Where Do We Go From Here?

The Disease
 (Actually, one of these is a friend's needing recalibration and setup.)


 Sparkle flew ‘OK’ with the lampshade for a few minutes but it was a little breezy and it took lots of real flying to keep the rig within a 5 foot space. It is highly unusual for a Phantom to wander that much with GPS locks acquired. Something was wrong and I decided to fly another day. The next day, without wind, Sparkle continued to act up with a concluding ‘very hard landing’. For some reason the addition of the fabric to the outside of the shade frame was problematic. Or, maybe it was the fringe at the shade bottom. Or, maybe something else. My only course of action was to shit can Lampshade 1.0 and work on a new costume. The new costume was envisioned as a space ship thingie using all blue LEDs. Each new configuration requires a new set of prop guards and I bought four more sets further depleting the kid’s inheritance.

It also dawned on me at 3AM (way before dawn) that I simply had too much weight hanging on Sparkle. Though I managed to get back to sleep, my unconscious brain knew that was on to something. After my bike ride, I weighed Sparkle. 1700 grams. So what? I had no idea as to whether that was too heavy or within reason. I turned to the forum and found that most folks posting had their head up their butts. (I sometime wonder whether these dronies actually have a Phantom let any person drone at all.)

With no help there, it dawned on me to weigh Tommy. After all Tommy has a 3D-3H gimbal, Fatshark video transmitter and a GoPro. Tommy weighs about 1500 with instant connect prop guards*. I really didn’t think the 200 grams was the issue. However I was all done with using the metal wire frames from Michael’s.

The next morning at 3AM I decided to use thin bamboo. Not exactly the easiest thing to find as it turns out. After a few glasses of wine that night it flashed across my brain that I might be able to use the bamboo frame from inside those Japanese paper lanterns. (Maybe Chinese. Not sure about that.)

Off to Pier One or whatever they called these days. Bingo! 36” paper lantern. Well, not lantern but lanterns. I needed three. As it turns out, you can use smaller ones and soak the bamboo to spread and fit around Sparkle’s new set of prop guards.

The second costume for Sparkle (Big Blue) went together nicely and flew much better that Lampshade 1.0 which was now in the trash can. Keeping lights to simply strings with no encircling cloth seemed to be one the right track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yytHj32JXTk

With Big Blue meeting expectations, I turned to making Lampshade 2.0. Bamboo frame, short external fringe but still with cloth around the frame for a real lampshade look. We’ll see!

 *Note: Given the extra weight and increased wind resistance, I only fly Tommy with prop guards attached when there is the possibility of a tree killing it. Trees and multi-rotors do not get along. Trust me.


 

The Beginning of Sparkle: Concept to Maiden Crash

A while back I was fascinated by Cirque du Soleil’s YouTube post of an informal concept project called Sparked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C8OJsHfmpI and the technology behind the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YqUocVcyrE

Like any true hacker, I set out to create my own light and magic quad. The first challenge was that I really did not want to dismantle Tommy or risk my very reliable video platform. So honey, nothing else to do but buy a second Phantom 2, further tapping into the kids inheritance. Plus, I envisioned flying the light and magic P2 while capturing the undertaking with Tommy and the GoPro. And, thus I introduce you to Sparkle.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBPrJQi0CDk  Actually, two visions of Sparkle. (Yep, there is also a third 'costume'.)

I decided that I wanted the ability to change Sparkle’s ‘costume’ as I thought of more configurations of light. Since I assumed that Cirque used some Phantoms, I started to craft a lampshade starting with installing prop guards for the basic structure that would support the shade. After wandering around three hardware stores and a couple of crafts stores, I found a wreath wire at Michael’s. For cloth, I fought my way through the Halloween moms at Joanne’s. Both Michael’s and Joanne’s are among my least favorite environs.  (Plan on standing in line for a good 30 minutes.)

Here is the completed initial configuration with top fringe removed.

At this point I have to warn you that this beta Sparkle really had problems. My assumption was that if I kept all the cloth and fringe on the outside of the prop guard rings nothing would interfere with the props. WRONG! As it turns out, the props suck air from outside the ring and thus on the first flight of a completed lampshade, Sparkle sucked in the upper fringe and had what we will call a hard landing. A very hard landing but from only about five feet. (DJI Phantoms are tough.)

So, off came the top fringe. But, I needed lights. That was solved by HobbyKing who sells some great Turnigy LED strings. They come in red, green, blue, yellow and white depending on what is currently in stock. (BTW, you will pay dearly and wait dearly for orders coming out of China.)

Most of these add-on LEDs run off of 12v and thus the typical three cell LiPo battery. I did test using the P2's available power but quickly decided to run the LEDs off a separate battery Velcro’d to Sparkle’s bottom shell.  I use Willy hacked servo extension wires for the harnesses.

