Many recent news stories detail people who are shooting down drones which are flying over their property.  My very limited understanding is that shooting the drones down is in general not legal, and some are facing charges for discharging a firearm inside city areas.

Most of these people don’t understand that the drone can’t “see everything.”  Unless the aerial vehicle is a few feet away, it probably can’t see their wife sunbathing in the backyard.  A camera with a long lens or a covertly placed camera phone can gather much more juicy imagery than a noisy flying weedwhacker.  But that’s not the point of this article.

How To Take Down A Drone

If your neighbor is flying a drone and you want to bring it down there’s no need for a gun.  No need to call the police.  No need to freak out.

The best anti-drone weapon on the planet can be found at many common stores and only costs a few cents…

All you need to bring a drone down is a loose ball of yarn.  Toss it up in the air and watch the drone come down for an unintentional crash landing.  Then you can have a “discussion” with the drone “pilot” about flying over your property, and the “finder’s fee” you’d like to collect to return the pilot’s drone to him/her.

If you wish to buy a drone defense system, I have them for sale at $99.99 each with free shipping!

I’ve been fairly satisfied with my second frame for my Alien 680mm Quadcopter. The “Alien” frame is a foldable design, meant to be more portable and easy to transport. Unhappy with the first frame I purchased, I picked up a second one and transferred all the parts. It has been much improved.

Part of the catch with my new frame is the foldable arm mounts were weak. I ran into some issues trying to level my motors and noticed that the arms were not level with each other, and were actually sagging. There was some play in the arms, vertically and horizontally. Imagine how messed up that could be in flight with arms moving up and down and the flight controller trying to compensate. And over time that play in the arms would certainly end up in an arm failing.

Notice how much play there is around this clamp? Bad bad bad.

I took a look at the old mounts which came on my first frame, and those happened to be more solid, by a long shot. So I ripped apart the bird and replaced the weak arm mounts with the more solid ones from the old frame. The difference is remarkable. My bird is much more stable and the video quality is better. I will have to mod the folding clamps a tiny bit but that’s not a big deal.

Left: the better 16mm arm mount
Right: The weak one which was removed

It’s nice to have an entire extra frame of parts to pick from when building or tweaking a build of a multirotor copter.

With the rampant paranoia and constant negative press drones (also known as UAV’s by many who prefer that name), I feel it is good to try and pump out some positive information about drones. Contrary to the uninformed people crying wolf, drones can do, will do, and ARE doing many great things across all sorts of industries. My goal with the new category DRONES FOR GOOD is to highlight, once every week or two, a story or way that a drone is doing good.

Drone beer delivery?  I’m all over that!  Can I put in a morning coffee order as well?

As of this writing I know of several fantastic applications drones are being used for, much more than the standard aerial photography and aerial video.  Drones are being used for mapping, agricultural needs, real estate, research, delivery of products, search and rescue, firefighting, law enforcement, wildlife preservation, and more.

Despite all these great applications and huge possibilities in the business world, the few morons who fly too close to airports, impede fire and rescue, or fly over their neighbor’s back yard without the neighbor’s permission are getting the bulk of the attention.

Ironically many of the same news outlets that are fueling the drone paranoia fire are using drones to deliver their product in more interesting ways.

Drones For Good

Welcome to the new topic here.  What ways can you think of which drones are doing good?