IF YOU THOUGHT I WAS BORING BEFORE, WAIT’LL YOU SEE MY NEW HOBBY

As my title suggests, I now have another “hobby” to add to my retirement package. Besides being a professional golfer, talented fisherman and guide, author of a major blog, chef, and the one in charge, who “metes” out the jobs around this castle, I am now a certified, licensed and skilled DRONE PILOT. Ron and JMW have now dragged me, flailing away, further into a life of high tech. Sometimes I just have to sit down and wonder “who am I? where am I? and what am I doing here?” It all started when my son-in-law took up drone flying and decided that he finally had found something that I was not going to be able to handle.

Ha! A couple of weeks later I was writing an examination for a drone pilots license, which would allow me to fly hovercraft up to “just shy of” the size you could ride on. It is a DOT exam and I must say, that although I took the course and passed the test, a few minutes after completion I could not remember much of what I learned or was asked on the test. I guess that means I’m not working for AC anytime soon. It then took me a few days to get up the courage to actually fly this aircraft. I turned it on, and it made one hell of a sound with 4 props beating the air and making a frightening “whirrrring” sound. Then I quickly shut it down, and sat looking at it from a distance.

But after some prodding by Ron, and with instruction from Deysi, and armed with my license, I took it out and gave it a test flight. This time, I made sure I was well away from people and had my aircraft hovering about 6 feet off the ground. All of the sudden a “big ol’ shit eating dog” came bounding out of the weeds. One yelp, and it made a “Michael Jordan” leap for my drone. Deysi screamed and I almost had the big one right there and then.

Luckily for that dog, he missed. Or he would have gotten a “Peruvian nutter” from Deysi and henceforth, wouldn’t have been jumping much at all. I am attaching a short video clip from a walk that we went on with Ange. This in a place called Todd Inlet, off Brentwood Bay, and just north of Victoria. It was beautiful, mild, dry and calm. Ange shows great patience in humouring me thru my feeble attempts at breaking into the world of modern technology.

The first thing you will notice, is the quality of its video recorder. My god what a step up from that big old movie camera, I used to lug around when the girls were small. You will also notice that I am still flying in a very limited range, as dictated by Deysi. She has visions of my drone making a break for freedom and disappearing into the sunset across the water. Never to be seen again. Another thing you might notice. Is that I have not yet discovered how to add sound to my videos, but I am working on that and will conquer it shortly. In any event, it is a bit chopped up and jerky. however it will add proof that I can, in fact, pilot a drone. Even control it somewhat and follow Deysi’s instructions on how and where to fly it.