Just recently a older friend of mine purchased a Solo because he loves photography and he told me that he has a wedding to film soon. I asked him if he had ever owned or flown anything RC.
Well the answer was NO.
So before I go on I have to back up a few years.
My problem with him,, My Friend and everyone like him is this. I have said this before and I will say it again, I personally have been flying and building my own equipment for exactly 42 years now. Am I bragging,, NO,,, its not bragging if you can do it or have done it. When has Experience been considered bragging,
Does anyone want to guess how many hours of flight time I have logged over the years and or others like myself have.. We will all tell you,,,, it doesn't matter because mechanical issues and failure doesn't care. You just have to be ready if and when it happends..
I will help anyone with anything to make sure they do it the right way and the safe way so no one gets hurt. It's stupidity if you haven't done it and think you can...
If I'm in a jet and the engines quit and we're at 20000 Ft,, I tell you what ,, I would rather have a 70 year old pilot at the yoke then a 30 year old operator.
Back in the day myself and others like me and probably many of you reading this have had the same past experiences. We had to build and learn everything about Everything..
Many of us built our own HeathKit radios and recievers before purchasing the known brand name equipment.
Let's just say We pioneers payed our dues as did the ones before us,, so before anyone starts blowing up this thread because of something I wrote,,, show some respect as I do every time I see my old RC buddies and remember we are here because of them.. and most of them are long sense dead and gone.
We had to learn how to build and with that you understood how the dynamics of things working together make things fly, float and roll.
With that you learned to respect the equipment and take pride in what you had built and accomplished. With all of the unbox and fly on the market do you think there is any of that today?
Next question I had for him,, Have you joined AMA... he asked,, what's that?
And you want to fly???,,, If you don't know who or what AMA is you should not fly or have anything to do with it at all... sell your equipment and walk away.
AMA is the organization that fights for the rights for all of us to do what we are doing now since 1936.
How many reading this forum are members,,, if your not,, maybe you should be,, There is power in numbers and the stupid people are out numbering all of us and Lawyers cost money so we can all keep what we have...
I sat my friend down for hours and opened his eyes to what he was getting himself into.
With today's companies trying to make quads (stupid proof) it can't be done because you can't fix stupid,, stupid. Remember Forest Gump,, stupid is,, as stupid does... well there you have it.
A few days later I set it up with a old TX and mini quad I had laying around..
I had my friend stop over and I told him I have something for him.
I gave him the quad and he asked what this is for...
Flight training,,,
When you can fly this in your basement without hitting the wall and can land on the arm of the sofa and fly in the wake of the central air blowing around the room and can fly it at any orientation from your body your almost ready to fly your solo or others for that matter safely..
You have to learn the basic flight skills to get yourself out of trouble.. what do you do when you have GPS , barometer issues or just plane mechanical problems because the copter won't fly itself.. so you switch to manual and take over and hope you can get back to safty ,,,
If you can't fly manual (( Nose in)) or flying around yourself or around obstacles in manual mode and get disoriented your not ready to fly and you sure as hell are not even close to being ready to take video of people at a wedding..,
With great power comes great responsibility,, yup,, It's a movie line that you all know but it's the truth right down to driving your car.
Still to this day I get into arguments about DRONES,,, we don't fly drones,, we fly multi rotors, helicopters, fixed wing, we drive RC cars, boats and trucks.
The military flys Drones..
But when these manufactures paste and package DRONE on the side of the box it doesn't help matters any.
Why,, because it sells and they themselves are killing the industry.
Years ago it was a multi rotor or quad rotor.
Now IT'S A Big Bad Drone thanks to manufacturers and the misinformation from the news media.
I'm sorry but I have seen this comming for years and the more manufacturers promote Drones and throw them in the big box stores for ignorant people to purchase the worse it's going to get ,, it's not good for any of us.
Also on a personal note,,, 30 some odd years ago I did a few things with helicopters that to this day I don't talk about. So if your going to do some stuff that you shouldn't ,, DONT put it on YouTube and make this situation worse for all of us. Just because you can,, ask yourself if you should...30 years ago you didn't go to jail.. these days you will...
I hope we are not all seeing the rise before the fall..