DJI Spark Drone - Our newest acquistition

We picked up a DJI Spark drone yesterday so we could create some aerial photography. It was a bit challenging to get up and running. The activation was confusing. If you get one, the secret is to connect your iPhone's WiFi (the drone comes with USB cables for Android phones) to the Spark network using the password found on the back of the RC controller. Then, load the DJI Go 4 app, insert a good SD card, and start flying.

Here is a short video of some of my first footage:

I was nervous while flying it. I didn't take it as high as it could go (within FAA guidelines) because I was afraid it would get blown away by the wind. I finally got brave enough to get a tree top view of the surroundings.

On my second flight, I only raised the altitude, I didn't travel once I was high in the air because I haven't yet become familiar enough with the controls. Honestly, I felt a little vertigo when looking up at it and imagining how high it was. I'm going to have to get over that and learn to fly at higher altitudes.

It's a lot of fun to fly. It's also very easy to fly. All you have to do is hit the takeoff button and it will hover 4 feet in the air. When you raise altitude, it will maintain it when you stop. I did notice that it climbed a bit when moving forward, but that could have been the wind.

I've spent the past few weeks reading over the rules and regulations on the FAA website as well as other related videos and articles. There's a lot to worry about in order to fly safely. We live just outside of class D airspace of an Air Force base. We're sandwiched between that and two other airports to the East. There are two heliports within 5 miles that I have to notify when I'm flying.

I registered with the FAA back in 2015 when they were offering free registrations. I put a label on the top of our quadcopter with our FAA registration and my name. I think I need to add my phone number in case it flies off and someone else finds it.

I hope we get a lot of use out of it. The battery only lasts about 15 minutes, so we'll need to get some more batteries. Other than that, I'd say that the DJI Spark is a great quadcopter for beginners. We're not sure if drone photography is for us, so investing a lot more money into a Mavic Air or Mavic Pro didn't make sense.

After some time in beginner mode, I switched it to sport mode and had my first crash. If I had been higher than the fence, it would have ended up in my neighbors swimming pool.