Looking out the window
My eight-year-old cousin is homeschooled. I asked her one time how long it takes her every day to do her school work.
Her answer describes me completely. She said that it takes me about two hours unless I spend too much time looking out the window. If I do, it takes a lot longer.
I know the feeling. I sometimes spend too much time looking out the window and time slips away and I realize that I haven't accomplished much.
Of course, sometimes that's not all bad. Below is a picture of the view I saw this morning when I was looking out my window and enjoying my coffee. No wonder I didn't get a lot done.
What I had planned on doing this morning was to take my drone out to the softball field and practice flying it. With my flying skills, I wouldn't dare try to fly it around the campground. And I sure wouldn't want to fly it out over the water.
I'm an instrument rated pilot with about 2,500 hours of flying time, but I haven't flown any lately. None of that experience helped me a bit when I started trying to learn to fly a drone.
I remember one time when I was a student pilot my flight instructor told me I had more confidence than skill. That's a dangerous thing when you're flying an airplane.
That wasn't the case with me flying the drone. I didn't have any confidence or skill when I started. I'm getting better, but I still need a softball field when I'm flying to make sure I don't hurt anybody, anything, or the drone.
Back to looking out the window
By the time I finished my coffee this morning and stopped looking out the window, the wind had picked up and I decided that it wasn't a good time to go fly my drone.
Tomorrow will be different. I have everything in the car and I've watched some more YouTube videos. I'm going to be at the softball field early (with my coffee cup in one hand) and I'm going to get some flying time in. Maybe I should get a logbook and log all of my flying time like I did back when I was a real pilot.
Here is a picture of my drone.
I only paid $40 for this drone, so it's no big deal if I crash it. I do have some spare parts, but so far I haven't needed any of them. I was out with a friend recently. He was flying his drone that he paid over $1,300 for. He asked me if I wanted to fly it, and I said, "No thank you."
The day wasn't a total loss. I did enjoy looking out the window and drinking my coffee this morning.
By the way: The purpose of me learning to fly the drone is so I can shoot some videos to post on my RVing YouTube channel. I will let you know when I get some videos posted.
Update: I have had some questions about where I purchased the drone I'm using. I bought it from GearBest in China. It takes about two weeks to arrive. The shipping is free. The price has jumped around from about $29 to $52. Now you can get the low-resolution version with a 480 p camera for $32 and the one with the 780 p camera is $52. You might want to consider getting one of each then you would have one for parts. The drones are the same except for the camera. Have fun.
https://www.gearbest.com/rc-quadcopters/pp_666745.html?wid=21