FatDash now has it’s own air force!

by: Mike O'Quin
September 18, 2017

When we were back in the states I purchased a drone for FatDash, well actually for me. I decided on a DJI Spark with the “fly more” package. I had this shipped to our friends Vic and Sarah in San Diego so we would not have to carry it around.

Unfortunately when we arrived at Vic and Sarah’s house I got carried away and unboxed it before I could document the event. Oh well I’ll explain.

I arrived in a outer box that had the box for the spark inside. The Spark came in a package that I still use to store and ship the Spark. It also came with a carrying case, propeller guards, 2 batteries, a 3 battery charger,  a spare set of props, a remote controller, a charging cable, and a 16gb micro SD card.  Additionally I purchased 2 additional batteries along with a USB to micro USB convertor and a USB to Apple Lighting adapter, this is to hardwire the iPhone to the remote controller.

That night I plugged everything in and got it charging overnight in anticipation of me attempting my first flight tomorrow.  In the morning, before anyone was up, I went through setting up the drone and remote controller. They all needed updates including the batteries. I updated everything and waited for people to wake up so I don’t disturb them.

Well Vic gets to go to work and I head outside for my first test flight.

 

To explain, Vic and Sarah live in a house at the top of a hill. Besides the house there is not a lot of extra room. The lawn is not real so it made a nice clean and soft landing area. The edge of the roof looks closer than it actually is. There are also a few power lines in the corner of the house. After the flight I went back inside and downloaded the video. I was thrilled but thought the video quality was not up to what I thought it should be. Oh well time for another test flight.

The second flight taught me something about the obstacle avoidance. I got a little too close to the tree and no matter what I did the drone would not go foward. Good thing it is smarter than me. After landing and going inside I downloaded the video. I was still not impressed.

I swapped out the battery and went on one more flight. I wanted to practice with the controls. It’s all pretty boring stuff and the video quality is still bad.

As we are leaving in a few days I figured I needed to get the video quality problem solved. Did I set something incorrect, did the lens get damaged or is it defective. What could the problem be? As I was inspecting the camera and lense I noticed that I hadn’t removed the plastic covering over the lense. Well that could be the problem.

As you can see the video is a lot better. I was demonstrating to Vic what I could do with the drone. I tried a number of times to show him the “palm launch” and the hand gesture modes but they would not work for me. Later I found out I was doing the gestures incorrectly and I also didn’t have the settings correct.

Well that is my first day with my new drone. Look for more aerial pictures in the future.