文章编译自《Go Ahead, Fly a Tiny Drone. The Man Doesn’t Have to Know》
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The wild west days of drone flight came to end earlier this year when the FAA began requiring that pilots register their aircraft with the agency. If you want to use your Unmanned Aircraft System (as the FAA calls them) for anything remotely commercial, you’ll need to go a step further and pass a test. 自从今年早些时候FAA发布规定要求驾驶无人机需要持证上天，无人机的好日子就到头了。要是你想要无人驾驶系统用于任何商业用途，你需要通过认证考试。 The registration is not particularly onerous, though there is a processing fee. The whole thing starts to feel a bit Kafkaesque when you get to the end and realize that you can “display” your registration number by writing it on the battery and then tucking that inside the aircraft. WAT? It’s also unclear how often the regulations are going to be updated, or how the rules of flight are going to be enforced. For example, one rule states that a pilot has to maintain constant visual contact with his drone, but the signal range of some new models extends so far that it can fly up to two miles away from the operator. The technology will continue to advance faster than the laws. Meanwhile, it’s like the sheriff showed up, laid down the law, and then promptly rode off into the sunset, never to be seen again. 执照并不难考，但是需要一定的费用。而且更加魔幻的是，你拿到执照后还得在无人机的电池上落下你的执照编号。目前也没有明确规定说认证几年更新一次，同样也没有说明如何禁飞。举个例子，一项规定要求飞行器必须要在驾驶员的视线范围内，然而随着科技的发展，飞行信号可以延伸至2公里以外，法律的更新程度远远跟不上科技发展的速度。就像警察要来抓你乱玩无人机，但是他刚跟你说完法律条款，无人机早就不知道飞哪里去了，抓你都没证据了。 Whether you agree or disagree with the FAA registration, it does put something of damper on flying a drone. There is, however, a loophole in those FAA regulations: weight. The FAA does not regulate drones that weigh less than 0.55 pounds, or a little over eight ounces. Cue the rise of the mini drone. 无论你是否赞同FAA的做法，无人机飞行已经被条条框框限制。然而，FAA的规定是有漏洞的，那就是重量。FAA并没有限制那些重量低于0.55磅的无人机。于是，迷你无人机崛起了~~ Small ChangeI first played around with a mini drone for a review last year. TheJetJat Nano is so tiny, it fits inside its own controller. It might seem like a toy (and it is) but it’s also a lot of fun. And, as I mentioned in my review, it’s a great way to practice flying without worrying about crashing a $1,500 baby.  Since I started playing with the Nano, similar drones have taken flight. Each new mini drone manages to feel a little less toy-like. Today’s tiny drones still lack the stabilization and advanced flight features of their larger, regulated brethren, but several of them are very nearly as capable on the two fronts that have the most appeal: fun and photography. Mota, creator of the JetJat Nano, has since released the JetJat Ultra, which picks up where the Nano left off, adding hovering capabilities, a camera with live streaming, and an app-based controller. The flight control system has also been significantly overhauled and is much better than the Nano. All this, and the drone still manages to fit in a package very nearly the same as the Nano—the Ultra weighs just over a quarter of an ounce and can wander 100 feet away from its controller. That might not sound all that impressive next to a DJI machine, but consider that the JetJat Ultra literally fits in the palm of your hand. The JetJat Ultra is the smallest of the mini drones I’ve tested, but its camera still delivers video of passable quality. It won’t make HD movies, and the quality is relative to how well you fly, but it is possible to get usable footage. A Bit Bigger Is BetterAnother contender for the best small drone is the Aerix Black Talon . It’s considerably bigger—about the size of four Ultras joined together—but at 2.4 ounces, it’s still well under the FAA’s weight limit. The Aerix is more expensive ($140 to the Ultra’s $130), but for the extra money, you get a much more stable flying experience and a 720p camera. The larger size gets you more than just stability though; the Black Talon can also stay in the air for a claimed 25 minutes per one charge. In my testing, it was more like 20 minutes, and of course it depends on how conservatively you fly. But either way, that’s much better than the six or seven minutes you get from smaller drones. In fact it’s long enough to blur the line between a mini drone and a full-size quadcopter.  The Black Talon also has an interesting feature dubbed “altitude hold,” which eliminates the need for the pilot to manually maintain the altitude. Get the craft where you want it, activate the feature, and you are free to focus just on side to side, front and back, and rotational movement. It’s a really nice feature for creating decent video as well, since you can lock the altitude then creep forward for a nice, smooth approaching shot. The Aerix’s controller includes an LCD monitor, but it’s also compatible with the company’s VR goggles if you want have a more immersive, first-person-view flying experience. Unlike with larger drones, I almost never used the display unless I was hovering. Because these drones never fly as high (and therefore are never as clear of obstructions) as larger models, it’s far easier to fly by watching the aircraft than to try to fly in first-person point of view. The Black Talon will save your video to a microSD card, which slots into the side the body, but it’s here where it shows its low price most painfully. The cheap plastic body isn’t well assembled, making it easy to miss when inserting the SD card into its narrow slot. I accidentally pushed the card into the body of the drone, where it currently rattles around. In the Black Talon’s favor, the thing still flies just fine. Swann’s WayIf you want to fly a little closer to the FAA’s wire, there is a slightly larger class of drone out there that still manages to skirt the weight limit. RC toymaker Swann has a drone called the Xtreem Gravity Pursuit that’s nearly as large as the (license-requiring) DJI Phantom 4, but weighs just a fraction of DJI’s quadcopter. Directly comparing their performance would be ridiculous, since the Phantom 4 could quite literally fly circles around the Gravity Pursuit. But the Gravity Pursuit is still plenty powerful, and it can shoot 1080p video. As with the rest of these lightweight drones, there’s no real gimbal or stabilization for the on-board camera, which means your video quality is only ever as good as your flying skills. But you shouldn’t buy one of these drones because you want high quality imagery. You should buy one because you like flying. These are first and foremost, RC quadcopters. Were it not so frequently used as a pejorative term, I’d call them toys, because they are toys. But they’re also a lot of fun for not much money. Don’t let The Man keep you down. Viva la revolución!
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发表于 2016-9-13 16:48:24
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