River's End to Orwood, Skier's Beach and back

[Ronnie]

Taken on March 22, 2013 with stills and footage from a gopro 3+ black and white edition plus a Phantom 2 Vision quad copter.

Ate lunch on the patio at Orwood where pets are allowed, we had a great time.

 

[Volffas]

Another good one. Thanks for sharing, I can't wait to get on the boat!

 

[Julian]

Nice one! How hard is it to fly the copter around the boat and keep the boat in the frame? My guess is that takes some serious practice???

 

[Ronnie]

Thanks.

Keeping the boat in frame when it is stationary is not that hard once you get used to flying nose / camera in (in relation to yourself). While flying nose in all of the right side control stick movements are reversed (I.e., left is right, right is left, back is forward and forward is back).

The hard part, for me so far anyway, is keeping the boat in frame while it is moving and I am in it, especially when I'm trying to fly nose in circles around the boat. Fortunately, dji's GPS assist function works well so it is very stable in a hover (even if I take my hands off the remote control unit) and doesn't drift more than a few feet in any direction. This helps if I lose orientation (of the heli to me). In those cases I learned the key is to let go of the sticks and get reoriented via the first person view, if that is out of range I let go of the right stick (which controls pitch and roll) and throttle up to get altitude then reorient myself visually (even if I can't tell which way the nose is pointed by looking at the heli I can tell by seeing how it reacts to stick movements).

I think that my previous experience flying rc helicopters helps sometimes I'm not so sure about that. When it is windy or and/or there are obstructions to worry about or other stressors my ability to concentrate is limited to just a few minutes (e.g. 5 to 10) even though a fully charged battery will keep the heli in the air for 25 to 30 minutes.