https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnJcZfsVLAQ

Say what you will about privacy and weapon-ization . . . with a 4K camera, it is a pretty sweet video platform.

I wonder what size shot will be most effective against it.

My 14 year old bought a camera drone with about $375 of his own money. It’s the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 and is available through Amazon. His mom and I both cautioned him he was going to be disappointed, but we have been proven wrong. That thing is pretty amazing. It basically flys itself and you give it inputs using a tablet or smart phone to go up /down /left / right / etc. It takes off and lands using auto pilot. It has a forward looking HD camera that tilts and pans and a second fixed downward looking SD camera. If you try to fly it out of range, it returns automatically. It can do a barrel roll flip at the touch of a button and this feature supposedly can help it “rescue” itself from a tree.

The first day he flew it (flawlessly, by the way), I remarked to him it was pretty cool and I would like him to fly it over our roof so I could do a virtual inspection. I mentioned I had never seen the top of the chimney in the 25 years we’ve lived here. On the second day, I came home from work and found my son sitting on the couch on our screened in porch staring at his tablet screen. The door to the porch was propped open. When he saw me, he asked if I wanted to see what the top of the chimney looked like. I watched what I thought was a short recorded video hovering over the chimney above us. I asked when he recorded that and he floored me by revealing that was a live feed and he was flying the drone using the camera above us at that moment. He had flown it out of the screened in porch, navigated through a maze of trees behind our house and was merrily buzzing overhead.

I’ve had a serious talk with him about using it inappropriately and the fact he could go to juvy if he used it for something illicit.

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Behind every great man is a great woman. Behind every great woman is a great behind.

There is a big battle on right now between the FAA and illegal drone operators. Apparently, there is concern the drone operators may fly their drones into the flight paths of commercial aircraft causing an accident. There have been reported "near misses".

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/09/travel/unmanned-drone-danger/index.html

This model flies itself to a smart phone. The next model might fly itself to a shotgun, with a grenade on board. Escalation can be a *****, just look at McNamara.

You come over my property, you look like a duck in season to me. Stay away from my property and all is good. You want to up the ante, well, we can deal with that too.

You got any hot chick neighbors like to sunbathe in their back yards?

- Peter.

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2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
2002 Kia Rio. Worst crap on four wheels
1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

Heck, we have a whole nudist park in Cincinnati. I suspect mostly indoor activities right now.

The footage is pretty awesome. A lot of the cameras that are light enough to attach aren't great - I mean a gopro is nice but it's not really feature film quality. There are bigger ones you can hang a dSLR on but they are $$$$.

Hopefully the FAA regs will strike a good balance between public safety and opening up the tool to all sorts of private and commercial uses. They can be pretty dangerous if you get smacked in the head with one (or stuff one into a turbine engine)