First video of NM ancient Indian pueblo

[NM_Quad]

Got my ver. 2 P2V+ Nov. 13. Now comfortable with the NAZA-M flying, decided it was time to try it for it's intended purpose: to document abandoned New Mexico pueblos and El Camino Real trail. Besides, I have a Board meeting with the organization Saturday and figured I better show what the P2V+ can do. A few Board members (government employees) are really negative about drones. Most Board members were impressed with the following demo video I submitted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4J8YIrwwNY

Also my first attempt to place a video on YouTube, so hope I got all the settings right.

This was the first crack by a couple of rank amateurs. The pueblo is atop a 160ft. high mesa and 1,000+ feet away from our Home Point. It was my first flight where the P2V+ disappeared into the sky. Kinda scary. Suddenly, FPV morphed from entertainment to mandatory maneuvering. Also, I was being very conservative to not let the bird drop below the edge of the mesa from our vantage point to loose RC POV. If RTH activates to the 66 ft. elevation, that would drive it right into the 160 ft. tall mesa, wouldn't it? Will set it higher next time.

This video was more an exercise as my first experience with video editing, rather than flying. I used VideoPad, though I ordered Corel Draw Video Suite, not yet received. (I've used Corel Draw for years). Some of the jerkiness is just due to my lack of finesse with video
editing and unfamiliarity with the program.

I am truly impressed with many of the videos posted here - something for me to achieve. This is just the ramblings of a rank amateur, and I guess stating how impressed I am with the ability of the P2V+. You couldn't do anything like this on your kitchen table a few years ago!

Paul

 

[msinger]

I know my eye is untrained, but all I see are some hills and piles of rocks. I suppose this is more impressive though if you know what you're looking at.

If RTH activates to the 66 ft. elevation, that would drive it right into the 160 ft.

Correct. I think the default is 60 meters though. You should definitely set it accordingly before all flights.

 

[Conquistador]

My wife and I were just at Chaco Cultural Park where it would have been wonderful to take some overhead videos, but it is a national park - off limits.

 

[BuzzBuzzZoomZoom]

Yeah...I was like...Wait, what am I looking at, a bunch of ground..?

Then you had the overlay graphics showing where the buildings were, etc...and I was Ohhhhh! That's neat!

Very cool way to see something that might be difficult or impossible to recognize from the ground level.

 

[NM_Quad]

I will position myself better next time for better views. The video was shot with the P2V+ about 200 feet above the pueblo, and thus little detail. Taking it down closer I would have lost LOS.

That is a 100+ room pueblo, roughly 200 feet square, implying a population of a few hundred people. The rooms were made of rocks and adobe, thousands of rocks somehow carried to the top of that mesa. The adobe walls have long melted and the wood roofs long rotted away. The rock rooms are now filled with nearly 500 years of blowing sand and debris, becoming natural "flower pots" for vegetation, the reason the bushes form square patterns (those are the rooms). What looks like rocks on the sand is actually the tops of the rock walls filled in with sand. The room floors are several feet deep beneath the sand. This is what Chaco Canyon and many other pueblos looked like before being excavated - just a mound of sand cluttered with rocks.

Paul

 

[paulajayne]

Have a look at some of the 3d mapping software as well as inserting latitude and longitude into video - Flyterex.