Finally, I had lights, camera and action as you have seen in the short proof of concept video. Just before the second ‘hard landing’. More on version 2 later.

Time for Tech Talk

At some point in this adventure we have to peel the onion back and dig into raw science. And that begins with the differentiated laurel algorithm or ‘algor diff’ as the science community knows it. (Don't confuse this with that guy that invented the Internet.) The ‘diff’ is exactly how such flying devices as quadcopters stay in the air and is ‘mapped’ according to the Bernoulli distribution in probability theory and statistics. (See explanation in graphic below.)

It was Nikola Tesla who first attempted implementation of these flight anomalies with his "teleforce" weapon after studying the Van de Graaff generator. Much like today’s ‘drone brain’ , (See  photo above) Tesla’s ‘nozzle’ was to send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, “of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks”.

So, we dronies have that going for us, which is nice. (Bill Murray, Caddy Shack) 

(Note: This post is embargoed until April 1, 2015)

Now What?

We are standing here at the edge of the cliff with our quad safely back on terra whatever, now what? Time to make a movie. That's what!

I am a Windows 8.1 user with a nice laptop. I use Adobe Lightroom for still images and Corel Video Studio Pro X7 for editing. Not sure that this is the best setup but it seems to work for me.

The first challenge in editing the raw file is GoPro. Many video editing software apps simply cannot keep up with the amount of data the GoPro places in a file. That said, you can use GoPro’s free software though I find it pretty worthless and non-intuitive.  BTW, my GoPro Hero 4Black is even more problematic in regards to file structure. And, use the fastest SD card available.

As this blog will most likely stay live forever, I’ll not get into settings and such on the GP4. Except to say, experiment with your camera before you go to Nepal to capture the renaissance of humanity. There are trade-offs in these settings including frames per second which dictate how much slow motion you can achieve when that lion attacks that white rhino on the Serengeti.   

Another challenge for your finished movie is that the camera captures excellent sound and that sound is the buzzing of four motors with 9” props. The sound has to be taken out of the raw file. But what to insert into your epic documentary? Well, music seems to be the medium of choice by most 'creators' but it does not have to be the only option.

There are a number of free sound effects websites for cool add-ins. Also, try recording in areas where you might want to use just the audio portion of the file. Or, record your own narrative and then merge all of this into your movie. Here is one site that I use http://www.freesound.org/browse/

Checkout my video were I removed the Phantom rotor noise and inserted not only music but also occasional pounding surf. (The goal for this movie is a meditation piece or a ‘screen saver’ for home ambience.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP_xc0rbl6w

Back to Fly Aways

The other day some folks on the PhantomPilots forum had an interesting exchange regarding a statement by Frank Wong, founder and CEO of DJI. Frank’s comment was, "some customers are losing control of their drones because of technical issues, including a reliance on GPS signal, which sometimes can be lost, it’s our fault. We have to make something that cannot go wrong in any scenario."

And then a couple of forum responses:
 

1)…I still believe that many of the "fly aways" are still pilot error - primarily, like not waiting for GPS to get a home lock. I've corrected local pilots who I saw doing this... taking off before the blinking green lights.... or ignoring other light blinking error codes (like compass needs to be calibrated etc) and flying anyway... A pilot has to be responsible and make sure they go through the proper pre-flight procedure every time.

I am glad DJI has admitted a problem, but we all still need to follow all the pre-flight precautions and not depend entirely on pure technology to get our craft back - learning to fly in manual mode would (sometimes) be another failsafe when technology fails us. Cheers

2)…For what it is worth, I purchased my first Phantom Vision 2 + early upon release in the spring. While my early July flyaway was my fault due to not waiting for enough GPS signals, I will share the following.

In mid-July, I ordered a new Phantom Vision 2 +. Soon after that purchase, the original lost Phantom was found, pretty much undamaged. LOL. Too late however to return the second Phantom.

In August, I took them both into my yard, same place, same conditions, same same same. First the old one, which took many minutes to finally acquire 6-8 sats. The number varied, and dropped when video turned on. Turned both transmitter and copter off. Took the newer version out, and it acquired 10-12 sats, quickly, and no drop off when camera turned on. Again, same time within minutes, same place.

3) I still maintain that if we learn to actually fly the quads before we start relying on advanced features we will be much better prepared for many technical faults. I belong to a club and have noted that many times newbies immediately fly in home lock or worse 'relative' mode where they don't have to learn orientation drills out at 200 yards. These guys have had 'fly always' when the quad goes into regular flying mode and the pilots are clueless as to how figure out the quads orientation and thus a flight path back to home. This usually happens as the batteries are getting low compounding the crisis. (Timer!!)

