Experience Flight with DJI Phantom first person vision system

When I first looked at the world from hundreds of feet in the air, I was strapped to a 220 pound parachute instructor. We were slowly drifting down, over a course of 5 minutes or so, as I looked at lush green canopies that reminded me of huge broccoli sprouts.

To get to this point, I spent over 6 hours waiting for my turn to be cramped into a hollowed out Cessna, only to experience a few minutes of skydiving.

I did not experience surprise, as a few years later, in 2013 I was looking at the tree canopies again, only this time using a wireless camera attached to my own DJI Phantom Drone helicopter.

The striking difference was that I was comfortably sitting on a ground, without any risk to myself and it only took me a couple minutes to assemble my drone and launch it, giving me breathtaking view of the earth from 400 feet up.

As a huge smile split me face, I felt like a bird. And I'm here to share this feeling with you, as this hub should contain everything you need to experience flight for yourself, or give a gift of flight to a friend.

Remote controlled helicopters are hard to fly. RC planes are a hassle to transport and land. This fact is re-iterated by many members of the RC community. For a long time this kept me from buying one of my own - I was afraid that I would not be able to fly it, or that I will put it on the shelf after a few uses.

Then I discovered that a helicopter or a plane is not the only option for flying a remote controlled model. About a year ago, I learned about multirotor helicopters - 3,4 and 6+ propellers mounted to a single frame. Such platforms are much easier to fly than a traditional helicopter, and are fun to watch, but until recently they required the pilot to also be a mechanic and an engineer to put together one of them.

Things changed with DJI Phantom Quadrotor helicopter - it started a revolution in a commercially available "minimum assembly required" quadrotors. They are practically ready to fly right out of the box. No soldering. No calibration. No mechanical or electrical troubleshooting. No pairing of radios. Just charge a battery and you are ready to fly!

"So, how far can it fly?" - I hear this question time and time again, as a small crowd gathers around me anywhere I go out to fly. The short answer is 1000 feet. This is a couple medium sized city blocks. It is a size of a small lake. It is enough to cross some rivers. And it's fun.

The drone ( or UAS - Unmanned Aerial System ) that I use is very basic. It is bought at Amazon.com, and serves to help me learn flying. So it does not need to go very far or very high. It just gives me practice, and over time I got very good with it - enough to fly through a forest, around and under obstacles and safely return.

It's time to geek out about flying! Learn all about DJI Phantom!

• DJI Phantom is an unmanned drone quad-rotor helicopter
• It can also be called an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) or vehicle (UAV)
• The drone operates using a 2.4Ghz radio band and has a range of 300 meters /1000 feet over open air
• The wireless camera setup is called First Person Video (FPV) system
• The FPV operates at 5.8 Ghz radio frequency and transmits video from the camera over to video goggles that I wear

The drone has impressive stability and ease of use:

• It uses GPS to automatically keep itself hovering in the position you left it at
• The drone can return to launch site if radio signal is lost
• The drone resists wind up to 30mpg
• It can fly for 8 minutes carrying the camera and FPV equipment
• The battery is Li-Ion 2200mAh takes 1.5 hours to charge
• The drone weights 890 grams with camera and FPV equipment

Flying remote controlled helicopters is easy, and I've never flown anything other than kites in my life before picking up DJI Phantom's controller. What I found out is:

• The drone is incredibly stable - it maintains altitude and position
• Just let go and it hovers there
• Move it forward, like giving gas to a car
• Steer it like steering a car
• Bank left and right like switching lanes in a car

The illusion of driving becomes even more obvious once I put on the First Person Video goggles - it's like looking through a windshield and steering. The camera does not turn to follow my head, but wide angle lenses make it easy to see around the helicopter.

When I talk to people about my quadrotor, I frequently make comments like "If it crashes into a river, I'm buying another one". And it's true! Even after a couple months of ownership, it is still fun to fly, and I'm getting into more advanced flying (see my forest flying video).

All together, the black box that I own with everything inside of it came out to be about 1500$. A more professional setup would cost around 2000$.

It is worth it, and here are some of the points that fly through my head as I think about this price:

• It is about the same price as a motor scooter
• Half a price of a reclined bike
• Much less than a motorcycle
• Much quicker to setup than real plane or skydiving.
• Fun, fun fun!
• Great conversation starter

I lied. While you can buy the drone itself requiring almost no assembly, you still need to do a little bit of work:

How to assemble DJI Phantom together with First Person Video system.

It's not hard, and I created a website with instructions and parts list required. The good news are:

• There's no soldering
• There's no debugging electronics
• Just buy the components that I listed and glue a matchbox on the bottom of your DJI Phantom.
• Plug cables and you are done!