Learning where you can, and cannot fly is a basic part of learning to pilot a drone. To aid this there are several mobile applications that a pilot can use to check the airspace status of a potential flying site. Just scroll that map and select a site to see the warnings.
Flying the Mavic Air on Mauna KeaFirst there is the official FAA app B4UFly available for both iOS and Android. There is also a notable alternative in AirMap, a third party application that uses the FAA database to accomplish the same task.
I have downloaded and used both for flight planning applications around the island. The island of Hawaiʻi offers some spectacular scenery that has made learning to fly the drone quite enjoyable.
Basically the official FAA B4UFly application sucks. A blunt expression, but appropriate, it truly does.
Learning to fly the Mavic Air has been a pleasure, and actually much easier than I feared.
Flying a Mavic Air over the badlands of recent Hualālai lava flowsThe purchase of a drone was a bit of leap, one I had been considering for quite some time. When you realize where I will be over the next month the time was now.
Our annual boating trip into the wilds of Alaska and British Columbia offers stunning photographic opportunities for a drone. Not that the island of Hawaii does not offer a great place to learn.
Now or never! So I put down the money and bought the aircraft.
With drone in hand I need to learn to fly it. I need practice to achieve the level of competency I feel is required. I have had a month to practice, a month I have made good use of. Regularly flying and logging quite a few discharged batteries each week.
I am taking learning to fly seriously.
To watch a thousand dollar drone disappear into the sky takes a leap of faith. Faith in the technology and faith in your own skill to pilot the drone back to the launch site. Any number of times I have piloted it far enough away that the drone itself is lost to view, even though I have a clear view of where it is. It is always reassuring to hear the buzzing grow louder and have this little aircraft reappear as it returns.
When you take a drone out of the case and begin preparations for flight in a public place it is inevitable that you attract a little attention.
Flying the Mavic with a small audienceThe worry? Will that attention be negative?
The news has been filled with negative reactions to drones. To be expected of course, drones are a new technology bound to attract attention, and the media tend to write about something only when it goes bad. If it bleeds, it leads reporting.
The result has been quite a few reports of negative reaction in public to a drone. Reports of spying or snooping into private property have become common. There has certainly been some hysteria surrounding drones, some justified, quite a bit completely unjustified.
Weather? Currently overcast, no rain, and almost no breeze. Hard to believe there is a hurricane just offshore.
The worst wind was early last night, and then no worse than a strong trade wind event. We have had much worse several times this year.
The rain gauge has not even made it to an inch of precipitation. We have had none of the torrential rain the other side of the island has experienced.
All is quiet here, no damage beyond having to pick up the usual scattered palm fronds.
The video below is the storm passing by our island over the last 38 hours. I started saving the 4km IR images as soon as the eye of Hurricane Lane entered the close range image and have assembled them into a video.
This is our closest pass so far for a hurricane. May the remainder of the season be uneventful…
OK, flying for a few weeks now with the Mavic Air, my first drone. Fortunately my training area is slightly scenic, just stopping off on the way to work in the morning and burning through a couple batteries.
The video is really an experiment and a learning exercise. With a bunch of video clips from the flights I needed to see what works, and what does not when it comes to editing. No better way to do that than attempt to assemble this material into a video.
What am I doing wrong? Quite a bit, I did not edit all of the flaws away in the video, you will see them. Definitely need to relax and use a bit more finesse on the controls to produce smooth panning motions. I have been experimenting with cinematic mode and slowing the gimbal down.
Why did I buy a drone? I really consider it as a camera that flies, not as an aircraft that happens to have a camera. The drone is a way to give my photography freedom of the air and to gain a new perspective.
Hurricane Lane is looking to swing north just east of the island. The worst of the storm should pass through tomorrow. All of our Keck staff has been told to stay home and take care of family and property, observing is cancelled for the next two nights.
Hurricane Lane approaches the islands as seen in this 4km resolution IR image
