...and somehow I ended up here. My name is Jack Olsen and I live in Los Angeles. For the pandemic, I got my kids a small, 52-year-old sailboat. We go out in our local marina and sometimes sail for a couple of miles up or down the Pacific coast. I put a couple of GoPro knockoffs on the boat, but couldn't work out how to get a shot of the whole rig from far away. It bugged me. What if I died and the kids had no picture of us all sailing the boat on the ocean? (Well, that's not really very likely, but still...) In any case, to get that picture, I'd need the person with the camera following on another boat. Covid notwithstanding, I don't know anyone I could ask to do that.
Enter... mission creep. Pretty soon I was thinking about getting a cheap drone with a camera on it. I could even get a dramatic sweeping video shot of the boat to use in one of my onboard-camera videos. But that led me to think about the idiocy of immediately crashing a drone into the ocean and losing it. Because I know I'm not going to be very good at piloting it -- especially when I'm helping to sail a little boat at the same time. So that led to looking at drones that could follow me with some reliability (budget increasing...) and that led to buying a drone that could land on water without being ruined. I know myself well enough to be certain: a zero-strike mistake policy is not going to go well for me.
But spending as much on the drone as I had on the little boat wasn't the craziest part of my journey. I sail right where the air space of Santa Monica Airport and LAX converge. I've just now figured out how to use LAANC and AirMap to request permission to fly as a recreational flyer, and if I'm willing to sail for an hour or so, I can get to a square on the map where I can get permission to do a fairly-low flight. And THAT led to my discovery that commercial drone pilots can request special permission for the many 0-altitude squares on my map. With a 10-day to 2-week wait for permission, sure. And that led to me thinking about what I'd need to do to pass the part 107 test and (crazily) become a commercial pilot.
And honestly, I don't have many ideas for what I'm going to use my PowerEgg X drone for after that, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. If I don't, this is going to be the most expensive boat picture ever.
I still haven't launched the drone. So I really don't deserve a place at this table. But I've read a few posts on this forum and am impressed by the knowledge and generosity I see. I doubt I'll be very helpful to anyone here, but I'll do my best. Here are a couple of pictures of the boat in question, and a link to a short clip of me on the race track made by someone who knows how to fly a drone.
vimeo.com
Enter... mission creep. Pretty soon I was thinking about getting a cheap drone with a camera on it. I could even get a dramatic sweeping video shot of the boat to use in one of my onboard-camera videos. But that led me to think about the idiocy of immediately crashing a drone into the ocean and losing it. Because I know I'm not going to be very good at piloting it -- especially when I'm helping to sail a little boat at the same time. So that led to looking at drones that could follow me with some reliability (budget increasing...) and that led to buying a drone that could land on water without being ruined. I know myself well enough to be certain: a zero-strike mistake policy is not going to go well for me.
But spending as much on the drone as I had on the little boat wasn't the craziest part of my journey. I sail right where the air space of Santa Monica Airport and LAX converge. I've just now figured out how to use LAANC and AirMap to request permission to fly as a recreational flyer, and if I'm willing to sail for an hour or so, I can get to a square on the map where I can get permission to do a fairly-low flight. And THAT led to my discovery that commercial drone pilots can request special permission for the many 0-altitude squares on my map. With a 10-day to 2-week wait for permission, sure. And that led to me thinking about what I'd need to do to pass the part 107 test and (crazily) become a commercial pilot.
And honestly, I don't have many ideas for what I'm going to use my PowerEgg X drone for after that, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. If I don't, this is going to be the most expensive boat picture ever.
I still haven't launched the drone. So I really don't deserve a place at this table. But I've read a few posts on this forum and am impressed by the knowledge and generosity I see. I doubt I'll be very helpful to anyone here, but I'll do my best. Here are a couple of pictures of the boat in question, and a link to a short clip of me on the race track made by someone who knows how to fly a drone.
Near Miss
Awesome footage shot by Sean Fannin. In-car footage shot by me. No Cobras were hurt in the making of this clip.
vimeo.com