In my opinion it is the manufacturer's fault when the craft does not respond to basic radio commands and my fault when I cannot fly the quad visually.

____________________________________________________________________

United Pilot to passengers, "Ladies and gentlemen and am sorry to tell you that we will be crashing somewhere because Boeing caused my plane to fly away. Stupid Boeing!."

_____________________________________________________________________

NET- NET: This shit is expensive. Protect your investment and the safety of those around you with competent flying skills.

You Gotta Be Shitting Me!

Those are some of the wickedest words you will utter or hear around radio control pilots with gear in the air. Unfortunately, those words are anything but foreign for me. Whether I am flying fixed wing, rotor or multirotor, YGBSM is never far from the tip of my tongue.

I started this RC escapade learning to fly a Real Flight PC simulator. After a month of crashing computer animated airplanes for hours upon hours, I decided to go out to the club field and smashup real planes. And, smashup real planes, I did, but that was after I learned to assemble $100 foamie aircraft from HobbyKing. It was while first attempting to assemble these models that were engineered by one group of peasants in Wyn Bin Qi and documented by another tribe somewhere in the heart of the good People’s Republic when I fully integrated YGBSM into my every other sentence. (Family was not pleased, nor neighbors when I was in the shop.) But, not to digress. We’ll get back to the wonderful world of HobbyKing some other day.

I found that flying DJI Phantoms was a real walk in the park. And, not a walk wandering around looking for my quad. But just because these babies fly in almost ‘cheating mode’ doesn’t mean that I was out of You Gotta Be Shitting Me World. My first YGBSM moment with Tommy was just after my observation that some of the RC Pilots at the club had these cute little lanyards attached to their transmitters and slung adorably around their necks. Very stylish. Others, the real men, grabbed their Tx by one hand and then at the last minute before liftoff placed both hands on the radio.  I flew (crashed) with the later style.

So, Tommy is out maybe 200 yards at 100 feet when I dropped my radio and six AA batteries went in six different directions. YGBSM!! At this moment I appreciated more than ever a quads ability to hands-off hover. I had done a lot of dumb ass things with fixed wing aircraft (none of which fly today by the way) but I had never dropped my Tx.

Of course, because DJI designed the Phantom to ‘return to home’ upon losing contact with the radio, Tommy was on the way back regardless of my state of panic.  As it turned out, I got the batteries back into the radio and regained control of Tommy as it started its final earth bound decent. (Remember, I don’t like the P2’s auto landing mode as tipping over seems to be a regular behavior and takes out a prop just for fun.)

Today, I never fly anything without one of those cute little neckless lanyard things. But mine is from Oracle Team USA. Friggin nailed it dude/ette.

 

Frosh Orientation

What else makes for crappy videos? Herky-jerky flying. And, what makes herky-jerky? Shitty flying skills. Few out of the box quads are more stable or easier to fly than the Phantom. I could teach Tyke my cat to fly it. But flying is not perfect flying. Perfect flying is driving your little baby exactly where you want and keeping it oriented exactly the way that you want. What is orientation? Better go get some popcorn. This will take a while.

Unlike an airplane or a helicopter, a quadcopter is basically a flying square. To the sideline novice, the front, back and sides look all alike. To the pilot, it can be just about as confusing. There is an implied front and an implied rear and of course implied right and left sides. But rotate Tommy 90 degrees 400 yards out to sea and you just might have another ‘friggin opportunity to learn’. Turn Tommy another 90 degrees and every control on your radio is now backwards. Now Tommy’s front is facing us and moving the aileron stick right will push Tommy left. At this time, hopefully you understand why I suggested that practice thing. Perfect practice makes perfect. Like flying any remote control aircraft understand and keeping your brain properly oriented will keep you in control of your flight.

One of the most redeeming qualities of quadcopters is that when properly set up, they will hover. No matter where in the hell Tommy is out there in the wide blue yonder, if I take my hands off the radio controls, Tommy will hover in place until I figure out which way it is pointed and thus how to get it back to me.*

Another recommendation. Resist flying in a mode called ‘relative flight’. In this mode, manufacturers will claim that you can’t lose orientation because the quad stays oriented for you. In other words, if you push the right stick forward the quad moves forward. Left moves the quad left. Right is right. Perfect. Except it is far from perfect if you are using the quad as a ‘filming’ platform. As a filming platform, that quad is part cameraman and part flying machine. Remember that the camera is fixed to the quad pointing forward between the two forward motors. You direct the camera view by pointing the quad at the intended scene. Spin right, should point the camera to that right. Continue spinning right and you should have the camera pointed at you. Push the right stick up and the quad will fly back to you, with the camera pointed at you. This is the way to fly a quad if you want to take compelling videos. (Yes, I understand there might be situations where ‘relative flight’ is useful.)

