Drone Legends: A flight of its own by Finn Lloyd

DRONE LEGENDS – A FLIGHT OF ITS OWN

FINN LLOYD and friends discover a new learning dimension.

A plane with four propellers – the size of my fist? The Drone Legends program has been touring the world, after being designed in the USA to teach children a new modern concept - drones.

To many, drones seem dangerous and uncontrolled, and many have no clue about their actual purpose and their greatness. Drone Legends aims to change this. These prejudices of the drones and the droning community can be damaging to people who either enjoy flying these aircraft or discourage people from using them.

The Drone Legends team quickly shut down the rumours. They introduced us to drones, their abilities, and their uses in the present world.

Creative engineer Dr Craig Hansen introduced us to the drones themselves, DJI’s programmable Tello drone, and began to instruct us on safety measures to help us keep our eyes and ears in their correct places. Mrs Brayshaw stayed with us for the entire day, helping in running the programme, held in the Tech Block.

We soon began to fly the drones, firstly simple manoeuvres around some structures we made. But then moved on to collecting images and footage of the surrounding area, and we could use these for the next part.

This involved making a website. This was the assignment given to us by Dr Hansen, to create a website using footage we had collected, and show the importance and the promise drones present.

The Drone Legends experience was like no other, from coding and path-flying a drone through a structure or room, to creating a drone of our own. There is no experience I would rather spend the day doing, and my thanks go to Mrs Brayshaw and Dr Hansen, and the Drone Legends NZ program.

I hope to fly again soon.