I’ve become a crazyhead about flying drones this year.

For a long time, I could have told you that it’s exciting and challenging and fun, but I’m not sure I could have verbalized exactly what’s so deep-down, awe-inspiringly compelling about flying these things. I mean, aren’t they just more sophisticated versions of the little remote-control helicopters we’ve given kids for decades?

No, they’re not. The cameras on today’s drones change the game. It’s not flying a toy; it’s discovering the third dimension.

All your life you’ve spent on the flat earth. Your point of view is like an ant’s. You may know your town very well — but only from a two-dimensional ground level.

You’re aware that there’s a third dimension; you just don’t have much access to it. There’s Google Earth and aerial photography, but those are records of what your world looked like at one moment in the past. You can’t move through it. You’re not experiencing it.

A drone lets you do that, for the first time in history. It lets you look around, freely exploring vertical space, getting to know a whole new dimension of spaces and places you thought you knew well. It’s truly exhilarating.

(I really hope the FAA’s upcoming drone restrictions don’t squash this blossoming experience like a bug.)

Parrot is back

Mere mortals got a taste of this magic when Parrot introduced its AR.Drone in 2010 for $300. It used your phone or tablet as a remote control, which made a lot of sense (and saved a lot of money); the image on your device’s screen showed what the drone’s camera was seeing, virtual joysticks on the touchscreen controlled altitude and rotation, and tipping the phone or tablet controlled the drone’s forward/back movement.

Now, Parrot is back with a more sophisticated, $500 drone called the Bebop. Its computer, Parrot says, has eight times the power of its predecessor, and its sensors now include “a 3-axes accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, one ultrasound sensor with an 8 meters reach, one pressure sensor and a vertical camera.”

View photos Parrot drone More

(Parrot)

All of this winds up giving you amazingly stable, smooth, controlled flight. Even when the wind is blowing, and even if you’re a beginner.

The Bebop’s most dramatic failing is that it comes with no manual. And this is a device that needs one more than any other product on earth. You get only a Quick Start leaflet that’s almost criminally sparse. Here’s a taste:

“Insert the battery into the appropriate compartment.”

Yeah? Well, guess what: It won’t go. You can try inserting the battery into the compartment, but it simply won’t click into place; it refuses to dock that way. Online, some people give the Bebop 1-star reviews for this very reason. They get really frustrated trying to insert the battery.

I had to call a Parrot PR person to discover the secret: You have to pull a cable out of the battery compartment, connect it to a clip on the battery manually, and then push the battery into the compartment.

View photos Inserting the battery on a Parrot drone More

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