As long as we are taking about orientation, I’ll touch on one more dimension of orientation; camera orientation. The GoPro is attached to the bottom of my Phantom 2 via a mechanism called a gimbal. The complete definition is ‘a device consisting of two rings mounted on axes at right angles to each other so that an object, such as a ship's compass (GoPro), will remain suspended in a horizontal plane between them regardless of any motion of its support.’

These gimbals are magic for very professional videos, however one last control is necessary to master; the camera tilt. I modified my DJI radio to remove the stock tilt lever on the back and installed a control pot on top. I also modified the speed and amount of tilt response from that control. The camera moves from almost straight out to about 20 degrees from straight down. The biggest benefit from the modification has been slowing down the tilt speed and thus a much smoother transition in the video.

 

Note: One recommended practice maneuver is to fly your quad in figure eight patterns. Both ways.

That James Cameron Thing

The next phase of our adventure is to mentally review all 248 pages of Stockman’s, ‘How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck?’ We need a video plan. The ‘video plan’ is a step in my approach to recording that I am just now starting to consider before I get in the car with my gear.

I think there are four basic types of movies; or a combination of the four.

1. Play-purposeless, 2. Art (including Beauty, Impact /emotion, and Exploration such as the color red or the wind), 3. Documentation which is to record reality such as Inform, Chronologically capture an event or phenomenon. The 4th type of movie would be to tell a story: manufactured and edited. 

 

Hopefully, your epic flick includes all four of these fundamentals.

 

For me, much of the last nine months of taking Tommy, my Phantom 2, on video adventures has been pretty much, ‘I wonder if I can keep this thing in the air and get some good vids’. I haven’t really thought much about what the finished movie is really about. That changed when I decided to capture the beauty of the rough California Coast a while back.

For this undertaking, I had to dig down and see in my mind's eye what that final video should look like to viewers. With a clear (well, almost clear) vision of the expected outcome I headed to the cliff.

At that point I needed to decide what flight paths would result in captivating video. Where is the sun? What routes will I fly? Where am I going to take off and land from? When should I fly FPV and what parts of the intended flight path should I not be under the googles. What should my spotter be looking for when I am under the goggles? Review the CHECKLIST a final time.

Speaking of compelling videos and capturing captivating scenes, I have taken some really crappy videos. Though I have usually had kinda a vision in my mind as to what want to capture from what I see in front of me. Unfortunately, the results have been about a quart low on Nirvana. The most disheartening failure is pulling that mini SD card out of the GoPro and inserting it into the computer. Nothing. Not one frigging file. Why? Yep, I never pressed the GoPro record button. (Remember that checklist thing I have mentioned too many times? You get the point.)

Note: I have had occasions where upon landing, my seemingly perfect recording session resulted in a ‘SD card error’. If you are using a GoPro, format your SD card in your camera and not with your computer.

Here is an example of a 'story' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP_xc0rbl6w

Perfect Perfect

Back to ground zero on Dead Man’s Cliff. We have reviewed and complied with our 17 step checklist. We have made sure everything is in top flying condition. We have our spotter. We have perfect weather. We have a captivating view. Now we just have to capture that view, that scene out there, and conclude our 11 minute adventure with that mini SD card in hand. (Did I tell you the GoPro records video files onto mini SD cards? Well, it does, and yours does as well.)

WAIT! Before we get into the intriguing topic of ‘capturing compelling video’ let’s take a step back from the cliff and consider how we will fly the routes that capture the scene before us. Now that we have spent the money for equipment and invested considerable time in learning to fly our quad; can you actually maneuver the craft into the exact spot to ‘get the shot’? And, then can we fly around the object of our vision in a manner that yields a spectacular compelling video and not some crazy ‘Drunk Uncle” zig-zag?

If you want to capture that vision, you need to be able to fly. Remember Vince’s mantra, ‘Perfect practice makes perfect.’ For me, it took some basic remote control newbie drills. Flying figure 8s. That’s so basic. Go out to a wide open flat, unpopulated space and fly figure eights. And, fly them precisely as you planned. Got it done? Good.*

Now that we can fly figure eights, we need to fly them all the while video recording a subject. One identified subject. After all, our goal is to capture that magic vision that we see in front of us. Of course, we can fly willy-nilly all over the friggin place, come home, and post some shit on YouTube and do a victory lap for not crashing. But, that takes only partial skill, partial luck.

If you intend to have a point of interest, a specific video subject, you need to be able to fly about that subject. And, with a GoPro, that includes the distance between the subject to the camera as wide angle makes it hard to get close up video on a specific subject. You have to be close and that poses big challenges, especially when the quad is 300 yards out to sea and 70 feet below.

