Production Logs: 4-22-2019 Project Aerospace and Photations

4-22-2019

Project Aerospace and Photations

The day started off early, my goal was to get to this new park to fly before everyone else arrived to exercise. This park is Creasey Bicentennial Park and is a large park with multiple soccer fields, a prairie and a large exercise hill. I knew that it would take multiple trips to film at this location with the drone so this was to be the first of many. I also wanted this to be a simple flight.

            The first location at this park that I went to film at was the soccer fields. This would be good for long forward kinetic motions shots without having to worry about obstacles. This did prove to be the case however there were several problems while flying.

            The first several flights went relatively well but I kept have issues with the batteries. In the previous week I had timed all the batteries to figure out how long each one would last while flying. I did this for safety and it helps having one less thing to worry about never knowing until the last 2 minutes when the battery is about to die.

            I should also note that I received a new battery charger. This one is fancier then the one that came with the quad copter. I noticed that each battery had wildly different flight time which should not be the case. In addition to this, batteries that were low power and dead when plugged into the stock charger would not charge. In fact, the stock charger would think that the battery was fully charged.

            After doing some research I found out that the stock charger does not do a balance charge. RC and Drone batteries have cells. They come in 1s 2s 3s 4s and 5s. Each cell has a limit of around 4 volts and vary how much mil amps hours they can provide. Each cell is supposed to be charged to the proper identical voltage an mah (Mil amp hours). Because the stock charge does not do a balance charge, it would charge one cell way past its 4 volts and leave the other cell with no charge. This means that the battery would not have enough power to fly the drone but would still register as fully charged. This is also very bad for the battery health.

            The new charger is very nice. Not only can I charge each cell to the correct mah and voltage, I can also drain the batteries after a flight especially if I did not use one battery and it remains fully charged. Lithium batteries should not stay fully charged while you store them because this hurts the battery health as well, instead when in storage they should only be charged to around 30%. This will help them last longer and work better. A battery should be discharged to storage if you’re not going to fly 2-3 days after you fully charge it. Ideally you should only charge the batteries the night before a flight.

            With this new battery charger and new tested flight battery flight times I felt confident that this would be a good flying session. There was nobody in the soccer fields and I essentially had the park to myself. My four 1800mah batteries had a test flight time of 5 mins so I would only fly for 4 mins in case of emergency and to account for power loss from more varied flying conditions then when I tested.

            This worked out well however I did begin to lose power a little sooner than my 4 min timer which was fine because I would notice it and land the drone safely next to myself. It turned out that with a varied throttle I would have a solid 3 min of flight time before the drone would begin to lose power.

            After the four 1800mah batteries were depleted I moved on to the 2200mah batteries. These tested had a flight time of 10 mins however learning from the 1800mah hour batteries I would only fly for 7 mins. With this larger batteries and longer flight time I was free to fly using my FPV equipment. This is first pilot view and allows me to see from the drone’s perspective from the drone’s camera in real time.

            This however is where I ran into a problem. I flew very well for about 5 mins getting good footage of the forest on the side of the soccer field and the soccer field itself. However due to the scale of the soccer field with it being large and flat with no real objects of scale I didn’t realize how far away I had flown from my position. This is where I ran into trouble. I did not lose my FPV (camera connection) signal, I began to lose my transmitter signal. I started to fly back but the signal cut in and out and I lost too much altitude and I crash landed between the soccer field and the forest.

            It was difficult to find the drone in the bushes but I found it. The camera mount had fallen off and there was some mud in one of the brushless motors, but other than that the drone was fine. This concluded the first flight at this park and I moved on to continue my work on the sleeping spring project.

Photations Sleeping Spring

            After finishing and crashing the drone I made my way to the Genesee nature trails. I like to film for two divisions of LCD-production when I film for project aerospace. Project aerospace only take about an hour and a half to film because I’m limited by battery flight time. I feel because I’m already out of the house I might as well film something longer as well.

            I filmed the first section of trail which was about a mile round trip. The actual first trail is about half a mile but I walk it twice. One time around taking 35mm and 3D photographs and 4K UHD video then on the second time I take VR 3D photographs.

            This second part would be the same however I would be walking a much larger section of the trail. There were a lot more people this time as we’re getting deeper into spring and having nicer warmer weather. This was not a problem everyone was very friendly and I greeted everyone as they passed by me. Some even gave good advice about where the wildlife like to rest which was helpful.

            The trees were still bare but the grass, flowers and bushes had begun to bloom and it took about an hour and a half to walk this second trail and it was exhausting. Not from the walking, just from having to stop every 10 or 15 feet to take the 4K UHD footage (or so I thought). Each time I set up the video camera I take longer 30-40 second video clips. While I’m doing this I take the time to take the 35mm and 3D photographs. Even multi-tasking like this I still have to wait on the video camera which is setup on a tripod.

            I found two large ponds, several geese and ducks as well as a gardener snake which was very interesting to watch. Once I made it to the end of the second section of trail. I decided to walk back. I was tired and I still had to take the VR 3D photographs which is easier because I don’t have to multi task with the Video and DSLR camera, but it meant I had to do everything in reverse going back the way I had come.

            Walking back was much faster and in total I probable walked about 3 miles. However, once I returned home and began to back up the footage I realized I had made a terrible mistake. When I film for project aerospace on the quad copter I film in HD at 120 fps. This allows me to slow the footage down to 4x slower then real time creating smoother longer shoots.  However, when I went to film for Potations Sleeping Spring I did not set the camera back to 4K UHD. This would be okay if the whole 2D (35mm and Video footage) project were not a 4K project but it was. Not only that but the 99% of the video footage was of still life with already slow gentle movement. There was no need for video at 120fps.

            A little disheartened I decided I would go back and re film that section of trail in 4K. The part that made it a little worse is that I would have to redo the part of filming I didn’t like which was walking from subject to subject which for whatever reason was about every 20 feet. Then waiting 30 – 40 seconds and moving on.

            The good news was that I was able to fix the drone when I returned home so I would be able to fly again at the Creasey Bicentennial Park then go back to the Genesee nature trails like I had before doing another multi division shoot for LCD-Productions.

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