As the astute among you will have noticed, I have been away from the coal face for a few days. There are a couple of reasons for this, not the least being my long-suffering other half needed a break from endless teaching of pre-teen students how to tinkle the ivories and pound a drum kit to death.
This resulted in a 6 hour flight across the Indian Ocean to the beautiful Cocos and Keeling Islands, which really is your best tropical sandy beaches, waving palms paradise.
More detail on that when I complete the associated travelogue. I have learned one major thing though that is worth passing on. If you wear prescription sunglasses as I do, do NOT forget them! I tried a pair cheapie bought-at-the-visitor-centre generic sunnies, but whilst I could see, they were still not enough to counter the savage glare from the very white sand, super white coral-based roads and blazing sun (when it’s out).
Back to the main program: This trip coincided nicely with DJI sending me their nifty new DJI360 360° panoramic camera which has more tricks up its sleeve than Tommy Cooper and Penn & Teller combined.
I’ll have a separate further review following my “first looks” last week on the DJI360 when I get back. FYI the internet here is sparse and contained pretty much to your accommodation unless you are at the Visitor’s Centre, and is non-existent if you get heavy rainfall / thunderstorms, which are frequent. And heavy. And bloody loud!
There is also no direct mobile phone reception here, as you are again reliant on the internet – which is NBN Satellite – for wireless only phone connection.
But some imagery is here to whet your appetite.
I have brought a drone with me, my DJI Flip, and this led to an interesting exercise following the aborted attempt to fly same said done at Christmas Island back in April. This time I was pre-prepared and logged all the potential flight dates with the local authority on Cocos Island (which is the airport supervisor) and DJI, to open up the flight areas I wanted.
And it all happened without a single issue, barring one area that seemingly I could fly in, being out of bounds due to local restrictions. This is only a guess, but as some of the fellow house guests at the apartments we stayed at were here from the ADF to do some network engineering, and I know that there is an ADF presence here (which is well documented so no Secret Squirrel there), perhaps I just coincided with some “stuff” being done when trying to fly at that specific location at that time.
Anyway, the DJI Flip kept its promise to being, I believe, the best consumer drone for beginners. Easy to fly with a controller as against your phone, worked fine in winds of 25kph and each of the 3 batteries gave me 20 mins + each.
The 4K video footage speaks for itself, although the day could have been a bit brighter.
This talk of 360° cameras and DJI Flip drones brings me to a point (before I trundle off fly rod in hand to catch me tea).
Insta360, which for its own reasons refuse to even talk to me and have had this attitude for over 5 years, has just released – although not in Oz – its Antigravity A1 drone (under its sub brand “Antigravity”). A few publications / websites have leapt on this quite understandably, as if the specs are correct with 360° camera and under 250g, the magic number for licencing, purposes, this is, they say (ugh) potentially a game changer.
But wait a tick here. Firstly, the Antigravity AI drone, if and when we get to see it in Australia, cannot be legally flown here as CASA clearly states that all drones must always remain in line of sight with your own eyes. You. Not a spotter, just you.
So, as the Antigravity AI uses goggles and FPV – that’s First Person View – you are by definition not using your own eyes.
Next, at least one publication has touted the fact the Antigravity AI has blown away the convention of a double stick controller. For those not in the know, with a “standard” controller as used by DJI among others, whether you have one with a built-in screen or you use your smartphone connected to the controller as the viewport, the left stick controls height and direction, and the right stick is the “accelerator”, so to speak.
What Antigravity has done, is use a single joystick implementation such as used in many flight sim programs and over the years, made by companies such as Microsoft and of course Logitech.
Ummm. Cough. This is NOT new. DJI has had the Motion Controller, now at version 3, for some years now. I got my first one with the FPV drone around 5 years back for example.
The Motion Controller 3 is compatible with DJI Avata 2, DJI Mini 4 Pro, DJI Air 3 and DJI Neo (but not the Flip at this stage dammit!) and costs $139. Of course you do need the goggles and these cost from $349 depending on the version of goggles you get.
Of course, you still need to abide by the CASA rules as they are at this stage to only fly at an approved model aircraft airfield or indoors at an approved drone flying centre.
Hopefully that clears that up.
In the interim, I am still going to try to get an Antigravity AI to review – I’ll keep you posted. Don’t hold your breath though.
Finally, as is her wont, Jacqui spent a few hours snorkelling using a GoPro Hero 13 Black in a waterproof case. We didn’t get to Direction Island this trip (one of the world’s premiere snorkelling / diving sites which among a few other things is saved for the next trip), but pretty much anywhere are in the ocean here, there are corals and fish to see.
Some water conditions were cloudier than others dependent on wind and tide, but this one shows the clarity of the water.
We are now packing to head back tomorrow, Friday, and oddly have to be out of the unit by 8:15 and have the hire car back by 10:30. For a flight that leaves at 1:30.
As nowhere on Cocos Islands is more than 6Km away, this basically means we drive to the airport, drop the car off, have brekky there and then wait a few hours. The trip back is via Christmas Island so there is a 45 min stop off before heading direct to Perth, so all in all a 5 ½ hour or so light arriving at 8:45pm (Cocos is ½ hours behind WA standard time)
While we are packing, another major rainstorm has hit, and this is the view from the back veranda of our apartment. The booming sound is not thunder, but a surf break I am guessing, not ever been a surfer, many would kill for! I’ll hopefully have some proper surf break shots tomorrow.
Addendum: We just learned the tender for flights to / from Cocos has been re-let and as of November this year, all flights will be conducted by QANTAS, and instead of a Perth->Learmonth->Cocos->Christmas Island->Perth route, flights will be Perth->Cocos->Christmas Island-> Learmonth->Perth making it 3 ½ hrs up and 5 or so hours back. This of course may change.
And they will be a fraction cheaper according to the QANTAS website.
Normal transmission resumes from Chez Australian Videocamera on Monday.