Drone to film in alpine environment

Nathan Hui wrote:

It's actually interesting - the bigger the drone the worse it is in wind because it catches wind, and typically, the props are too big to change speed fast enough to compensate.  That said, small drones also usually don't have enough power to compensate that hard either, so yea...

One suggestion would be a DJI Mavic or similar airframe.  Small, relatively easy to fly, decently smart.  It's got fairly light props with good sized motors, so it could be fast and reactive, but DJI doesn't tune their copters that way, so I personally feel it's sluggish.  But, it's smart enough to not fly itself into a wall.  Other option would be the DJI Phantom 4 Pro - also smart, easy to fly, but not as small, so taking it up a climb is annoying.  I know for a fact from field work that it can handle a good amount of wind, something on the order of at least 8 m/s (around 17 mph).  Not the most fun to fly then, but it's doable.

For taking off at a belay, that's kinda hard with the DJI systems, because you can't bypass the pre-flight checks.  They'll automatically do a compass/gyro calibration on start, so it's important to keep them still and mostly level.  If you grabbed an Arducopter based copter, you can bypass those start checks, so you'll just need to keep it still at start (it'll only do a gyro cal, but it can initialize sideways).  But, there aren't many commercially available RTF systems on the market that are any good - the last one was the 3DR Solo, and that's bigger than the Phantom, and now obsolete.

We've toyed with launching the Phantom from a mobile platform (panga).  It's doable, but the thing needs to be really still (aka not achievable in field conditions).  You supposedly can launch the Mavic from your hand, but you've got to make sure that you're holding it still and level, and it's not recommended by the manufacturer.  Basically, you'll want to fly from a big ledge.  I suppose you could launch from a portaledge, but you'll need to be a decent pilot to launch cleanly and recover, especially if there's wind.

Edit: Please respect the applicable laws/regulations in the country you operate these drones in.  We've come a long way in the integration of drones/unmanned vehicles into the national/international airspace systems, and it only take a couple people with the attitude of "I can do whatever I want with my drone" to undo a lot of that progress.

Well Mavic Air will definitely launch from the hand just fine as i have done it before... Landing it on your hand is a little more nervous experience though :) I am well familiar with Mavic Pro and Air models and between the two Air is a lot less stable in the high winds...  But yes using any DJI (or similar) drone from a hanging belay is definitely not an ideal situation and there is a good chance you will lose that drone. Not familiar with platforms like Nixie in person but somehow i doubt you get great quality ... 

Alex Fedorov wrote: Well Mavic Air will definitely launch from the hand just fine as i have done it before... Landing it on your hand is a little more nervous experience though :) I am well familiar with Mavic Pro and Air models and between the two Air is a lot less stable in the high winds...  But yes using any DJI (or similar) drone from a hanging belay is definitely not an ideal situation and there is a good chance you will lose that drone. Not familiar with platforms like Nixie in person but somehow i doubt you get great quality ... 

The magic air ime is super easy to fly.  I almost exclusively land it to me and grab it out of the sky and then turn it 90 degrees so it auto shuts down.  I don’t think you’ll have to much of a problem Flying it next to tall cliffs.   I’ve used my drone on 900 foot ice climbs with no prob.  

Seems like this would be a decent drone to use in climbing areas....no annoying whirring noises yankodesign.com/2017/08/18/…

Christopher Smith wrote: Seems like this would be a decent drone to use in climbing areas....no annoying whirring noises yankodesign.com/2017/08/18/…

That would be pretty awesome! Unfortunately it doesn't appear to actually exist. 

Jared Casper wrote:

That would be pretty awesome! Unfortunately it doesn't appear to actually exist. 

True - just a design concept.....that was pretty heavily shredded in the comments.

Cortney LeNeave wrote:

a drone was following me for any reason

It is not a drone thing rather bad manners thing. One does not need drone or bluetooth speaker to piss virtually everybody around off. Those pieces of technical equipment is kinda developing agent to uncover bad manners of yet another product of bad parenting as soon as possible. More technologies more ways to express manners.

Pavel! Did you end up using the drone? I’d like to learn about your experience :)

We have decided to skip on drone. As it is not that straightforward to learn to fly a drone in alpine environment and we don't have enough resources to acquire all needed skills in timely manner there is no need to add yet another hard to estimate variable into the mix.

Mavic pro. Compacts to size of a camera and is damn good quality. I carry with me on moderate multis and other excursions. Havent tried take off from hand yet tho

Pavel Burov wrote: We have decided to skip on drone. As it is not that straightforward to learn to fly a drone in alpine environment and we don't have enough resources to acquire all needed skills in timely manner there is no need to add yet another hard to estimate variable into the mix.

Ahh that’s a fair decision! 

Pavel Burov wrote: We have decided to skip on drone. As it is not that straightforward to learn to fly a drone in alpine environment and we don't have enough resources to acquire all needed skills in timely manner there is no need to add yet another hard to estimate variable into the mix.

If you change your mind contact Doug Millen who runs NEice.com . He owns a drone and films lots of routes. Funny nobody ever wants to shoot his drone down or punch him in the face. The real world different from MP? Who knew..

Bill Kirby wrote:

If you change your mind contact Doug Millen who runs NEice.com . He owns a drone and films lots of routes. Funny nobody ever wants to shoot his drone down or punch him in the face. The real world different from MP? Who knew..

I’d like to shoot his drone down. I’m just not in the NE.

Bill Kirby wrote:

If you change your mind contact Doug Millen who runs NEice.com . He owns a drone and films lots of routes. Funny nobody ever wants to shoot his drone down or punch him in the face. The real world different from MP? Who knew..

Anonymous keyboard bravado.

Bill Kirby wrote:

If you change your mind contact Doug Millen who runs NEice.com . He owns a drone and films lots of routes. Funny nobody ever wants to shoot his drone down or punch him in the face. The real world different from MP? Who knew..

Special Armchair Forces.