For example, I was FPV out over ocean rocks when I realized that right below me were sea lions on a rock formation. I wanted that shot. I had to have the skill to point the GoPro at the sea lions and flying in a circle (or hover) about them. I did, I had maybe 3 minutes of the group looking at Tommy and then started diving into the ocean, all the while two juveniles would not jump as they were fascinated by Tommy. Finally, Mom kicked their ass off into the water.

The video? Oh, I had forgotten to turn on the record button upon launch and missed everything.

Check List, Check List, Check List, Check List, Check List.

*Note: A final exorcise for quad & video control is to place a chair (a large object) somewhere unobstructed and fly a 360 pattern around the chair, never losing the chair in the center of the recorded video. Good luck Grasshopper. That is one bitch of an exercise. If you can’t do it. You are kidding yourself about being a competent pilot.

Everyone Has a Story

I was sucked into this hobby by a friend who showed up one day in the ‘hood’ with a simple flyer called a Slow Stick, and he had mounted a tiny video camera onto the wing top. He taxied down the street and lifted into the air while video recording the incredible sights of our mountain home and the land beneath the wings. He then made a slow descent, lined up for the final approach, crossed the imaginary runway threshold and at about three feet off the deck, ran into our neighbor’s parked SUV. 

After a few minutes of conflict resolution, we immediately ran into the house and threw the mini SD card into the laptop. “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halle, Halle, Hallelujah” There was this wonderful video of our hilltop neighborhood and our homes. It was a friggin miracle.
 

Well, two things happened that day; Day One. First, I caught ‘Remote Control Disease’ and second, I first learned of HobbyKing. HobbyKing! Where everything is amazing and really cheap. At this point in my life, I had to make a choice between HobbyKing and my kid’s inheritance. Let me tell you, this choice was not easy. Of course, being focused only on myself and my immediate needs satisfaction; I opted for HOBBYKING.

That is when my hobby life began and started to unravel, all at the same time. I saw the amoebas of life reconfigured into a new formula.  A formula of cheap China parts and unreadable user manuals.  Screw the user manual, I can figure this shit out by myself. How hard is it to fit Piece A into B, through hole C. Oh, there is no piece B and piece A is the wrong size. Oh, and hole C is actually on a different airplane. 

My first remote controlled airplane along with a brand new HobbyKing transmitter costs $110 and the plane never flew and I threw the radio away as well. And it began! Cheap part after cheap part from every corner of the People’s Republic. This $5 part and that $7 part and $36 for some weird freight through some rich ass Hong Kong dude. Bravo! Good for you guys.

As I said, that first plane never got into the air. Nor, did the second one. Forty seven days later, plane three did fly; 28 seconds. My maiden flight was over. It was then that I had another one of those friggin opportunities to learn; I needed to buy two of everything from HobbyKing. Shit doesn’t work. Shit doesn’t fly. And if it does fly, I will crash it faster than you can log onto HobbyKing.com.

Sometime about one year later and after more mangled airplanes than I can count, I read about quadcopters. Finally an air worthy flying machine that hovers. Stops in space. Defies that gravity thing.

Spot On

We are back on the cliff going through our preflight checklist and chatting with our spotter. You have a spotter, right? A spotter can be anyone. A spouse, a friend, even a stranger who seems interested in what you are about to do. Ok, we now know what a spotter is or can be but, what purpose do they serve for our vidding adventure?

 

The FAA declares that anyone flying First Person Video, looking through goggles, is in fact flying without maintaining constant visual contact with the UAS (Unmanned Aerial System or Vehicle). That is a FAA violation. Well isn’t that a load of government over reach crap? Maybe, maybe not. Hear me out here Grasshopper.

I belong to a RC flying club where we have wide open flat land to fly. We have experimented with FPV in both fixed wing aircraft and recently in quads. There have been times out at our field when flying ‘under the hood’ has left me completely at a loss as to where my quad is. Imagine driving around in your car for five minutes looking only through a 10”x10” view out the front windshield. Now ask yourself, “Where in hell am I? And, what am I about to run into?"

After five minutes of flying using only your FPV goggles, the quad can be so far away that you cannot see or hear it and very likely cannot pick it up in the sky. Your spotter has been visually following your flight and it is your spotter who is going to tell you where to start looking. Nope it is not to your right but to your left and 200 feet in the glaring sky, slightly right of the sun. It is just a white dot in a very bright sky. Now bring it back before the batteries go dead and before your baby performs a perfect auto landing out near Seal Rock. Get the point? Have a wingman or wing-woman or wing-stranger.  They might be worth $2500. Plus it’s fun to share the adventure.

BTW, I usually share my FPV googles with anyone interested around me. Their first comment will be, “Oh, is that one of those things to spy on neighbors with?” Their departing comment is always, “That is really cool. Thanks for letting see this.” One more convert. 319,000,000 to go.

