Drone Footage

[Tiny]

If any one else out there has an expensive UAV & are flying FPV or Waypoint Missions that cover a fare distance you may want to look into one of these.
I'm definitely thinking about getting one of them myself.

For tracking, your basic options are a cellular/GPS tracker, of which there are many on the market, and a radio direction finder, like Marco Polo. The advantage of the GPS-based trackers are that they have basically unlimited range, provided that GPS reception and cellular coverage are both available at your quad's chosen landing spot. However, if one or both of those services is not available from your quad's position, upside down in a ditch in the forest for example, then you are out of luck and there is nothing you can do about it.

Marco Polo is a self-contained Doppler direction finder that uses a small (12-gram) transceiver that goes on your quad and a handheld "locator" that controls the transceiver. The locator computes a bearing and signal strength from your position to the quad to allow you to home-in on the position. In fact, it takes you right to the exact location of the quad - you will step on it if you don't watch where you are going. Of course the disadvantage of a system like Marco Polo is limited range, it can be up to 2-miles in excellent conditions but for that quad that is upside down in the ditch in the forest it will be less. But, you are never out of luck. You have 10 days after take off to get within range of that quad that is lost in the forest - a whole lot more hopeful than looking for it by eye.

Another advantage of Marco Polo is that it absolutely will not interfere with any of your other on-board radios because the transceiver does not transmit until you activate it from the handheld locator. Plus, being only 12-grams in weight you don't have to be concerned about it upsetting the flight dynamics of your aircraft.

Test vid,


A couple of user vids,

Quad found in long grass.



Quad found in deep snow.

[trash]

Fin ally back in the air with a new radio. Finally cracked the shits with the hobbyking orange transmitter failing.

[Tiny]

Great, what radio did you get?

Noticed a flock of birds below you at one stage, do you ever get trouble from them?

The swallows here have decided after 5 months of me flying around their airspace; that I'm worth investigating, they haven't got close enough to touch yet, but they're getting closer.

Luckily most of the big birds around here are dark brown or black so they ignore my large black hexacopter.

I think the 6 x 500KV motors with 9 inch props should turn a swallow into a feather duster should they get sucked in close enough.
As long as they don't get jammed up in a prop I should be able to survive the attack.
I guess they're just protecting their young form my large black bird.

[trash]

Got a spektrum DX6i. So it's almost the same as the Orange transmitter.
I just got shitty about the radio failure of the hobbyking radio because it makes me feel like a crap pilot when it's just poor chinese quality control.
I'm also shitty at myself for putting up with it for this long and with replacement radios.

The Galahs in the video... hehehe... I was chasing them. No trouble there, I was more surprised how tolerant of me chasing them.
I've had a bit of combat with tawny kites. Each time it has been with the habu180 EDF. It's small and fast and I can easily out manoeuvre a kite. So I've goaded them into attacking the plane on a couple of occasions. Each time it has scared the shit out of the kite. They have a pretty standard raptor diving attack. Kite's can't loop or barrel roll and I can fly a lot faster in level and climbing flight than they can. After a failed attack they are always keen to get away fast.

Barn swallows will occasionally mob a plane. They can fly almost as fast and are a lot more manoeuvrable, but they don't make contact with the plane. It's fun to try to annoy them, but I suspect if they don't think you're a threat, it's just about keeping you busy and distracted rather than scared. There's no way a swallow is getting bitten by a quad. Even if it was a skynet quad/hex copter hell bent of taking out a swallow, they're too fast.
I've had a group of swallows mob the plane and I have also had single swallows try distract the plane.

I also tease magpies. They're all big and tough about intimidating things on the ground, but when it comes another bully in the air, they go and sit it out on a branch or the ground.
I've had them fly up to chase a plane out of their airspace, but when I turn the plane on them I'm always spiral diving chasing after them as they try to get away.
As long as you fly level, the magpies will chase, but if you fight back.... they get the hell outta there!
A magpie would most probably try to bite a quadcopter, but I suspect when the prop bites them, the bird will get the hell out of there and the quad should recover.

The big prize is of course a wedgey. I thought I might get a chance to tangle with one, a couple of new aggressive birds have appeared in my local area this year attacking paragliders.
Eagles tend to learn the gliders are floppy and aren't a threat or easily frightened away and they get used to them fairly quickly. The parents also tend to influence the chicks and they learn gliders aren't an issue.
But when a new bird moves into the territory they're bad birdies and they have to learn the hard way.

I've got an arsenal of educational tools to teach eagles, but I was keen to see if I could drive an eagle out of my RC territory. I haven't had that chance. The other option was to use the flying skunk approach and put a bad taste in the bird's mouth. It does work with other birds, but I'm not sure it discourages the bad behaviour, rather I expect the bird learns to avoid just one type of target and still attacks others.

Wedgey vs Quad .... the bird is going to slam into a quad with a LOT of force. They come in from above talons out, and they'll grab for the body of a quad. Expecting self defence the sting of the props won't come as much of a surprise. If the bird can hang on, he'll ride the quad to the ground. I would expect most of the time he won't hang on and the quad should have enough time to recover and the bird will be slow to make further attacks.

One other thing I've noticed is insects. I've seen flies or some other larger bugs chasing planes. Especially if the plane is flying slow. I've seen them at different heights but I'm not sure what the insects are doing, whether it's a territorial chase or they're hunting in some way or it's a defensive move to fly behind a predator.

