UFO

Linda and I have been taking a walk most mornings quite early and this last Sunday was no exception as we were planning on a boat ride.

The first ride across the Great Bay this season.

When we arrived on the Swasey Parkway at the pavillion I spotted something over my boat that perplexed me, it was hovering. This is at some distance and I really had no clue what it was, perhaps my angle of view was confusing my eyes. Then it zoomed straight up and away, to a tremendous height.

Now  we were   much closer to the Phillips  Academy boathouse and from above one could detect a faint whine , and I just then spotted the human controller at the boat ramp.

A drone.

We went over to check it out and there were two squad cars there too, so initially I thought this might be something the police were testing .Nope, it was just a  hobbyist and we stopped our walk for a bit to pepper him with questions.

The controller was quite simple and when  following up later on the web  I read how one can seriously upgrade the controller, with a video screen , a camera gimbal control, you could really max out the rig.

This gent was employing a fixed GoPro camera set to take a pic on 5 sec intervals. The drone has a flight time of 10 -15 minutes and blinks a red light when the battery is running low. If it loses contact with the controller it defaults to a home program and returns to it’s launch point. You don’t have to land it, just bring it in close and grab the handle.

This is not a toy, the design and housing are quite robust, upon lifting it you would say “gee this is heavy”

I asked him to send me a couple of his  aerial photos and just got them this morning.

It is fascinating to explore the many uses for which these are being employed.

It would seem that about a 1000.00 is required between the drone and a camera, though you could spend a lot more. It’s not at all about the flying as the operator allowed is rather boring since the flight model is limited, it is all about the images produced.

Mike