Son Captures Drone Pics of Soon-To-Retire Truck Driving Dad Crossing Mackinac Bridge
Eric Kuipers' dad had a request. After driving a truck with the same company for 41 years, he asked his son to take photos of him crossing the Mackinac Bridge in his semi before he retires.
Eric says in a Facebook post, that at first he kind of dismissed it thinking, "yeah, that would be cool"... but then his problem solving gears started turning, and he hatched a plan.
He explains that A LOT would have to be just right to be able to pull this off. As Eric tells it,
I brushed off my very dusty drone and started timing flight times of every battery, different camera settings and angles, reception limitations of my receiver monitor (to see what the drone sees) and discovered quickly I would need a boat to take off and land from instead of flying from land.
He also brushed up on rules and regulations for flying a drone in the airspace around the bridge and coordinated with Mackinac Bridge Authority, Michigan State Police, and the US Coast Guard.
Eric says the last piece of the puzzle was timing: His Dad only has one day a week he travels across the bridge to deliver food to a store in St. Ignace, so he had to keep checking the weather as "the forecast had to be right for it not to be a huge waste of time."
Well... it all worked out in the end!
Eric shared the very cool photos to Facebook on Sunday, wishing his dad a happy Father's Day:
Well, I think it all came together quite nicely! Happy Fathers Day to my Dad, quite possibly the best truck driver in the world!
(I'm not just saying that, I think he actually might be.)