[Tiny]

We got a family of Wedge Tail Eagles live near by, haven't been bothered by them yet.
Love watching them soar.
The Tas Forest Ravens AKA Crows chase the Wedges away if they fly in too low.
That's the reason I got a black UAV. Any white birds get attacked by the raptors and ravens. Large black birds rule.

[trash]

When the wedgies attack the hang glider, they hit it hard and they tend to bounce off. It hurts them and most of the time the glider is undamaged or has small tears that are easy to fix.
The paragliders you can flap them and they make a noise like a polyethylene shopping bag and it scares them away. There is another trick that pilots have that works. They carry a rubber chook.
Yep, if they're flying cross country and a wedgey looks like he might be pissed they "chuck the chook".
The logic is that it looks like you've dropped the food and the attacker can't help but focus on it.

There are plenty of pilots who say it works and have chucked the chook. But throwing anything pretty much works.
I often throw newspaper into thermals and I had a wedgey come over to me about this time last year. He squawked and then flew off in another direction. It was like he was trying to get me to follow him.
Sure enough he took me back to where a cloud of newspaper was fluttering around that had fallen out of a thermal and he was grabbing pieces.

[trash]

The Bird has spoken!


Today's flight with my rebuilt regular EZ master platform.


I was also testing out a Bix3 for a friend. I installed the flaps option on this plane and it makes landing it much better.

[Tiny]

How well can news crew video camera's zoom in?? A lot further than you may think!!

Check out this footage of a news crew helicopter team tracking a drone fly by.




I reckon this news crew should be on the Police force, good tracking.

[Tiny]

Interesting interpretation of the CASA rules?

[Tiny]

This thing looks interesting, an all in one quadcopter & flying wing.
Once they got the hang of it outdoors (about 8.00 in video) they flew pretty good.

The Quadshot from Transition Robotics, Inc. is a flying wing that can be flown as a quadcopter or an airplane (flying wing)





more about it at

[Tiny]

The Mariner waterproof quad now has a waterproof gimbal & camera mount.
The Splash Drone






& if money is no object then there is the The seaHEX V1 price is $7,700.

[Tiny]

Wow, now this is the best aerial photo/video drone I've seen so far, pity its $150K or I'd order 2 of them.

Filmmakers hack drone to carry 1,000 fps 4K camera

There are 4K cameras and drones, and then there's the and the --products that top the bad-assery charts in both categories. Drone cinematography outfit decided to pair them up, resulting in a video exactly as impressive as you'd expect. The company (which has done work for clients like Nike and Mercedes) said it's been dreaming of getting the Flex4K into the air ever since it arrived. The problem is that it weighs in at a bulky 14 pounds without a lens, putting it outside the lifting capacity of most UAVs.
Phantom's Flex4K camera mounted on a modified Aerigon drone
To pull it off, Brain Farm teamed with Swedish drone maker Intuitive Aerial, known for its . They boosted the power output of the company's $50,000 or so Aerigon drone system by 40 percent so it could handle the 30 pounds of a fully-rigged, $100,000 Phantom Flex4K. The team said the result would either be "the most technologically advanced drone flight of all time... or a quarter million dollar crash." Luckily, it went off with a hitch, resulting in some of the best pickup-splashing-water footage we've ever seen.



[Image credit: Brain Farm]

source;

[Tiny]

This is the fastest Quad I've ever seen.

Watch the warp quad video at the following link. (sorry can't extract or embed it)

“Soma from Australia makes the fastest quadcopters in the world right now. It's unreal how fast the warpquad flies, at first the video looks like it's just playing at a fast speed because that's how fast the warpquad actually goes. The ability to pilot this craft at that speed is by far the most impressive part, although some good crashes are bound to happen (big crash at 0:55 and more later).”

Proof of untampered speed



& another

[weirdo]

awesome Tiny
especially that last clip
that's some aggressive little speed machine
and some great flying control too
makes me feel so inferior seeing guys fly like that
I'm too chicken to open up the throttle on full for too long on my f 450 lol
I must practice more

[Tiny]

Not inferior, just less practiced or skilled, both can be fixed with time & study.

Don't worry, won't be long with some more practice on the F450 & you'll want more power.

They do fly awful fast though. Phew!!

[Tiny]

Some days you just get lucky.

Had an unexpected visit from a Wedge Tail Eagle, he left me alone unharmed & retreated. I retreated as well so as not to intimidate him.
Did a slow-mo replay of the footage in second half.
Big bird, wow he came out of those trees so fast, I had no idea he was there.

Was like he was shot out of a cannon, not even flapping his wings until he left.

Tali Eagle visit with Slow-mo replay.


here is a still I pulled from the video file.

[weirdo]

nice bit of footage again Tiny
what's the audio track you used in your clip?

[Tiny]

nice bit of footage again Tiny
what's the audio track you used in your clip?

The sound track is a copyright free generic "SmartSound" mix, called "Introspective", that is built into my video production program (Cyberlink PowerDirector).
It has about a hundred to choose from with varying genre & you just select the length.
Some are good, some are like elevator music. Although for some film clips elevator music is appropriate.lol.

[Tiny]

How much water can the Mariner Waterproof quad take??

[trash]

Another video for the collection.
This one was a bit tricky.
A radio tower, some power lines and a bit of a tight landing in low light.
Camera angle is a bit different, 45 degrees down tilt.
Still a good flight with some interesting things to look at.