A hazardous ground level flight along a steep and narrow coastal path lined with thorny Gorse bushes
DANGER!
Do not attempt this at home. I will not be held responsible for others damaging their drones attempting this type of buffoonery.
If you are after a gentle serene flight around beautiful countryside to relax to , this video might not be for you.
For me it was about control of the aircraft in a really tight situation perched 300 foot atop a windy cliff in Ceredigion.
This is the Cardigan Bay coastal path about three miles south of New Quay at Coybals.
In order to do this I had to keep an eye on possible ramblers approaching and menacing Seagulls who would fly over the cliff from nowhere.
The day was breezy but in the evening there was quite a stiff breeze, hence not wanting to chance my luck over the high cliffs or sea too much. I had walked up this path from the footbridge at the bottom , ooh some 120 feet or so below. The narrow track was becoming encroached with hard thorny Gorse bushes, in places barely 2 foot six inches (80 CMs) So why not try to fly the Mini 2 back down to the footbridge? What could possibly go wrong?
“Buzby” my Mini 2 was drifting slightly in the breezes so I had to really concentrate as I began the controlled flight descent. With me following closely behind.
It would be great to have collated this footage as one graceful sweep, pbut realistically , I ended up taking it really slow and on many occasions I had to correct and make adjustments. At no point did I land or catch or restart the drone, it was one continuous flight. I know I could simply have held the drone and manually walked it down but the truth is I didn’t, I flew it every inch of the way. There was just one occasion where I had to lift off to avoid a very tight spot on the path but came down a couple metres after and continued.
There were many difficulties including dropping altitude, I had the drone set on Cinema but drifting caused by the breeze was a major issue as well as the tight gaps.
I don’t really know why I did this, put my rather expensive drone at risk, I guess I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a drop should the worst case scenario happen. But seeing what happened when I dropped my first drone whilst climbing out of the car it was a really risky business.
As it was on average I flew about three feet above the ground, sometimes lower sometimes a little higher, now and then I popped up to 15 metres or so to look around and then drop back again. I was conscious of the ground sensor so occasionally I would have to correct the drone from lifting.
Eventually I am glad to say I managed to navigate the whole path down the gulley, over the footbridge and then back up the steps the other side before landing without any mishap, thank god! The only caveat was that “Buzby” was covered in dust from flying so low to the ground. I soon had that sorted.
I tell you what though the whole experience has really improved my flying skills Now I am ready for more low flying antics.
Music by Nostramus which is my good self this one I felt because of the disjointed loop mash up style might suit the fast editing. I did have to edit a lot of pausing and swaying about and of course the whole footage is speeded up significantly so the whole episode in real time took 15 minutes has been edited down to two minutes.
Without spoiling too much I hope you enjoy the errr dream sequence part, I couldn’t resit!
I don’t regard this as a “Drone Egg”, film , more of an adventure.
