Palindrone

As my impending travels get nearer, the final purchases are coming into play, which is so exciting I’m a kid at Kwanza. I may even pee. First up is a personal alarm <not exactly on every child’s list for Santa, is it? – Ed> which also triggers upon movement so if you can finally hear your bag disappearing around the corner. I’d love to tell you how loud this little device is but all my screwdrivers are in a vehicle floating 5000 miles away in the Pacific, so . . . yeah. A tiny Rode microphone too has been purchased too so I begin my vlogging experience, along with the piece de résistance: a Mavic Air drone.

As regular readers will tell you (hi mum!), I had a drone before.  I wouldn’t say it ended in disaster, but let’s just say that obstacle avoidance technology wasn’t around then, and the rest writes itself. 

Mavic Maverick

In the Mavic Air, DJI, aka the Drone Elves of Rivendell, have brought out a 12-megapixel RAW shooting, 100mbps video wonder-fairy with obstacle avoidance technology at the front and back, which means whichever way it goes, it should end up with the same result (avoidance, hopefully!). It also comes equipped with a sexy looking carry-bag, hub battery charger, 3 batteries, spare propellers, 8Gb built-in memory and a supercool folding remote. There is a cost of course, but when you think about it, who needs two kidneys anyway, am I right? And my first born was also going to be just testing the waters, so really, I’ve lost nothing.
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If all that lovely tech wasn’t enough, the whole package has Apple-esque engineering, which to me is the benchmark of cool. Years ago, when iTunes consistently ruined playlists and deleted contacts, I built a good amount of loathing against that company, but their design is flawless. If you have ever played with AirPods, you’ll know what I mean: it’s simply one of those products where nerves in your fingers instantly trigger your vocal chords to audibly opine ‘ohh…that is nice, isn’t it?’. 

Flying Solo

Clearly DJI have been avid readers of my blog, as they have finally come to the party with a folding drone that is impossibly tiny. It’s smaller than your hand and weighs less than half a kilo. When I first opened the box, I expected the controller to be in this tiny zipped package, not the actual drone. Incredible. Basically, it’s hotter than Jennifer Lawrence’s underpants in a sauna.
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So Reed, what is like to fly? The simple answer is that I have no idea. I’ve had it for 24 hours and I’m absolutely scared shitless. My heart won’t take another crash. But I will go out today and report back. Let’s hope for a different result than last time.
 
References:
https://www.drone-world.com/dji-mavic-air-fly-more-combo