Blue View – Flying Our New Drone

View of Blue from drone

From a previous blog regarding our new drone: “I'll be learning how to fly it this week. I'll let you know how I did in next week's Blue View, unless I crash it or it flies off over the horizon - in which case the subject will never be discussed again.” While we did have a week or so of bad weather, we did have good weather on our way back to Las Vegas, and had no probem finding a couple of isolated spots in western Utah that looked perfect for drone flying. There was no wind. It was sunny. I couldn’t come up with any more reasons not to take the plunge.

Well it didn’t crash nor depart for a land far, far away. After a little familiarization with the basic operation, I managed to get it to take-off, fly around shooting videos of, more or less, what I hoped to take videos of, then get it to return to me and land… several times, in fact.

As reluctant as it I am to admit it, however, my drone piloting success is certainly not due to any innate skill or competence on my part - my clumsiness and lack of eye-hand coordination are legend in my family. No, this is a testimony to the sophistication and quality of the drone software. The Holy Stone HS720 is a pretty smart cookie. It will take-off and land at the press of a button. If it strays too far from home or the battery gets dangerously low, it will automatically return and land itself.

The drone’s view of me as I look up at it…

With the press of a button, I can get it to circle an object. Another button press and it will follow along behind me. Or, I can pull up a local map, draw a route with my finger, and the drone will follow the route. Short of flying it into a tree or telephone pole, it’s hard to mess up. Pretty cool.

Take-off/Landing button

Plotting a route for the drone to fly

The drone does have some shortcomings – the video footage is sometimes jerky as the drone moves and corrects its position, for example, but I’m hopeful that some of these can be lessened as I gain experience. Bear in mind that I am a complete novice when it comes to drones, and other than comparing specs, I can’t honestly compare the Holy Stone HS720 with other drones. I can say, however, that I had no issues flying this drone and I’m quite optimistic that we’ll be getting some nice video footage in the future.

We did a video on learning to fly the drone, and if you’d like to watch, click here.

BTW, I paid full retail for the drone – Holy Stone didn’t offer or provide any incentive for evaluating their drone.