Production Logs: 3-29-2019 Project Aerospace and Live to Tape

3-29-2019

            The day started off a little early and I made my way back to Richfield County Park. This time I was shooting for Project Aerospace and Live to Tape’s Flow. I went to the visitor’s section which is a wide grass land area with trees spaced out. I felt very conformable about this flight going in. I’ve been filming for Project Aerospace all winter and in some horrendous winter weather.

            Today was a clear sunny day with very little soft winds, but most of the time there was no was wind. I pre setup the drone last night so I could start filming right away. My goal was to finish filming and head out to my second job. I found an open channel for my FPV (First Pilot View) just like that I took off.

            The second I took off I knew something was off and this would not be an easy flight day. The drone was bucking a little and having a hard time hovering, rocking back and forth. My solution was just too slowly move the drone forward just to get some momentum and reduce the rocking.

            After that the flight went pretty well but occasionally I had a throttle problem. I believe the battery was having issues releasing its discharge. I would be gaining altitude a little, so I would lower the throttle to slow and come to a hover. However instead of slowly coming to a hover the drone would just descend and quickly. It seems that there is an increased sensitivity between have enough thrust to gain altitude and to descend. It felt like there was no in between.

            While the drone was descending I would gently but quickly raise the throttle. The drone would still descend all the way to about 4 feet off the ground, which was just luck. Then the drone would rise quickly back into the air.

            Either the motors are slow to respond because they are faulty or the battery is slow to provide enough power to the motors. I believe it’s the batteries. I noticed that during the first 6 min of the batteries 12 min flight time there was no problem. I’ll just have to set my timer for 6 minutes instead of 10 min with a 2min safety. Usually I would never have to worry about this because the radio sends out a alert when there low voltage on the drones battery and that gives a solid 2 minutes of time to land.

            The last issue was that the camera would randomly crash while filming. This was during that last ¾ of my time flying and eventually I figured out that the camera’s battery was faulty as well. This was the original battery that came with the camera and has gone through the most charge cycles. It was quite the coincidence that I had both problems with the drone battery and Camera battery which are two separate independent systems. I was worried none of the drone footage would come out for project aerospace because of the rapid ascents and descents and bucking from the drone but once I returned home and went through the footage, the majority of it was good.

            After the flight I went to the park forest where I filmed the steady cam footage for Live to Tape’s Flow. This was very relaxing and went a lot smoother then the flight. I spent my time in one forested section, then walked strait to through the center of the park. I made it to the stone steps and filmed the pathway and the stone bridge. Then I filmed along both side of the river. After that I filmed the return to my car which was parked back at the entrance of the park which was a 10-minute hike.

            My audio from the last time I was at this park (Richfield County Park) did not come out well. The forest sounds, and ambient recording came out well. But the in car driving sounds which will be used for Live to Tape’s Sunday Drive Series did not come out well. It was loud enough to pick up the road, nature and car sounds but it peaked way too often. Just a blast of sound from picking up too many loud noises that had no definition to it. It sounded like I was listening to an old scratched up CD Player.

            I took many small samples of sounds this time before recording the drive around the park. It paid off. There’s still a little more editing work to do to the audio then I would like but I had the audio from driving around the park twice. As well as driving from my home and too the park.

            It turned out that today was a very successful day despite the problems with the flights for Project Aerospace.

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