I’ve been reading many stories about what are termed as “fly aways.”  In a fly away situation, the remote control quadcopter becomes uncontrollable and flies away.  Considering that the unit could probably fly 40 miles per hour, a fly away with a full battery (12-15 minutes of flight time), could mean that the unit could be 10 miles away before it crashes due to the battery dying.

The DJI Phantom is supposed to fly back to where it took off if something goes wrong, but some theorize that the fly aways are the unit trying to fly to its original home, China.

Because I now have so much invested in this setup with the copter, cameras and camera mounts, I decided to implement a little insurance policy.  No not real insurance, though that’s a good idea…

I ordered a small, lightweight GPS Tracker, similar to the ones one would put on their car, bike, child, pet etc.  I’ll mount this GPS to the quadcopter and should I ever lose control or experience a dreaded fly away, I’ll be able to locate the unit with my smartphone.

I took the Phantom for a flight today, just 8 minutes of time above one of my least favorite (okay, my least favorite) courses in town.  The place is called Old Mill and it is 18 holes squeezed into an area suited for nine.

Old Mill

The lighting was very gray and cloudy, so the images pretty much suck.  But even with that bad lighting, I could tell that switching out my GoPro 3+ Black for the 3 Black was a wise choice.  The imagery is much better focused.

Can’t wait to get some shots in decent lighting conditions.  Unfortunately, it is very cold here and we won’t be seeing any “green” grass here until April or May of next year.

I’ve done the initial install of my new GoPro Hero3+ Black DJI phantom gimbal (don’t make me say that twice).  The unit is big and heavy and I can definitely see it taking a good sized chunk out of my flight times.

Now that the unit is physically installed I came to the crappy realization that my landing gear is too short!  The gimbal extends the bottom about 1.25 inches.  The money pit continues… I ordered some landing gear extensions on ebay yesterday.

The next task while waiting for the landing gear extensions is to get the gimbal hooked up to the NAZA (the quadcopter’s internal controller) so that it can be controlled and powered.  It appears that the included power cable may not be long enough and I may also have to drill a hole in the shell of the quad.

More soon.