Production Log: 2-11-2019 Project Aerospace

2-11-2019

            I went back to Stepping Stone Falls in Flint Michigan. Today I was only shooting for two divisions of LCD-Productions, Project Aerospace and LCD-Productions its self. My plan was to wake up at 5:45 am but this did not work out because I went to bed around 2:30am. It would have been better to not go to bed. Instead I woke up at 8:00 am which gave me time. The winds were forecasted to be below 10mph from 7am -10 am. So I just had to get to the park and start filming for Project Aerospace before 11am even so the winds would only go up to 12 mph in general the whole day would be calm winds.

            I arrived at the park at 9:45 and hiked to the location and set up by 10am and began filming. My first battery had a flight time of 10 min which I used to film video. I filmed the video at a high frame rate of 120 frames per second which later when editing is slowed down to ¼ real time. Then I use a program I wrote to interpolate the frames allowing the final project to be in 60 Frames be second but still be playing at ¼ real time. This creates and incredible amount of smooth motion which is very important because the drone I fly with does not have a gimbal and there is no image stabilization. The point to all this is that 10 mins of recorded flight time is 40 minutes of footage to be edited. I was only filming in one section of the park so this would be enough. The other batteries were supposed to have a flight time of 6 min. Which I would use to take photographs. I set the camera to take a 12mp photo every half a second. This allows me to align the shots very quickly and get several options of photographs which allows me to choose the best picture.

            Unfortunately  the batteries were not acting well. Instead of 6 min of flight time I was getting 2-3 minutes. This was even after a full charge. There’s one more trick I can do to try and get their flight time up but I could not do it at the location. So I flew very cautiously, staying very close to the position I was sitting. I was using an FPV system to fly which stands for First Pilot View. This means that there is an additional camera on the drone that broadcasts back to my video googles and I fly as though I am in the drone looking out as the Pilots View. This is allowed but you still must stay within line of sight which means you have to fly only where you can see the drone with the naked eye. I never trust FPV, so I’m always aware of where the drone is in relation to me so I can instantly remove my goggles switch back to line of sight.

            The FPV transmitter is connected to a separate battery which has a flight time of 20 min. I’m used to flying with one 10 min battery and two 6 min batteries but because the six minute batteries were only flying for 1-3 minutes I tried flying with more 6 min batteries. Unfortunately I forgot that the time for the FPV Batteries was still counting down. By my mental estimation I still had a little flight time on the FPV battery but for the last flight of the day I received a lot of static from the FPV transmitter. I instantly flew back to my location which I was not far from then I lost video signal. I took off my FPV goggles and found the drone in the sky and made an emergence landing. I was able to start a quick decent right above my location but I came down to fast. The Ground effect caused to much turbulence and flipped the drone upside down and it pile dived into the ground right next to me. One of the drones Motor arms broke off but everything else was fine.  Ground effect is a condition all Rotor (Helicopters, VTOL (vertical Take-off and landing), and Quad copters(drones )) have to be aware of. When descending back to the ground the propellers still have to push air down even through the vehicle is going down. It just has to do it at a rate that is applies less up force to keep the vehicle in the air. This means that the vehicle is still falling out of the sky but it’s doing it slowly.  Because there is still thrust pointing down and the vehicle is going down some of the thrust is reflected back at the vehicle if it comes down too fast. This means there is a lot of rocking and turbulence for the vehicle. The closer you get to the ground the more down thrust is reflected back at the drone making it want to rise into the air unstably. This turbulence is what made the drone flip midair and fly strait into the ground. I descended too fast towards the ground.

            This was not a setback,  I was received all the photographs and video I needed and was confident I would be able to repair the drone. (Later I successfully repaired the drone.)

From 11am -1:45 I continued taking photographs with my DSLR and video with both the new 500mm Lens and an 18-55mm Kit lens. It was much easier to use the 500mm Lens this day. I only used Live View (Viewing on the LCD screen instead of the optical view finder). I was both faster at focusing and more accurate.  The Photos and video turned out very well even though it was a darker cloudy day.  I am even more happy with this $80 USD 500mm lens and editing the photographs I was able to bring out an even high quality image. I still would not say this is a professional lens, it more of an enthusiast semi pro lens, but it can occasional take a good photo. Just not reliably.

            I finished shooting at 1:45 am For the rest of the day I spend submitting the drone footage to be rendered and Editing Feb 9th and 11th DSLR photographs.

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