Fly away

Copter Kids owners Trent Palmer and Errol Kerr have what sounds like maybe the coolest jobs on the planet. They go to exotic locations and fly radio-controlled planes that carry cameras, filming from above for things like movies, commercials and the military. They aren't kids exactly, although they are young. Palmer is 25 years old. Check out their work at www.copterkidsllc.com.

Tell me a little about what you do, exactly.

I’m a low-range aerial cinematographer. What it is, we have a set of different platforms that are all unmanned aerial vehicles that we use to lift cameras and shoot for the film industry.

How did you come to get that job?

Really, it was a merger of my two passions. Growing up, I’d always flown RC planes, and I got into RC helicopters as well, and then I also—kind of as a passion and a job—went into the film world. I started off making ski movies, worked my way into a bigger job with the company called FLF Films, which is out of Reno. The director over there took me under his wing and taught me everything I needed to know about film and the film world. Simultaneously, I was learning to fly RC helies and building them. One day I was editing and saw video online of someone flying a helicopter with a camera on the front, the same camera I had, and I was like, ‘Why am I not doing this?’ So I went out and built one. It took me a year to build my first one. The rest was kind of history. I got my partner, Errol Kerr, the ex-Olympian. He came out and did a test with me, and we put the video online, and it got 100,000 views in a week. And then the phone started ringing. We actually worked our first whole six months in 2010 with no business name, no card, no demo reel. It was all word of mouth, and people just kept hiring us. That’s how the name “Copter Kids” came about, was people seeing we were just these young kids coming out there, and we didn’t really have a name, so they called us “Copter Kids.” So we put an LLC on it, and called it the business name.

You film all over the world.

We’re international. All of our kit will fit onto an airline with us. Anywhere that we can fly to, we can go and shoot.

So you just carry it as luggage?

Yeah, these big cases. There’s eight of them so we definitely overwhelm some of the airlines, but luckily we fly United all the time, and the guys all know us. It’s pretty easy in Reno. Other airports, we’re definitely getting a little turned heads and people wondering. The good thing is we’re “Premier” so they won’t pull our bags because we’re overweight or oversized situation. I kind of feel bad for everyone else on our planes because a lot of times I see a lot of bags get pulled. And they won’t be ours.

And what are your helies made of? You make them by hand, right?

For the most part, the driveline for the helicopter is out of a kit heli. One you can buy at a hobby shop. The reason I do that is if anything goes wrong, I can run to a hobby shop and get parts for it. It keeps expenses down as far as the custom manufactured parts. We try to stick with all carbon fiber or aluminum. If we need metal, it’s aluminum, otherwise it’s carbon fiber. It’s the lightest weight and the strongest.

How much can it lift?

It depends on the size of our helies. Our bigger one can lift over 10 pounds on the camera tray. But the overall flying weight is at 35 pounds. I could fly at more, I just don't like to because I like to keep it extremely overpowered and dynamic.