My interest in drones is less about flying small unmanned vehicles and more about aerial photography and videography. The latter simply affords a perspective of things around you that you cannot get normally.
My first foray into drones though ended badly. The missus surprised me with a DJI Phantom 3 for my birthday in December 2015. But I had no idea on how to fly drones then, and had a mishap when during setup I accidentally launched the drone indoors in our study room. I was fortunately able to catch the Phantom 3 by hand in time before it hit the ceiling, but that incident damaged the drone’s propellors when it clipped the wardrobe doors. I packed the drone thereafter back into the box and ended up giving it away to my nephew a few years thereafter. An unfortunate situation of something being out of sight and out of mind, and basically never getting around to it after that incident.
But since that point, I’d continued over the last several years to keep an eye on the evolving capabilities of drones, and at a few points seriously contemplated buying a smaller unit and only after I’d done extensive homework this time. But the pretty restrictive regulations here in Singapore governing drones for recreational use continued to put this project off.
That is, until we firmed up our plans in mid-February to visit Vietnam and Halong Bay June this year: and that was when I resolved that in the next few months, I’d learn to fly a drone and do aerial videography so that I can do exactly that in our coming trip.
Once that personal resolution was set, things started moving along pretty quickly. I essentially had just three requirements for the new drone I’d need:
Under 250g: that important takeoff weight limit that would mean lighter usage regulation in many countries.
Support for 4K video.
Obstacle avoidance: because I might just turned out to be a clunky pilot!
While there are a number of companies which make consumer-level drones for recreational use, there is a clear market leader in this segment, and it’s DJI – same as back in 2015. The takeoff weight limitation of 250 grams furthermore considerably narrowed the possible options. And once obstacle avoidance was added to the required feature list, there was really only one model from DJI that would meet all three requirements: the DJI Mini 3 Pro. DJI has two other under 250g drones on the retail shelf: the Mini 2 SE, and the standard Mini 3 – both of which supports 4K video but do not offer obstacle avoidance.
The specific drone model identified, the next part was to learn how to fly drones and making sure this was something I would like to do before I fork out the dough and buy the DJI Mini 3 Pro. Coming out of that experience with the Phantom 3, I was determined to get the learning right this time. So, I signed up and attended a half-day Beginner’s course in flying drones offered by Drone Flying Academy (DFA). The class was conducted in late February on a weekday – took a personal day off to attend it – and by the end of the four hours, I’d developed the necessary confidence skills in basic drone handling and flying.
I’m not in any way affiliated with DFA. But that workshop provided an incredible instructional experience for beginners like myself. There was theory to explain the engineering concepts in unmanned aerial vehicles, the prevailing regulations governing in Singapore, how to fly the drone for the first time, an emphasis on safety, and – most importantly – the workshop included sufficient practice time at an open field. The class was small at just four students including myself – not surprisingly since it was a weekday class – and conducted at Midview City, a short 12 minute drive away from home. Sure, I could have tried learning how to fly the drone by watching YouTube videos and saving myself the SGD278 – SGD248 for the four hour course and $30 for rental of a drone. But I’m glad that I attended this course and in doing so, have learnt the basics.
DFA is also an official reseller of DJI drones, and offers its alumni discounts off the retail pricing. I’d done checks of prices of DJI drones elsewhere, and like Apple products, there seems to be some level of pricing control with the large electronic stores like Courts, Harvey Norman and Challenger listing the drones for identical prices. There were a few resellers on Carousell offering the same discounts as DFA, but since I’d already had a great experience with this learning provider, I decided to buy the DJI Mini 3 Pro from them over the last weekend.
Continued in the next post!