For the Next Five Minutes, I Own the Skies

Everyone knows I’m nuts, so I suppose it will do no harm to provide further evidence. I bought a drone.

I hate drones. The whole point of drones, for most people, is to take naked pictures of women through their bathroom windows, and they are also useful for violating the sanctity of your neighbors’ yards and generally making an intolerable ass of yourself. But I don’t plan to involve myself in the primary uses of drones, so I felt like it was okay to get one. I wanted to see what the fuss was about.

I got myself a Sky Viper Nano, which is about the smallest drone you can buy unless you’re the CIA. It’s literally the size of two Hot Wheels cars side-by-side. I knew it was small when I saw it online, but when I bought it and opened the box, it still gave me a jolt. In my yard there are grasshoppers bigger than this thing. No exaggeration. Look up “lubber.”

It was nearly charged when I bought it, so I barely had time to read the totally patronizing and unneeded instructions.

Okay, I did read them. I just hate instructions, on general principles.

When you buy this drone, you get the drone itself, a video-game-style controller, and a USB charging cord. That’s about it. You charge it until the LED on the cord turns green, and off you go.

The controller is pretty cool. It takes AAA batteries. It has two joysticks, four trim buttons, and a “stunt” button. One joystick controls the direction in which the drone is turned; it can spin it while the drone hovers in place. It also controls the speed of the props, making the drone go up and down. The other joystick tells the drone to move in whatever compass direction you choose, at whatever speed you choose. The trim buttons adjust it so doesn’t run off or spin when the joysticks are in their home positions. For example, if you lift off and the drone spins, you push a trim button until it stops.

The stunt button makes the drone turn over once. If you’re going forward, it does a barrel roll.

I figured I would destroy it if I took it outside, so I tried it indoors. It was impossible. I could get it off the floor, but then it really liked to scuttle sideways or backward. Then it would go under furniture and sulk, or it would simply bang into things and stop.

With effort, I got it to where I could make three-foot trips that were not very uneventful. At that point I got brave and took it outside. About ten minutes later, it went straight up about sixty feet and disappeared behind me, over the roof.

I probably had something to do with that.

I looked all over the neighborhood. This drone is tiny, but it will fly 200 feet before losing the signal and stopping. I no way of locating it. They don’t beep when they’re lost.

If you’re shy and you want to meet your neighbors, buy a drone. Sooner or later, you will have to knock on their doors and ask if they’ve seen it.

I finally got a ladder and got on the roof, where I saw that a new herd of bees had moved into my soffit. Great. Time to call the bee people again. Oh well. Free honey.

I found the drone and took it back indoors. I had to go somewhere earlier, so I stopped playing with it, but now I’m back, and I’m determined to get it under control.

A few things surprised me.

1. It goes a very long way. Theoretically, you can fly this thing throughout an imaginary 400-foot hemisphere, with you at the center. That’s bigger than a football field, with a ceiling that reaches 200 feet when you go straight up.

2. It really moves. It seems like it goes about 30 miles per hour horizontally. That’s probably an illusion related to its small size. But there is no way a human being could run and keep up with it. And it flies straight up in a big hurry. When it went over the house, I had about a second to react, and clearly, that was not enough.

One reason I picked this drone is that I saw people talking about 7-minute and 10-minute flights. That may not seem like a lot, but its competitors are said to check in at 3-4 minutes, and I knew that would drive me nuts. Every time it stops, you have to charge it for maybe 20 minutes. How much can you learn in 4 minutes? Not a whole lot.

I had some problems with the drone quitting suddenly. I think that was because the props were pushed on too far. They’re held on by friction, so it’s up to you how far onto the shafts they go. I think they were rubbing. It stops automatically when it thinks it’s obstructed.

I wanted to give this thing a try so I would have some tiny acquaintance with the technology. I’m not a fan of drone users; they’re like the creepy people who get thrown out of restaurants for filming people with Google glass. But drones are not going away, so I might as well learn a little bit about them. It’s even conceivable (barely) that I might one day have a use for one.

Also, I wanted one because it was cool, and hey…30 bucks.

If I get comfortable with it, I may blow $80 on a bigger drone with a built-in camera. I found a model with a phone mount on the controller. You put the phone on the mount, and you watch the camera video while the drone flies. Hilarious. I’ll bet all sorts of punks have used that rig to watch startled women reaching for their tops beside their swimming pools.

It looks like you need a big field and a calm day to really enjoy a drone, and you definitely don’t want to be near a swimming pool. One more reason to find a piece of land far from other human beings.

Under current law, you can fly your drone all around your neighbor’s house and look in the windows, and there is nothing she (it’s always a she) can do about it. That’s unfortunate. I think you should be allowed to shoot down anything below, say, 300 feet. Anything a shotgun can reach. Maybe the law will change. On the other hand, you don’t want to be the drone equivalent of the grumpy old man who won’t give the basketball back because it rolled onto his grass.

Technology is fun and dreadful, all at the same time. It has stolen our privacy and our power, but it has given us all sorts of crazy abilities we enjoy but don’t need.

It may be a long time before I get a new toy this interesting. If you have nothing better to do, run down to Toys R Us and get one for yourself. If you can’t shoot your neighbor’s drones down, at least you can go on the offensive. Maybe he’ll back down after you Youtube a few videos of him sitting on the toilet.