Potato by air
The day the dads in my neighborhood discovered drone delivery The day the dads in my neighborhood discovered drone delivery
Spots 
The Wing Hummingbird 7000W-B delivery drone weighs less
The Wing Hummingbird 7000W-B delivery drone weighs less than 15 pounds. It has 16 propellers — four for horizontal movement and 12 for vertical — a top speed of 60 miles per hour, a carrying capacity of up to 2.7 pounds, and a delivery radius of about six miles. It is authorized by the FAA for beyond-line-of-sight piloting. As a feat of engineering, it is impressive. So far I’ve mostly used it to send people potatoes.
It all started a few Sunday mornings ago
It all started a few Sunday mornings ago when my neighbor Will added me and a half dozen other local dads to a group chat. I only recognized a few of the numbers.
“Anyone looking for dumb stuff to entertain the
“Anyone looking for dumb stuff to entertain the kids?” he wrote, under a video of a drone lowering a blue doggie bag into his backyard. He’d discovered that we were now in the delivery range for drone service Wing’s partnership with Walmart, and could get household items dropped onto our lawns in 25 minutes. “Hopefully liquor store will get on board soon.”
Ever since I saw the video of an
Ever since I saw the video of an Amazon drone dropping a package in someone’s pool, I’ve needed to know one thing: Do you have to order drone delivery to your own yard? I raised the question in the chat. Will, a few minutes later: “Nathan I just ordered you a potato to see if I can send to other people. 8 minutes out.” Two minutes after that, a neighbor named Rick: “Will just want you to know you’re going to get your potato first.”
Rick and Will had each scanned the list
Rick and Will had each scanned the list of deliverable items — over two thousand of them — and independently arrived at the same conclusion. “There is currently an air strike squadron of potatoes headed to our neighborhood,” Rick wrote.
At 12:14PM, a drone dropped a doggie bag
At 12:14PM, a drone dropped a doggie bag in my yard. It contained a single russet potato and a bottle of water. Three minutes later, another arrived in Will’s yard, also containing a single potato and a bottle of water. (The water bottle seems to have been added as ballast; every Wing order I’ve placed came with one.)
Someone posted “The drones are everywhere.” Those of
Someone posted “The drones are everywhere.” Those of us who hadn’t met introduced ourselves. An apparently more practical dad named Jason ordered himself a pair of gloves. Dev, who lives in the next development over, was just out of drone range and could only watch in envy. Eventually, a storm rolled in and the potato drones tapered off. My sixth-grader turned our sky potato into oven fries; Will baked his.
The wild thing — aside from the fact
The wild thing — aside from the fact that you can just order a drone delivery to someone else’s yard — is that each potato delivery cost 82 cents. Total. Each order came from the Walmart Supercenter a few miles away. Wing is absolutely losing money on this. There’s no minimum order, there’s no delivery fee, and the prices are the same as in-store. Wing’s not even collecting sales tax. Welcome back, millennial lifestyle subsidy!
At these prices, if you’re not using drones
At these prices, if you’re not using drones to send potatoes to your neighbors you’re leaving money on the table. That evening, I remembered that my friend Bill had been going through a rough time lately.
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Potato by air
The day the dads in my neighborhood discovered drone delivery The day the dads in my neighborhood discovered drone delivery
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Source: The Verge