World's Smallest Flying Camera

Still droning on about this you might ask?

Well, yeah. Becoming a proficient pilot is a matter of droning on. It’s like learning magic or playing a musical instrument. It takes practice. Then it takes more practice. Then you have to practice. And practice. Over and over and over again.

As you’ve seen, not all of my practice sessions have been exactly golden. I crashed repeatedly into asphalt at the field near the Artegon Mall. I nearly lost the drone altogether while flying at Cypress Grove Park. And then there was that time I was flying in the back yard and crashed into a neighbors sliding glass window. Plus it’s not always easy to fly outside. The backyard gets seriously windy. And then there’s the rain…and believe me, lately there’s been lots of it.

Being able to practice using the controller indoors would be nice. The box says this model can be flown both indoors and outdoors. But so far flying it indoors has been a disaster. Since it’s not so much having the drone in the air as it is a matter of becoming comfortable with the controller, I thought about flying a model helicopter that a friend left with me when she moved to Oregon. The controller itself is a little smaller, but the actual controls are the same. Unfortunately, it is stuck in mode two, which makes all the controls different from what I’m using with my Syma XC5-1.

So what to do? I figured I needed some lessons. Once upon a time I would have gone to the library to look stuff up. But times change. So I turned to the Internet. Or in this case the Internet turned to me. Funny thing about buying stuff on line. Your computer remembers. Then, as if it’s doing you a favor, it clutters every site you view with a plethora of ads for similar stuff. Mostly it’s annoying. I bought a motorcycle helmet on line. So for the next a couple of weeks I was inundated with ads for helmets. After you‘ve bought one, how many more do you need? Same thing with a cat carrier I bought from Amazon. I only use the thing to take my cat to the vet. And he knows it too. If I brought another one into the house he‘d kill me. Or run away.

It wasn‘t surprising, then, that I started seeing ads for every type of quad copter that flys. Mostly I ignored them. But then I saw an ad for what they were calling the world’s smallest flying camera drone. It was called a Cheerson. It was tiny. And it had a tiny controller. And a relatively tiny price. It was only $28. What did I have to lose? Well, twenty-eight bucks, of course. But, sadly enough, that’s only the sacrifice of a movie with popcorn and a coke. Alone. And we’re not even talking an IMAX 3D movie either. If the controls of this Cheerson were similar to the Syma’s, what with it’s size and all, indoor flights didn’t seem like much of a destructive venture. And I certainly needed the practice. So after a glass of wine or two, I sent Amazon more of my money.

It didn’t take that long to arrive, and when it did, it actually fit in the mailbox. I

The Cheerson CX-10

opened the box. There it was, in the palm of my hand; the Cheerson CX-10 mini with a 0.2mp camera. Unlike the Syma, the camera wasn’t removable. Neither was the battery. There was a built-in SD card slot, though. And the instructions said the camera was good for both still photos and video. I couldn’t help but wonder how good the video could be on something this small. Then again, having taken an Iphone 4s apart, the camera it has is so small it’s nearly invisible and the quality of the pictures and videos it produces are stunning, relatively speaking. But there’s really only one proof for that pudding.

I plugged the charger cord into a USB slot and then plugged it directly into the little drone. I mean little, too. It’s only an inch and a half square. The propellersare tiny, only an inch long. I kept feeling like Will Smith in Men in Black when Tommy Lee Jones hands him the noisy cricket gun. In my mind I kept hearing a voice say, “I feel like I’m gonna break this damned thing.” Still, it was seemingly more of a toy than anything else, so I couldn’t imagine it was that fragile.

Good thing it wasn’t too.

First flight: Too much throttle. Straight up into the ceiling and then into the wall just to crash behind the television. Next flight: Over compensation on the rudder. Right into the right wall and down behind the couch. It’s a seven foot sofa with duel recliners. And it’s heavy. Getting the drone out from behind it wasn’t easy. But it was easier than retrieving it when I lost control, crashed into the kitchen wall where it actually fell behind the refrigerator. It’s a big refrigerator and it sets in an incredibly tight place in the kitchen making it really difficult to move back from the wall.

Before I could even do that, I had to take everything off the top first. This is an apartment, meaning that storage space is at a premium, so there was a lot of stuff up there. I couldn’t believe how much. There was an assortment of pitchers; the huge pickle jar I use in the summer to make sun tea; a ten-year supply of Rice Krispies we got to make crispy treats with but didn’t; a flask I’d forgotten I owned; some drink mixing cups my friend Bryan had left when he and Liz lit out for Oregon; a martini shaker I’d actually been looking for; a turkey roasting pan (which I was pretty sure I owned but couldn’t remember); two plastic trick or treat candy bowls; a couple of wine glasses with fall leaf patterns on them; several unfortunately empty liquor bottles; a half-full bottle of red Gatoraide, which was a total mystery since I don’t like red Gatoraide; two small thermos bottles; a bag of candy corn; a Christmas cookie jar with one stale and disparaging chocolate chip cookie inside; and half a bottle of Winking Owl Merlot, which I immediately dealt with since I did, after all, have a wine glass with a fall leaf pattern printed on it at hand.

With all this stuff now spread all over every counter in the kitchen, I pulled the refrigerator away from the wall a little. There was the Cheerson drone, it’s rim lights flashing happily as if it were saying “hi! Better come get me!” I hit the throttle on the miniature controller, hoping I could fly it out and not have to pull the refrigerator any further. It was a good idea, but the drone only hopped into the air and then immediately flipped over. It had lost one of its propellers. Bummer. At least I learned that the props slipped off their needle-like spindles rather than just simply break. And they easily slipped back on too. That was something.

After the refrigerator incident, fortunately, my flying style settled down and I

rapidly began gaining control, something I‘d seldom managed to do flying my larger, Syma drone. I found that my real problem had been coordination between my left and right thumbs. When I moved the right lever forward to fly straight away, I’d been moving my left thumb as well, which instantly shot the thing straight up, which was something I hadn’t wanted to happen. I had to learn to work the controls independently of each other. And a light touch on the throttle helped a lot. And turning the front of the drone, and therefore the camera, away from me instead of pointing at me helped more than that. Flying the drone toward me rather that away from me reverses the controls, making you have to think about every move rather that simply compensating automatically.

Before long I was flying the Cheerson around the room without crashing into anything for the duration of its battery life. Then I learned how to make it hover. Then I took it outside, flew it high enough that I could barely see its lights but maneuvered it anyway, and brought it into a landing into my extended hand. Then I learned how to make it fly in a circle, turn to point its tiny camera in various directions.

Well, I’m sure you get the point.

Finally, I was becoming a pilot.