I met up with another forum member today - dtdyer01
We have all suffered weeks of miserable weather but this morning dawned with clear blue skies and a crisp frost all over the car. Its very useful having my little caravan on the drive as it means I can plug in a fan heater to its external power socket and chuck it in the car. So whilst that was defrosting I double checked all my gear for the meet up.
My wife came along to help with filming ground shots (bless her
). At 0930 we all rolled into the carpark of the Whitehorse Inn at Pulborough, West Susssex UK.
I had my new Phantom 2 and Dave had his Phantom Vision and we were there to catch some footage of the floods. Before we could do that though it was time for Dave to switch his Phantom to Naza mode so that he could take advantage of the extra features that brings e.g. ATTI and IOC modes. Anyway to cut a long story short we connected up the P2V to Dave's Macbook and using a mobile phone Internet connection in a flash it carried out an update. I was a little stunned as it didn't ask anybody's permission to do it. Anyway that was the start of a rather nervous time for both of us because it instantly lost communication with the Transmitter. Oh cr*p I thought, your supposed to update the Tx first. A quick check with Dave and no, nothing had ever been updated. Even though he had only just bought it it had the original software that the rest of us have already fixed.
Ok I thought, lets update the Tx even if it did mean open heart surgery in the back of my car. Then before I had even taken any screws out I remembered that whilst the assistant software is available for the Mac the RC Assistant is not!!! Time for a rethink. Dave is a Mac user and so am I. It looked like we might all have to drive to my place in Haywards Heath as I also have a PC laptop. Then Dave hit on the idea that maybe his neighbour had a laptop we could borrow. Have you ever experienced getting a neighbour out of bed on a sunday morning with a complete stranger in tow? Its not to be recommended.....
With the laptop duly supplied the open heart surgery was performed and luckily the patient came back to life. Poor Dave was by this time a gibbering wreck as he saw his hard earned cash at risk of being bricked. As the head surgeon on someone else's Phantom I didn't feel to good either. Imagine the cheers when I could finally turn to him and say the patient has made a full recovery. Everything was now up to date and Naza had been switched on.
Ok on with the mission and we headed for the river. I had been waiting for ages to film the floods and the day had finally arrived.
Does anyone remember the post that discussed 'ask permission or forgiveness" ? Well I do and we rapidly found ourselves in such a situation for which I take full responsibility. I wanted to get close to the flood you see and I had found what looked like the perfect spot on the river bank.
Imagine some blocks of flats with communal grounds surrounding them. No walls or anything just grass. A public road is about 20ft away from the edge of the floods. A 50ft gap between the blocks affords the perfect launch site. There is nobody around so we start to get ready.
No sooner than my quad was placed down ready to fly an irate woman appeared who promptly challenged us as we were on private property. I knew she was in the right and so I deployed my usual response and went into full apology mode and professing how sorry I was. I tried every trick in the book to persuade her to give us permission to fly and I almost had her won over when I fell at the last fence. As that had failed I resorted grovel mode apologising and agreeing with her how awful I was and a few minutes later it produced the desired result as she directed us to a suitable spot to fly.
I did get one good flight up and down the swollen flood plain using my FPV to guide it. With that in the bag we relocated to Bury Hill and spent several batteries allowing Dave to learn the finer points of ATTI mode and the usefulness of Homelock for recovery when orientation is lost. We also got some footage of the two quads in the air together.
Altogether it was a good day out and I am now so knackered that I can't bring myself to edit the footage. Thats going to wait for another day. We both exchanged each others footage and I know Dave is going to edit a film and I am sure I will do so also. Trouble is he is a rather good editor so I have got my work cut out.
Anyway thought I would share how much fun it can be to meet up with fellow forum members.
We have all suffered weeks of miserable weather but this morning dawned with clear blue skies and a crisp frost all over the car. Its very useful having my little caravan on the drive as it means I can plug in a fan heater to its external power socket and chuck it in the car. So whilst that was defrosting I double checked all my gear for the meet up.
My wife came along to help with filming ground shots (bless her
). At 0930 we all rolled into the carpark of the Whitehorse Inn at Pulborough, West Susssex UK.I had my new Phantom 2 and Dave had his Phantom Vision and we were there to catch some footage of the floods. Before we could do that though it was time for Dave to switch his Phantom to Naza mode so that he could take advantage of the extra features that brings e.g. ATTI and IOC modes. Anyway to cut a long story short we connected up the P2V to Dave's Macbook and using a mobile phone Internet connection in a flash it carried out an update. I was a little stunned as it didn't ask anybody's permission to do it. Anyway that was the start of a rather nervous time for both of us because it instantly lost communication with the Transmitter. Oh cr*p I thought, your supposed to update the Tx first. A quick check with Dave and no, nothing had ever been updated. Even though he had only just bought it it had the original software that the rest of us have already fixed.
Ok I thought, lets update the Tx even if it did mean open heart surgery in the back of my car. Then before I had even taken any screws out I remembered that whilst the assistant software is available for the Mac the RC Assistant is not!!! Time for a rethink. Dave is a Mac user and so am I. It looked like we might all have to drive to my place in Haywards Heath as I also have a PC laptop. Then Dave hit on the idea that maybe his neighbour had a laptop we could borrow. Have you ever experienced getting a neighbour out of bed on a sunday morning with a complete stranger in tow? Its not to be recommended.....
With the laptop duly supplied the open heart surgery was performed and luckily the patient came back to life. Poor Dave was by this time a gibbering wreck as he saw his hard earned cash at risk of being bricked. As the head surgeon on someone else's Phantom I didn't feel to good either. Imagine the cheers when I could finally turn to him and say the patient has made a full recovery. Everything was now up to date and Naza had been switched on.
Ok on with the mission and we headed for the river. I had been waiting for ages to film the floods and the day had finally arrived.
Does anyone remember the post that discussed 'ask permission or forgiveness" ? Well I do and we rapidly found ourselves in such a situation for which I take full responsibility. I wanted to get close to the flood you see and I had found what looked like the perfect spot on the river bank.
Imagine some blocks of flats with communal grounds surrounding them. No walls or anything just grass. A public road is about 20ft away from the edge of the floods. A 50ft gap between the blocks affords the perfect launch site. There is nobody around so we start to get ready.
No sooner than my quad was placed down ready to fly an irate woman appeared who promptly challenged us as we were on private property. I knew she was in the right and so I deployed my usual response and went into full apology mode and professing how sorry I was. I tried every trick in the book to persuade her to give us permission to fly and I almost had her won over when I fell at the last fence. As that had failed I resorted grovel mode apologising and agreeing with her how awful I was and a few minutes later it produced the desired result as she directed us to a suitable spot to fly.
I did get one good flight up and down the swollen flood plain using my FPV to guide it. With that in the bag we relocated to Bury Hill and spent several batteries allowing Dave to learn the finer points of ATTI mode and the usefulness of Homelock for recovery when orientation is lost. We also got some footage of the two quads in the air together.
Altogether it was a good day out and I am now so knackered that I can't bring myself to edit the footage. Thats going to wait for another day. We both exchanged each others footage and I know Dave is going to edit a film and I am sure I will do so also. Trouble is he is a rather good editor so I have got my work cut out.
Anyway thought I would share how much fun it can be to meet up with fellow forum members.
