I’ve been thinking of getting a drone for road trips for a while. Love some of the videos I’ve seen of caravans set up in the middle of nowhere and the drone looking down. But I just didn’t know where to start. It’s all very complicated. Last week I was going through Melbourne Central for work and there was a promotion going on for a Hover X1 – a simplified drone. I liked the idea but it was $650 and has some pros and cons compared to proper drones. Pros – easy to use – press a button and press a mode and it just goes. Hardly weighs anything. Cons – it’s designed mainly for selfies. Can’t fly it over water. Not a lot of control. After a trip to JB hi fi I decided other normal drones are way beyond my capability at this point, so made the splurge on a (second hand) Hover X1.

I drove to the other side of Melbourne today to pick it up and save $300 off the new price. Don’t you love it when you go to the side of the city to pick up something on Marketplace and the person says “oh – the only thing is…” My heart sank a little bit. Then he said it’s got a different cord to attach to charge. I asked “does the cord work.” “I THINK so.” He turned it on and the green button came on – yes it works, he said. I have no backup – we are leaving in four days so I paid the money and hoped for the best.

As soon as I got home I took out the unopened quick start guide, turned it on, downloaded the app and had a look at some of the tutorials. The tutorials are so good. After you have completed the tutorial for the mode you are interested in, it put the hover into that mode so you can have a try.

I opted for the hover mode. It’s quite noisy because it hovers with propellors, but the device edits the propellor sound out. I was a bit nervous it was going to run into something. I really wanted to avoid any negative commentary on my flying skills.

I pressed the go button, and the little Hover took off from the palm of my hand and then hovered at my height following me around the room. It worked! You can see by the reaction of the cat it’s quite noisy. No one was impressed that I scared the cat. No one really wanted to be in my video. But it worked! I was pretty happy. The only comment from Chris was to my daughter “you know how mum is really bad at selfies, she’s even worse with video selfies.”