Way before drone photography…..

That's fascinating, thanks for posting that, it makes us realise what peope did before modern technology took over!

My son and me tried aerial photography last year, we built a quadcopter capable of carrying a lightweight video camera (Contour v hold). The first few test flights were quite promising so we took it up to Scotland on a photo trip and tried getting some shots of a waterall by flying it up a narrow but very deep ravine. Unfortunately, the chopper clipped a tree branch and went down, finally ending up in the deep waters of the raging river below with no chance of recovery. A stroke of luck enabled us to recover the camera which broke away from the chopper on impact with a rock, my lad scambled down to recover it against my advice but he got it back. We were ging to build another but having lost a fair bit of money (expensive!) with the first we decided not to bother. These things cost a fortune and are so easily lost. I'll try to find some of the videos we got and post them up later, not sure what we did with them but they'll be around somewhere.

Luke, those photos are incredible - thanks for posting those also

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Dewi, what a great story! Would love to see some of the footage.

Unfortunateiy there was no footage of the chopper going down, Luke. The impact stopped the camera recording so any video we had of the chopper's demise wasn't saved to the media card. I do have one of the maiden flight though the first day we flew it after the build.
 
If you're thinking of it Luke, build it yourself and do a proper job or buy one that someone who knows what theyre doing has built. The ready made ones tend to be very average. The thing that let us down on ours was the use of a relatively cheap GPS system. A good one will hold the chopper rock steady in breeze, an average one like the one we bought (to save a few pennies) will let the chopper drift a bit - hence why ours clipped the tree branch and caught the wind that was lower down the chasm - lesson learned, buy the best you can afford, it's cheaper inthe long run! :D We may build another one someday, but it stings a bit bit when you watch just short of £800 worth of chopper fall into white water! Had we not got the camera back the loss would have been a lot higher
 
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