Drones

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Zasso Nouka
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Drones

Post by Zasso Nouka »

So we bought a drone recently, mainly to use it for checking our farmland without having to actually walk to each location. And that's why I'm fat :cry:. Really though it's quite a big timesaver in the mornings when deciding what jobs to schedule for the day/week, a quick zip around the farm and outlying land and you can rapidly assess the state of crops and what jobs need doing.

Luckily Japan currently has some fairly liberal drone laws and most of them boil down to common sense rules like not flying near an airport or not flying over people and crowds or in built up areas and you currently don't need to register or have a license for hobby drones but that may change if folk start doing stupid things. There is a summary in English of the current drone laws here at Drone Law Japan and a fuller guide to the laws here at MLIT in Japanese. To cut a long story short, you shouldn't fly within 9km of an airport and in most areas can't fly over 150 metres in height, you can't fly over large cities without permission and you need to maintain line of sight with the drone at all times (unless you've obtained permission beforehand). You can't fly at night (again without permission) and you shouldn't fly while drunk apparently. The government are looking to liberalise the line of sight rules to allow for inspections of power lines and other infrastructure in remote location but that's probably not going to happen anytime too soon.

Haven't got the hang of making well shot videos yet but using one of the automated flight modes did manage to shoot this video
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We didn't really buy the drone for video making and it will mostly be used for inspection work but if we do manage to make any interesting videos then will post them here.

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Re: Drones

Post by DocDoesFarming »

All that's missing from the video is a cheesy theme-tune and a title card to make it look like an intro to some daytime soap opera.

Wish I had a drone :(
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Re: Drones

Post by Tora »

Zasso,
Beautiful place!
Interesting to see how different places look.

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Re: Drones

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Thanks guys,

Apart from being very useful to check things remotely it's also good fun to fly and see your landscape from a completely different perspective.
DocDoesFarming wrote:
Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:50 pm
Wish I had a drone
The Mavic Mini is surprisingly affordable.

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Re: Drones

Post by mylhendir »

Your farm looks nice! And I am glad so far the rules for drones are rather common sense. Many laws are a result of a few people doing really stupid/bad things.

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Re: Drones

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Thank you, luckily from that height you can't see all the weeds running rampant.
mylhendir wrote:
Wed Feb 05, 2020 7:29 am
And I am glad so far the rules for drones are rather common sense. Many laws are a result of a few people doing really stupid/bad things.
That's exactly what has happened in the UK, some imbeciles wanted to protest about Gatwick airport and shut it down for several days ruining many other folk's holidays and travel plans and then suddenly the drone laws get tightened up and everyone has to register their drone :doh:

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Re: Drones

Post by DocDoesFarming »

How's the drone? Still using it often?
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Re: Drones

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Still using it but drones and mist or rain are not a good combination :lol: so it doesn't get out as much as I'd like right now but it has been really useful. I can now check the state of our chimneys without having to scramble up onto the roof of either the house or cafe and thought one of our solar panels get cracked the other day but the drone showed it was just bird poop so saved another precarious scramble onto the roof.

We've also used some of the footage for a pr video and some was used on our last tv appearance but still the most use it gets is if you hear something odd going on nearby or see a lot of smoke coming from somewhere being able to check out what it is or if the chickens are going ballistic it's easy to check them.

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Re: Drones

Post by DocDoesFarming »

Ahh yes the rainy season, I love it.... glad I'm not back in Tokyo trying to squeeze into a train during the morning rush hour.

It does sound handy having a drone, save time and potential accidents. Shame you can't add attachments like a mini chainsaw to cut down high branches branches and such although not having that option probably avoids another potential accident I guess.

The future is certainly going to be a noisy one with all them buzzing around the place either delivering amazon packages (if they get smart enough to avoid overhead cables and such) and policing.

Have you ever seen any of the drone racing stuff?
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Re: Drones

Post by Zasso Nouka »

DocDoesFarming wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:47 am
Ahh yes the rainy season, I love it.... glad I'm not back in Tokyo trying to squeeze into a train during the morning rush hour.
It reminds me of classic British summer weather :lol: but seriously though it's nice to enjoy before the temperature ramps up to ridiculous levels.
DocDoesFarming wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:47 am
It does sound handy having a drone, save time and potential accidents. Shame you can't add attachments like a mini chainsaw to cut down high branches branches and such although not having that option probably avoids another potential accident I guess.
Some of the large agricultural drones can carry a load of around 3 - 4 kg so maybe not that far off.
DocDoesFarming wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:47 am
The future is certainly going to be a noisy one with all them buzzing around the place either delivering amazon packages (if they get smart enough to avoid overhead cables and such) and policing.
Once a drone is above 100 metres you can hardly hear them but yeah I agree they could be pretty common fairly soon. Hopefully Pizza-la will start doing home deliveries by drone soon :oops:
DocDoesFarming wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:47 am
Have you ever seen any of the drone racing stuff?
Some of the FPV videos I've seen look awesome, might try building one next year if I have enough free time.

Here is the promo video a friend of ours made for us using some of our drone footage.
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