Recent content by cinclodes

Thanks, Capt KO. The log for that flight is here. The "Downlink Lost" message during the mission (when the drone was far away) is to be expected. It's the one that occurred after the drone returned to the launch area that caused the problem. I don't understand why it lost the downlink when...

A few more thoughts. If the drone had become disconnected while it was still above the trees, it probably would have flow off never to be seen again. I was fortunate that it was low enough that the obstacle avoidance stopped it from moving horizontally until I was able to reboot the controller...

I have read about drones "flying off" never to be seen again. I wonder if some of those cases are due to the drone becoming disconnected from the controller. When this incident occurred, I was focusing on the drone that was coming down and then heading toward the trees, without responding to my...

This image is from the location where it stopped when the obstacle avoidance kicked in. It hovered in that spot for nearly a minute while I was rebooting the controller. The entire incident lasted for about two minutes.

I have done hundreds of flights during the past nine years, but there are still new experiences. I have done numerous flights from boats (including ships in the Arctic). I often use Litchi to send Phantoms off on missions. Last week, I launched several missions from a boat on a small river (a...

There is no reason why a gimbal couldn't be rock solid, and in fact initial testing of the RS 4 suggests that it is close to rock solid. I hope to get an opportunity to apply that device on a sea trip. The star trails are correlated in some cases, but they are not perfectly matched (as is easy...

Shaking off the dust on an old thread. My original desire was to find a way to take long exposures of auroras on a moving ship. I tried the Osmo+ several times, but there were always star tracks in the photos due to the motion of the camera, not the rotation of the Earth. Since the last post...

For what it's worth, I did P4P flights in the same locations: several flights in Lofoten and one flight at about 78.5 N to the west of Svalbard. I was anticipating possible problems due to the cold, wind, and latitude, but all of those flights went well for me. The flight far to the north was...

I finally got the video posted...

I recently did my northernmost drone flight during a sea trip to the east of Greenland. I launched a P4 from the ship, and the flight went smoothly despite the potential for interference from the ship, the cold, the wind, and the high latitude (78.5 N). I also took along a Mavic 3, but I didn't...

RodPad and Heron: Thanks for the comments. Glad you liked it. It is difficult to run a drone and a camera during an eclipse and also trying to enjoy the spectacle. It was my third total eclipse (Mexico 1991, Wyoming 2017). I also used a drone for the 2017 eclipse, but this time was my first...

I used my P4P to obtain some drone footage of the 2024 eclipse. I aimed the camera not at the Sun but rather in the direction of the approaching shadow. I left the drone hovering above while using a Nikon Z6ii with a 560 mm lens to get some photos of the corona and prominences.

As mentioned in the original post, one of the reasons is to rig a tree for climbing. As illustrated in this video, a bow and arrow is used to shoot a fishing line up over a branch that is hefty enough to be safe for climbing, a stronger line is pulled up with the fishing line, and finally the...

Yes, that is what I meant -- it offloads apps that aren't used regularly. Thanks for all of your inputs!

I only recently found out about this feature. The problem arises only if you don't use your iPad for a while. It can be hard to figure out the cause of such sporadic behavior. Someone on the Mavic forum claimed that this feature is turned off by default, but it sounds like you had the same...