I was ARRESTED for flying this drone…
so I've been flying drones for a really long time and I tell this story not to complain or rationalize my behavior I accept full responsibility for my actions but hopefully me telling this story helps some of you in the future avoid the same situation I've been flying with drones for a really long time since way back in the day I think I had the original Phantom one with the GoPro attached to it I use drones because aerial footage is the frosting on top of the YouTube video cake and the story of how I got arrested was not with this little drone here but actually the mavic 3 Pro long story short I was filming in Germany about a self-driving taxi and I thought it would be safe enough to toss my drone up behind a Convention Center no people no crazy flying just a simple very short overhead shot of a self-driving car and it all went very great until I flew over a group of police officers who then took my drone and detained me for five hours they were extremely professional some of them said they did recognize my videos which probably helped a little bit but they said the main reason they were holding me for so long is because my drone was not registered and because of its size needed to be he said if I was flying a much smaller drone I would have much less problems which is where this guy comes in this is called the DJI Mini 3 Pro and at 249 grams it follows one gram shy of needing to be registered in a lot of different countries this is the Drone I've been using to get all of my shots here in Kenya for our library project and drilling a borehole and you probably didn't notice the difference I'm a huge fan of this form factor and it takes up a lot less room in my bag but now that you know which drone it is let me show you some more of the footage [Applause] [Music] now when I say the Drone is 249 grams and Falls below some regulatory limits that doesn't mean it's free rain to fly anywhere for example here in Kenya they don't care about the weight at all and every single drone needs to be registered and have a permit every country is going to be different and it's important to be aware of the constantly changing laws I think the best way to phrase it is the way DJI has it on their website since it is sub 249 grams it doesn't require registration in most countries foreign [Music] flying in National Parks even with a small drone is a huge No-No anywhere from my own personal experience I don't think I'll ever be buying the bigger drones ever again this little guy films in 4k HDR and 60 frames per second and can stay up in the air for about 34 minutes we were waiting for the shipment of books to arrive and I was able to park my drone in the air about a mile away and just hover while waiting for that semi truck to show up it has all of the optical sensing forward and backward obstacle avoidance and can even active track objects with no pilot needed everything the bigger drones can do just in a smaller quieter package so Philip has told me that this island out there in the middle of the lake has iguanas sunbathing around the outside we're not going to take a boat over there but we're gonna see if we can take a look with this guy [Music] not option good start one problem I did have with the Drone which was probably entirely my fault was when taking off at Lake Victoria I didn't quite launch correctly and the Mini 3 Pro did a little hop and a skip straight into the sand it flew fine for a few minutes after that but I guess some sand got into stabilizing gimbal locking it into an above the Horizon position making it very difficult to find my way back to the starting point I could have just used the return to home feature but In the Heat of battle and the stress of flying over water I forgot that feature existed once I cleared out the gimbal though it went back to working just fine with a clear line of sight the remote works for about seven kilometers about three or four miles but add in a single obstacle like a building or trees and that gets shortened up very quick and of course the Drone would probably not enjoy Landing in water very much speaking of which so right now we are in Napa Valley California filming with the Hummer EV SUV and even though it's raining I'm gonna take this mavic mini 3 Pro and see if we can get some cool shots going through the puddle that are here on the road there's a lot of rain and the Drone has a water resistance rating of zero so we uh we'll see if it works probably shouldn't be doing this but testing technology to its limits are what we are all about should be a fun shot [Music] extremely wet but it handled just fine I think those shots were amazing so far I'm really liking this drone I'm not however liking the ring today I'm in sunny California playing again with the Drone filming the aptera one cool feature of the mavic pro mini is that this camera instead of just filming horizontal can also flip vertical to do all the newfangled tick tocks and Instagram reels that the the youngins are doing these days and it's nice to have a camera sensor that can do both on the Fly see what I did there and of course here on Oahu this Wide Open golf course we can test the top speed of the Mini 3 Pro we're here to film some b-roll of our off-road wheelchair called the rig and while the rig has a top speed of 13 miles an hour the Drone in normal mode with all of its sensors engaged can fly about 24 miles an hour however switching to sport mode which turns off the sensors and makes the Drone completely wreckable goes up to 34 miles an hour at least right here on the island it's a pretty incredible and capable little machine and from now on I'm pretty excited about having this in my bag instead of the bigger one so out of all the drones I've used so far this is probably my favorite form factor and the one I'll be using going forward this video is not sponsored but I'll put a link down in the description so you can check out the current pricing the smaller size and the much less regulatory issues I'll have going forward the better thanks a tone for watching and I'll see you around okay