Flying My Drone

I was finally able to learn to fly my Parrott AR Drone this week.  The top two photographs Were taken by my wife this evening as I was demonstrating it to her.  The bottom two are photographs I took with the drone as I was demonstrating it at the Brookside Laboratory Consultants Meeting after we toured the new lab in New Bremen, OH.  There currently a number of drones available for agricultural applications.  This one is limited by range although there are programmable models similar to this one that could fly without the controller on a specific route.  Battery life is about 12 minutes.  The controller is a smartphone or Ipad app that uses a WIFI signal.  The first time I flew it, I could not see the phone screen well because of brightness, so flying was pretty shaky.  I went out in the evening and flew it in less light and learned it pretty well.  When I demonstrated it at the lab, it flew outside of the controller range at the same time it was being pushed down by the wind.  It was pretty hard to find where it crashed in the soybean field.  I am hoping to use it to spot crop issues in a field and then walk to them to investigate.

Parrott AR Drone in Flight

Parrott Drone

Crowd Watching Demo

Overview of Soybeans