Toy test flight

    We finally got clear, dry weather today. Although it's both cold and breezy, still it was a nice day to take out the quadcopter. So I did.
    A good place to fly is a very underused park called Southeast Park. As it isn't exactly photogenic, I thought I would be able to forebear from using the camera and instead practice flying. I did do the latter but failed to do the former. The pictures aren't exactly electrifying, but look about as good as the terrain permitted. I would have been happier if downtown in the distance had looked clearer, but heck, it's probably 10 miles.
    People in the Syma quadcopter discussion group on Facebook keep saying to take off the blade guards, that they catch the wind and hinder flying markedly. I guess I can trust to their greater experience, but it looks impossible to me. (The blade guards are little pieces of plastic that protect the blades slightly (on only one side each) from hard landings.) However, something is certainly catching the wind. This copter is much, much heavier than the previous ones and much more powerful, but still got carried away by the wind like crazy. So the flights weren't too long.
    I did finally learn to land without crashing at least, which is a big plus. The smaller lighter drones were easy; when you got near the ground, you just hit the control for up and it came down in a more or less guided landing. This one is so heavy and falls so fast that that trick never works. So I have to let it fall and start the controlled crash much higher up. Is tricky but fun to learn to master. I just wish we could get Indian summer back, this time without any more rain. Darn it.