Fly-away, Fly-away

Here is probably a great place in this discussion to touch on a highly exasperating phenomenon called ‘fly-aways’. That’s not a typo. Fly-aways are moments in flight when the remote controlled aircraft simply flies away from you: completely on its own initiative and completely out of your control. Fly-aways happen for a variety of reasons and a variety of ‘no reasons’. In my 10 months of flying my Phantom 2, which I have named Tommy, I have never experienced a fly-away. However, I did have another branded quad leave my controlled airspace and crash into an office parking lot a half a mile away, about 60 feet away from a six lane intersection. Miraculously, no cars were hit but the quad was pancaked. Lesson learned. (As to Tommy, you’ll have to pull out that old Who album to understand the connection.)

Back to fly-aways. They seem to happen for two basic reasons. Technology failure* and human failure. Not much that can be done about technology failure except preventative maintenance and preflight testing. But, the human failure can almost always be pointed back to not reading the manual or not having practiced enough. (Ex: many newer quads have a ‘relative flight mode’ and I have found that newbies that invoke this flight mode are asking for real problems. Learn to fly the friggin quad, Grasshopper.

Before, we leave the subject of flight anomalies, let’s touch on the automatic ‘return to home feature’. This is a terrific feature made possible by the GPS systems in high end quads. In summary, when you lose control of your quad, invoke the ‘come home’ feature and your quad will return to its launch site. Kinda. For the Phantom, return to home involves some automatic maneuvers by the system including climbing up about 50 feet before flying back. Also, the auto-landing maneuver is a little rough on Tommy. I have only invoked the 'auto return to home feature' in test situations and it is still unclear as to what Tommy would do here flying 70 feet below my cliff if it went into auto return to home is invoked. Would it rise to 50 feet above the takeoff spot or 50 feet above the spot where auto home is invoked? Will it run into the side of the cliff. Right now I am betting on rising to above the takeoff elevation. That is a $2500 bet folks. The price of my combined aerial video technology. Not for the faint of heart.

 

* Note: A common problem with inexpensive quads is bad solder joints where critical wires come loose from connections. Many solder problems are called cold solder. If you are handy, you might want to open up these inexpensive quads and check solder joints. Particularly battery connection points.

The Weakest Link

 

Some useful links

https://www.mapbox.com/drone/no-fly/?embed=true#6/39.462/-121.597

http://www.phantompilots.com/index.php

http://www.smalluavcoalition.org/

http://diydrones.com/

http://dronelife.com
 

Free music and sound effects for video

http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?feels%5B%5D=Bright

http://www.freesound.org/browse/

http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/video

Always useful downloads and terrific videos.  http://gopro.com/

Just for fun

http://www.gizmag.com/

http://robohub.org/

Management 102, Be The Battery

For P2 and other personal drone pilots, keeping track of inflight battery usage is an essential task in making sure that you have that mini SD card in your hand following a video session. There are a few ways to monitor batteries but the most important is to have a timer set to the maximum flying time that your experience dictates that you have on one battery. Seems that I am always a quart low on electrons. I Velcro the timer onto my transmitter radio.

The amount of flight time that you have on a battery will vary depending upon how hard your quad needs to work on a specific flight. I have found the attaching the FPV Tx, Zenmuse gimbal and GoPro has cut my flight time from 20 minutes to around 14. However, if I have some wind and active flying in the mission, that time is further reduced. For me, I set the timer at 11 minutes. I bring Tommy back at that time which can take a couple of minutes to return to home.  Of course, the Fatshark googles also show remaining battery life in the display. (I have 5 batteries. ready to go.)

Make sure that your checklist has a line item regarding the timer and make sure that you start the timer upon launch. That’s right Grasshopper, more discipline with the checklist.

More about batteries; specifically LiPo batteries. I have been involved with RC flying stuff for almost two years. I belong to a flying club with our own field and maybe 100 members. We fly only electric and therefore have lots of stories about LiPo batteries. Each one of us has had one of those ‘great friggin opportunity to learn’ times with LiPos. Net-net: If they catch on fire, you will want that flaming turd to be outside as it is incredibly smelly if not toxic. Have a good recharger and recharge where a possible fire will simply be annoying and not involve your insurance provider. Most everyone in the club has had a fire for one of many reasons. Mine was a bad Electronic Speed Control that shorted out the battery upon connection and I just barely got it out into the driveway where it burned for 10 minutes. 

Keep these batteries in a closed metal container. We use surplus steel ammo boxes.

For DJI Phantom 2’s and latter, the battery monitoring and recharge system is quite sophisticated and so far, safe. As a result, the batteries are very expensive. For other manufactures, you will most likely be using a standard off the shelf battery and recharge system. Be careful.

