Christmas Quadcopters

As well as racing camels, we also found some time to do some quadcopter flying on Christmas Day. Number one son had built a new one (I think one of his hobbies is building flying machines) that had a POV (point of view) camera and we took it out for a quick fly.

The wind was a bit strong but we managed to get a bit flying action. I'd taken along my much more sensitive Parrot drone and I felt a tiny built guilty when, having watched number one son battle horizontal gusts of blustery wind, I decided not to fly mine. 

I did take some pictures though.

In flight

Point of View View.

Quadcopters over Hull

Adam passed me this still shot from the quadcopter. Not bad.

I've enjoyed playing with number one son's home made tricopter, but this week the "proper" flying camera arrived in the department.  It's a Phantom Quadcopter. We took it for a flight today, launching it carefully from the middle of a deserted playing field near the university. 

It is awesome. The camera stabilization is astonishing. The pictures are incredibly smooth and very high quality. The device uses global positioning to allow it to hover at one point above the ground. There was a fair bit of wind around, but the device was completely stable. Apparently it's very easy to control, although I lacked the nerve to have a go myself. And anyway, I was taking pictures. 

The battery is good for quite a long flight and there are also coloured lights. We took long a tiny toy quadcopter as well, as you do.

This was great fun to play around with, and you can even get one with a camera built in too.

Formation flying

The ground crew