Went with a guide to the small beach town of Macao about 15 minutes away from Punta Cana DR this morning. Looking to film some beautiful scenic views of the area, then continuing on to Higuey from more filming.
Prepped the Phantom 2 for flight per usual. As with every flight I always perform the horizontal/vertical compass calibration, so she'll know where to come back to............
Controller/BlackPear monitor/GoPro4/P2 all fully charged, hit the stop watch and off we go. Winds are light-to-medium gusts to about 15. Performed a couple of fly-overs of this bluff section, about 75ft up, about 150ft out over water from the beach. Although I'm fully charged enough for 15 minutes + in the air, I choose when filming to stay in air no more than 8-10 minutes to be safe.
Time to do a fly-over of the main beach, brought the P2 down to about 50 ft, perform a straight-line flight down beach 300 feet away, turn her around to come back and land. Around 185 ft away while flying straight back to me, P2 comes to a stop, hovers in place for maybe 25 seconds, and begins a slow steady decent straight down into the ocean. While watching that agonizing descent I attempted RTH with controller - even had time to turn controller back on, flip to HL and try throttling back. Watching those last 10 ft coming down above the water definitely gives you a really sinking feeling - pun intended. As well as the expletives 5 seconds before splash down.
I'm close to 30 hours now flying this Phantom set-up since last year, and until today, I have never had 1 single incident, not even low battery, nothing.
It took me and 10 locals off the beach to search the area for 2 hours until my new friend Samuel jumped out of the water triumphantly with a waterlogged P2/Gimbal/GoPro raised in the air, which I'm sure are all pretty much shot. At least the micro sd retrieved from the GoPro survived and I was able to transfer 2 of 3 amazing looking aerial videos of the area. The R.I.P. video clip was corrupt.
When I get back home next week I think I'll be upgrading my controller from the DJI factory version to a Futaba, and probably upgrade my 5.8 video monitoring system to a LightBridge. Don't know how soon you'll find me flying over water again. Happy dry New Year!
Prepped the Phantom 2 for flight per usual. As with every flight I always perform the horizontal/vertical compass calibration, so she'll know where to come back to............
Controller/BlackPear monitor/GoPro4/P2 all fully charged, hit the stop watch and off we go. Winds are light-to-medium gusts to about 15. Performed a couple of fly-overs of this bluff section, about 75ft up, about 150ft out over water from the beach. Although I'm fully charged enough for 15 minutes + in the air, I choose when filming to stay in air no more than 8-10 minutes to be safe.
Time to do a fly-over of the main beach, brought the P2 down to about 50 ft, perform a straight-line flight down beach 300 feet away, turn her around to come back and land. Around 185 ft away while flying straight back to me, P2 comes to a stop, hovers in place for maybe 25 seconds, and begins a slow steady decent straight down into the ocean. While watching that agonizing descent I attempted RTH with controller - even had time to turn controller back on, flip to HL and try throttling back. Watching those last 10 ft coming down above the water definitely gives you a really sinking feeling - pun intended. As well as the expletives 5 seconds before splash down.
I'm close to 30 hours now flying this Phantom set-up since last year, and until today, I have never had 1 single incident, not even low battery, nothing.
It took me and 10 locals off the beach to search the area for 2 hours until my new friend Samuel jumped out of the water triumphantly with a waterlogged P2/Gimbal/GoPro raised in the air, which I'm sure are all pretty much shot. At least the micro sd retrieved from the GoPro survived and I was able to transfer 2 of 3 amazing looking aerial videos of the area. The R.I.P. video clip was corrupt.
When I get back home next week I think I'll be upgrading my controller from the DJI factory version to a Futaba, and probably upgrade my 5.8 video monitoring system to a LightBridge. Don't know how soon you'll find me flying over water again. Happy dry New Year!