Parts is Parts

A Boeing representative recently commented that for most of us a Boeing airplane looks like a Boeing airplane. But to Boeing, it looks like a million parts flying in tight formation.

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 For many of us beginning at the bleeding edge of remote quadcopter flight commenced with some little $65 flying thing from Amazon and migrated to a slightly bigger thing and then with completely no reason to believe that you could do it, tried to build your own quad with parts from Hobbyking. Failure! (OK, it was just me then.)

It’s now 8 months later, all the HK parts are toast and you are unpacking the ‘ready to fly’ DJI Phantom 2 having just thrown away the $367 worth of incongruent parts that never worked as a well-oiled machine. In fact, it never flew for more than 28 seconds at any one time between repair sessions.

The Phantom flies. And flies easily. Just read the friggin manual or watch a couple of videos before you ‘arm the quad’ and push the radio’s left control stick north, given that you are facing north. If facing south, turn around. Anyway, I am not going to explain how to fly a quadcopter here. I am going to simply plead with you to practice. Perfect practice would be even better. Practice away from people, buildings and most importantly, away from trees. Trees and quads do not get along and trees will ‘paper your rock’; 'rock your sissors'. Trees seem to suck quads into them, many times never giving them back unless you are very good at climbing out onto a limb.    

Regardless of which brand of quad you are flying, there are characteristics and idiosyncrasies that will most likely subject your little hobby to the worst that gravity can dish out. You will want these little ‘friggin opportunities to learn’ to happen over dry land and not over the Pacific. Keep practicing where unexpected outcomes have minimal impact on your wallet. (Example: The P2 will simply land by itself when the battery depletes to 25%. You will have zero control of the craft as it lands perfectly in the Pacific or in the middle of Interstate 310 because you were trying to capture compelling video of a friggin freeway, idiot.)

Watch Out for That Curve

At this point in our adventure, it might be a good time to discuss the many nuances of The Learning Curve. Loosely defined, it is a noun; ‘the rate of a person's progress in gaining experience or new skills’. For our purposes, it is a verbish like phrase meaning, ‘to crash’.

The Learning Curve was first discovered 105, 000 years ago in cave in southern France. It was there that a very young Neanderthal, Tether, picked up a river rock and threw it. Launching that projectile right into Mom’s forehead. (It was Mom, Dad was not in the cave, the outcome of extremely poor parenting skills.)

Mom, on the other hand (or her forehead as it were.) had the patience of Job, though the Job that you and I know lived 102 -103,000 years later depending upon whether you are Jewish, Muslim or Christian. Not sure if Confucius knew him or not. The guy seemed to have gotten around.

Anyway, Tether, encouraged by Mom’s ravished forehead, continued to practice and one day he picked up a river rock, threw it and hit a rabbit. Mom screamed ‘Hallelujah’ (apparently she was Jewish) and the Learning Curve was invented.

For us learning to fly aircraft remotely; we will be living the “J”. The “J” curve is simply the harsh reality of doing shit where one has no idea. Basically, you (and me) start out somewhat below zero on the ‘J’ and then descend even further into the bowels of failure and eventually rise triumphantly, bask in the glory for a bit, and then crash for no obvious reason what so ever.  

 

Refer to chart above.

Ready, set…WAIT!

Standing here on the cliff ready to fly like the pelican is the expected outcome of completing many tasks back at home base. First, all this technology takes batteries and dead or dying batteries trump bad weather every time in the failure column.  Kinda that rock-paper-scissors game you played in the fifth grade. For my setup, I need four Phantom LiPo fully charged batteries and in good condition. The radio transmitter requires 4 AA batteries plus back ups. The GoPro has its own battery. And, the First Person Video (FPV) goggles requires their own fully charged LiPo battery plus back up. Your checklist must include  ‘charge all batteries and test the system before getting into the car’.

 

At the edge of the cliff, one reoccurring nightmare ebbs and tides just like the Pacific. ‘What if this gear doesn’t come back to terra firma today?’ On about the thirty-fifth time that you loop on that nightmare in the middle of the night you should get a grip on your emotions and return to the checklist. In fact, it would be a great idea to constantly ponder, “what have I done to minimize that chance of failure for this flight?’

Reflect back to that moment when you first decided to buy your quadcopter after viewing 23 YouTube videos that were quite breathtaking. “Shit, if that dweeb-ass can do it, so can I.” There was that day when you first opened the box with your little multi-motor darling snuggled into the impossible to open clear wrap with a user manual that must have made sense to someone far-far away but makes no sense to you. (More on User Manuals from Hell later.)

