Book Review: The Complete Guide to Drones

Posted on Jul 21, 2016 in Featured

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

We often write about quadcopters—drones if you insist—here on the blog, with Mark Toal an excellent pilot and me mostly a Wrong Way Corrigan kind of guy. So I thought I needed to do some research and it turns out that Adam Juniper’s book The Complete Guide to Drones is just what I was looking for.

drone.book2This is a good-looking book that’s beautifully, fully illustrated as well as being nicely printed with a quality feel. The same could be said for the content: It’s what you need to get started with quadcopters or drones. Chapter 1 may be for aviation buffs and if you don’t care about the predecessors—full size or RC—of these flying camera’s you can jump into Chapter 2, which talks about all of the important components that make up a drone, let it fly and more importantly let you control how and where it flies. And much like a camera you hold in your hand the pilot/photographer is still the key factor, which is why it’s covered next.

Chapter 3 is called Ace Pilot that the Snoopy fan in me read as Flying Ace, which begins the real heart of the book and next to actually hands-on flying is the most important. You may not think a chapter on Building would not be that important, if you plan on just buying one but you would be wrong. What you may be good at initially is crashing, so knowing how all the pieces and parts work together is really important, so read this chapter carefully.

The chapter on photo and video starts out with information you may already be familiar with but then goes on to the critical differences of working with tools you may not be so familiar with such as camera gimbals. Lastly the author introduces you to resources on subjects like the law, which nowadays is a constantly moving target. Just last week, Utah lawmakers approved a bill that would make it legal for firefighters or law enforcement to shoot down or disable drones flying over airspace the FAA placed under temporary wildfire restrictions. Take the time and read this chapter and fly responsibly.

If you or a friend have been thinking about getting a quadcopter, The Complete Guide to Drones is the perfect place to start.