Flight

From a time way before the magic of shopping the internets, I’m still trying to remember how I wound up in a hobby shop in New York City buying that radio controlled plane kit. I can sort of remember how I physically got there- I had talked my friend Bob into hopping on our bikes one Saturday morning and riding to the train station and then riding the commuter rails to Grand Central Station, and then somehow figuring out how to locate the hole-in-the-wall shop that was selling the kit. This was a first time adventure as a twelve or thirteen year-old, and of course I hadn’t told my parents since they would have told me I most certainly wouldn’t be able to go. I don’t remember how we found the shop- I kind of remember being inside and agonizing over which kit to get within my miniscule price range. I don’t remember how we found our way back to Grand Central or back on the right train to our home town thirty or so miles to the north. I do remember the empty feeling in my stomach after getting off the train when we went to the place we had left our bikes only to find them gone. I also remember the stern look on my father’s face when he pulled up in front of the station with our bikes in the back of the family station wagon and said, I believe, two words: “Get In.”

I don’t know what ever happened to that plane. I built it up but never flew it. Ever since then I’ve had a sour taste appear whenever the thought of anything involving radio frequencies and control of objects from a distance has come to mind. That is partly why, when the box containing the DJI Phantom quadcopter arrived quite a while back, it sat unattended for months before I worked up the nerve to open it up to see what it could do. My reason for purchasing it now was way different than back when I first broached the subject of radio control in ancient times. Back then it was the fascination of a toy that could be flown through the air without strings or wires attached that drew me to the event that got me grounded, oddly enough. But this recent acquisition of a miniature flying machine had more to do with the practical aspect of learning the intricacies of another tool of the trade. In addition to swimming and biking and other things mobile, it is one of the attributes of the GoPro camera that it is small and light enough that it can also fairly easily go aloft and fly with any number of remote controlled aircraft.

As there is at least one event on the horizon, and any number of other possible uses for gaining a different video perspective out there, I decided that the fair weather of late should be taken advantage of, and so landing struts and propellers and their requisite guards were attached, and the operating manual, or Quick Start Manual Express V1.0 as it was labeled, was cracked open to see how I was to get this craft into the air. This was a far easier assembling process than was that plane of years gone by. Instead of wood and glue, an allen wrench and some supplied screws were all that was needed to have this modern marvel fully assembled. Unfortunately, being of an age where joy sticks and simulated games have never been a part of my routine, daily or otherwise, I had no idea what the switches and control levers did. There were no labels on the remote control device that came with it, except for a few things like GPS or ATTI, and there was no attending diagram in the Quick Start Manual Express (QSME) that gave much of an indication as to what any of that meant. There is a lot missing from this manual, as well as the Advanced Manual that you can download from the DJI site. A sample from the QSME under the heading “For inexperienced” goes as follows: “Slowly aircraft landing is suggested to avoid aircraft flying further away, though this suggestion may cause damage to aircraft during landing.” I went to the youtubes to see what wisdom might be gleaned from there.

I have learned from experience that any youtubes video labeled “unboxing” is perhaps among the most worthless exercises known to man or woman- I have no idea why people make them, but they are everywhere. On the other hand, there are very useful videos on perhaps almost anything one needs to know about, and some things one may not need or want to know about. For my purposes, I was able to learn enough to get the copter started and off the ground and soon able to recognize that the frantic wobbling my copter was doing, not unlike the crazy gyrating of a disabled flying disc in some sci-fi, UFO flick from the 1950’s, was not as things should be, and that a “slowly aircraft landing” was out of the question. The crash was unspectacular, resulting in one bent propeller and a smashed propeller guard. Some gorilla glue stuck the guard back together and the copter comes with an extra set of props. Having gotten all that back together I found that the bent prop motor was stuck, so I set about disassembling the entire thing to see what I could find. I was worried that I had bent the rod that the motor spun on, so I pried and pulled the two pieces apart, only to find a horseshoe shaped clip stuck to one of the magnets that rotated around the central coil. This was supposed to be attached to the rod on the base of the motor. Once that was back in place, and I had found elsewhere on the youtubes that a calibration was necessary to stabilize the craft in flight by running some basic tests through a connection to my laptop (we are not in the land of RC controlled, balsa wood aircraft any more), the copter then ascended like a hummingbird on the defensive. When this particular motor driven hummer headed toward the trees I panicked and couldn’t remember which of the two joysticks did what, and we experienced more “damage to the aircraft during landing”.

That was then. I have since gotten the copter off the ground and kept it aloft performing backs and forths and ups and downs without much further damage. I am feeling a bit more confident in understanding the controls and have been trying to go higher and further away with much better results than recent experiences have afforded. I have not yet, however, affixed the camera to the underbelly of the contraption- sometimes I tempt fate less than others. What I currently have in mind for filming involves swimming and boating and flights over water, which invites a whole new set of hazards into the mix, as nothing related to this machine is impervious to water contact. I am hoping that in this case practice does lead to something close to perfection. Unlike some other things though, practice with a remote controlled quadcopter is kind of fun.