Day One. At some point we all finally build up the courage to launch our first flight. We look at the ‘how to fly’ drawings on page 8 and 9. The drawings look familiar though the accompanying words seem to explain something quite different. “Advantage the mode 1 fight lever to ascend sky.” You will also notice that pages 10, 11 and 12 show the various replacement parts and how they can be ordered. You’ll figure it out somehow.

Don’t overthink this puppy Grasshopper. Arm and go.

Common Sense

Recently there has been much media attention given to the arrival of hobby drones (UAV) in our skies. These stories usually start off with some goofball claiming to have been photographed naked in a bedroom window by another goofball flying a 'drone'. Bullshit! No one wants to look at Goofball #1 naked, in the bedroom or anywhere else on earth. (That is what the Internet is for!)

That said, pilots of remote controlled aircraft have a responsibility to abide by all evolving FAA regulations protecting no-fly zones, people and property. Among, the many FAA regs is to always fly where you keep constant visual contact with the aircraft. (This is a real challenge for the emerging free flight waypoint to waypoint capabilities.)

Additionally, always have a spotter when flying FPV, especially using goggles. There have been flying times when in the process of transitioning from using the goggles back to using my glasses where I had no idea as to the location of the Phantom. In fact, flying using FPV is like driving you’re car with a 12”x12” windshield. You are going to crash into something sooner than later, so have a wingwoman or facsimile.

For all of us enjoying the opportunities offered by these new and rapidly advancing technologies, we need to use COMMON SENSE in making sure that our right to enjoy the freedom of flight does not encroach on other’s rights to safety, privacy and the right to enjoy the air space above them.

Checking It Twice

When I graduated from college, I was fortunate enough to make it into and through US Naval Flight Officer School. Anyone who has ever flown an airplane knows the first rule is to ‘work the checklist’ and flying a video quad requires the same dedication to following the checklist. Today, I have a sequenced checklist with seventeen mandatory steps for capturing compelling video which which hopefully has that happy ending  where I have that precious .jpg file on that mini SD card in my hand and not at bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, combining technology with video skills plus a checklist is simply a reasonable start. The next prerequisite for that compelling video thing is weather. Nothing ruins a quad video adventure faster than wind and fog. In my case, it takes an hour and a half to drive to the Pacific Coast. That is a three hour investment in time, so checking weather forecasts and/or checking webcams is a great hedge against disappointment. The DJI Phantom will tolerate 10MPH winds but the video can get a little shaky even with the Zenmuse gyro stabilizing camera gimbal. Check the forecast!

But then again, before you run your checklist prior to flying over that volcano in Iceland, you might take one more invaluable undertaking.  Preflight Test. Before you head out for that ‘mother of all video sessions’ make sure that your shit works Grasshopper.

 Lesson #123.8. The other day I was going back to the Coast to video some sea lions that I had missed on a prior trip. On that prior trip, Tommy had descended a tad too low and was sprayed by a rogue wave. I decided to run a test flight while at home to make sure the salt water had not corroded some vital innards. Innards were fine but I had no FPV. After a hour of peeling the tech onion back, I found a broken film tape connector between my GoPro and Tommy. I had a spare connector and all was well. Had I not performed a complete test flight, I would have wasted 3 hours of windshield time and be faced with some very uncomfortable personal quality time with myself on the drive home.

Lesson #123.8.a. Watch out for rogue waves. Not exactly how sure to do that by the way?

Digital Pigital- Just Don’t Suck

Check this quick video out        Bean Hollow State Park, CA

Ok, we have some cool technology going for us, but technology is only technology, and that alone will not produce an enthralling visual experience for viewers. We have to add the skills of piloting and the skills of producing a compelling video. Technology, plus skills and maybe a few other things we will talk about over the weeks here.

I have a lot of experience with both still photography and video though for sure I am an amateur hobbyist. I also do quite a bit of painting and drawing. And finally I have devoured ‘How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck’ by Steve Stockman. In summary, when I look at the scene in front of me, I have a vision for what I would like the recorded video to look like in the eyes of those viewing on YouTube.

Though now retired, my day job was always rooted by technology and of course that technology today is all things digital. Certainly, without digital, I would be standing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean watching the pelican fly up and down the coastline and fanaticizing as to what that experience is like. But today, I can fly out there and be one with the pelican, though I can tell you that pelicans hate DJI Phantom 2s.

So, we have technology and we blend in some of that ‘Doesn’t Suck’ video knowledge from Mr. Stockman, let’s go flying. And, at this point we have to add our third leg of the stool; processes. Yep, this stuff doesn’t magically jump into the air and capture compelling video. Someplace there has to be an ‘O-N/O-F-F’ switch placed in O-N position. In fact, for my gear, there are four on/off switches to deal with and a few other challenges to tweak before flight.