DJI Phantom 3 Advanced - Initial Impressions - Part 3

After ordering the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced, and while waiting for it to arrive, I downloaded and read the manual, watched the DJI tutorial videos, and watched a lot of YouTube videos about or taken by drones, especially the DJI Phantom 3.

I felt I had some insight as to how to approach learning how to fly and control the drone. A co-worker of mine, Nick, who has flown RC drones for years gave me some advice. When it arrived and I got the batteries charged and the firmware updated, I was ready.

I went out to my back yard, set up a crate as my heliport, followed the instructions to turn the equipment on, and hit the "Auto Takeoff" button. The drone armed its motors and then launched, hovering about 4 feet above the top of the TV tray! I was airborne!



Birdseye View

Per Nick's advice, I started slowly moving the roll and pitch controls to just go back and forth in one direction, then flying small squares, in both directions. Getting a feel for the response of the aircraft to the controls. Because the DJI Phantom 3 is such an advanced aircraft, I didn't need to control the elevation manually during these exercises. It will hold it's elevation for you. When you move horizontally, however, you do lose some lift so I did bump up the elevation a bit now and then just to keep it about eye level.

Eventually I had it in an open area with no trees above it and I decided to try making it go higher. I went straight up to about 60 feet. It was still easy to see the drone but at the same time a bit nerve-wracking having something that expensive up in the air that high! I made the camera point down and snapped a picture of my dog Elmer and I in our backyard with the dormant grass.

I was able to land before using up all of the battery, and repeated the trials with the second battery. The batteries were used up before you know it, and way before you want them to be used. It would be great to have half a dozen batteries or so, with the capacity to charge multiple batteries at the same time.

I found that using the DJI GO controller application on my iPhone 5 was satisfactory. I could make out what the camera was seeing. I could access most controls okay. Some of the controls use icons that are rendered very small on the iPhone 5 but I have somewhat grown accustomed to that from other iPhone apps and was able to get around it.

I tried my wife's iPhone 6 Plus which has the larger screen and it wasn't significantly better, not to the point where it made me want to upgrade my phone. I was actually thankful about that - it meant I didn't have to spend more money!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is my first encounter with the RC world. I don't know what it would have been like without the auto-hover or video streaming capabilities of the DJI Phantom 3. I do know that those features and others are what people praised in the many reviews I read and what led to their recommendations for this platform and to my purchasing it. I have to say I did not have any trouble flying the drone!

What about some video?

After the batteries had charged again I was able to go through both of them once more in my backyard. This time I captured a video of the adventure. It's not terribly amazing but I edited it a bit by putting some titles on it and one of my songs (the Phantom 3 does NOT capture sound). Enjoy!