I have always been fascinated with photography and I really started to appreciate it even more when the GoPro Hero 3 camera came on the market. I purchased one because I felt there were so many opportunities that I was missing and the GoPro made it easy to capture those images, time lapses or just videos.
I was on TurfNet’s website a few weeks ago and I was looking at the TurfNet TV. Low and behold Tom Bastis is on there talking about Aerial Reconnaissance. I use to fly remote control airplanes with my uncle back in the early 80’s. He would build them and I crashed them. As every knows I am a gadget guy and the new DJI Quadcopter just looked too good to pass up. I called Tom and we talked about several things. Since I had the GoPro I just had to be able to do flyovers on our golf holes. What a better way to show off your golf course than from the air?
So now I am the proud owner of a DJI Phantom Quadcopter that has the GoPro mounted on the bottom of it. I have done several short flights just trying to get my bearings and trying to understand how it all works. Not being a video game guy I am not very good at it yet. Both of our superintendents Nate and Corey just grabbed it and flew it! Anyway I am also purchasing some First Person View goggles to use it. This allows me to see what the Quadcopter is flying over and controlling like I was on board. It should make my photography a lot better.
My intentions are to give you some shots of the golf course that you may never see. I hope to show you future changes in golf holes during golf course renovation work, maybe show you some stressed areas or just trial areas that we may be doing on the golf course. I really think we should be able to see how the irrigation system works from a different perspective.
We will never use it while golfers are out on the golf course. It is not a dangerous thing to use, but I do not want to disturb your golf or the serenity of being out here. So look forward to some different photography/video from our department.
Here is a short video on Youtube of our first flight. It is really amateurish but I think you will get the point of it all.
