Go Fly a Drone!

In December I’m going to be joining Glenn Reynolds, Dana Loesch, Ed Morrissey, Kevin Williamson, Roger Simon, Steve Green, and Mark Rippetoe for a spectacular Second Amendment program called Bullets & Bourbon.  The event will be held at Rough Creek Lodge, which is a fantastic venue in Glen Rose, Texas (about an hour and a half south of Dallas). Later this month, I’ll be putting together a video shot at various locations at Rough Creek, and in order to round up the source material, my wife and I were out there today experimenting with a DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus drone we rented from EyeInTheSkyRentals.com (who have been great to work with). The drone is remarkably intuitive to fly, and with some practice to operate the controls, it’s possible to easily land it as well. I only crashed it a couple of times…

Which is also a reminder of how ruggedly it’s built; it was flying again immediately after we recovered it off the roof. The drone can be flown manually, but what makes it truly useful for aerial video photography is the unit’s downloadable smart phone app, which allows the user to program in a route via Google Maps.  As I said, we’re going to be editing this footage into a shorter, faster moving sequence, but I wanted to upload the raw footage and share it with you as soon as possible because… well, because we had such a blast and were so excited we didn’t lose or break the drone! I hope you enjoy them, and will think about joining us in December.

This is an overflight of the entrance to Rough Creek Lodge; for a really extreme overview, you can get a sense of where we were via this Google Map:

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This is the spectacular three-story main compound which contains the facility’s two-story dining room, and the picturesque lake it overlooks, where catch and release fishing is available:

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Rough Creek contains two pool facilities for its guests; here’s a flight over the family pool area, the zip line ride, the tennis court, the petting zoo, plus the main building:

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And finally, here is the Mallard Lake House, which is a rentable guest house near RCL’s equine area, and another view of the RCL’s main building:

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In a few days, we’ll also be uploading some (ground-based) videos of Tanner, one of the Rough Creek guides, at some of the many shooting venues.  In the meantime, follow Bullets & Bourbon on Twitter and stop by the event’s Website for many more details.

Update (6/17/15): The video I compiled from all of the rough footage is now online:

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