my first flight and the many horror threads on drone forums remind me that this "crash 'n burn" scenario is still very possible.

But I, like my friends, decided to invest in a cheap drone just to test the water first. And the water was surprisingly good. While my mini drone was nothing short of useless, my friend's "more-than-capable" drone was a pleasure to fly, despite my flipping it over and crashing it a few times.

We quickly concluded that the fabled "hover function" found in the uber expensive drones was going to be a valuable asset in order to compensate for our lack of flying prowess.

I am always amazed by high quality drone videos on YouTube and the footage my friend managed to capture when he flew his drone in a park was no exception. The view he obtained from above the tree-line with the distance visible and some lens flare was magnificently majestic mate.

I was so inspired after flying my friend's drone and watching the footage he produced that I did some more research and discovered that buying a great drone with many clever features (like the hover function and live camera feed) would not cost an organ or limb.

After months of researching (and saving), I bought the DJI Phantom 3 Standard drone with high hopes (pun intended) and enthusiasm that it would rekindle my passion for great photography, film-making and ultimately, storytelling.

I hope you enjoy my "First Flight".