Category: Hover

Update: Flight Planning Apps

I found out today that NATS ― the National Air Traffic Service, i.e. the organisation responsible for air traffic control in the United Kingdom ―  has released its own app to aid drone pilots in planning their flights, called NATS Drone Assist.

I have tried it out immediately ― being on the lookout for a new planning tool since the Hover disaster ― and found it to be excellent.  Not only are the VFR maps up to date and very interactive and include NOTAMs and future use indicators, but the app also warns of other hazards, including high-voltage lines and other drone users that are currently active.

NATS has also endorsed AirMap, the app I have been using since abandoning Hover.  So, I guess that if I use the app released by the air traffic control people and the app recommended by the air traffic control people, I hopefully will not go too badly wrong in the future.

 

 

Hover is not Reliable!

As usual, I did my preflight preps today with the Hover app, first at home ― my location was shown to be outside any controlled airspace ― and then again just before take-off.  Again, Hover  gave me the thumbs up and green light, and so unsuspectingly I commenced Tinks‘ take-off sequence.  It was only at that point that the drone itself gave me a “You are inside Zone D” warning.

Cross-checking with SkyVector, it turns out that I was well within the Zone D Controlled Airspace of Belfast City Airport, and flying there would have been at the very least highly unprofessional, and depending on flight profile could possibly have been illegal.  Checking with Hover again, this zone was indeed neither shown on the map, nor picked up in the pre-flight checks.

This unfortunately leaves me with no choice but to abandon Hover, and in future do all my preflight planning with SkyVector ― which is a pity, because Hover was a nice one-stop solution for drone flight planning.  SkyVector on the other hand is a tool for private pilots’ flight planning, and as such is not geared towards drone flights, and lacks some functionality that drone apps usually have, like automatic location detection or weather forecast.  Since it is aimed at pilots, it also shows a lot of information that is irrelevant for drone pilots, and is hence a lot harder to read.

I shall keep looking, and see if there are other, more reliable apps out there for drone pilots.  However, after this incident I do not think that I will ever completely rely on any of those apps again, and will probably always check the VRF maps on SkyVector, just to be sure…

Update 14 June 2018:  I have now started to use AirMap, which seems more reliable than Hover, if maybe somewhat on the paranoid side of things, but that is better than not flagging up when I am inside a controlled airspace.

 

Tullaghoge Fort

Tinks‘ next adventure was another chance discovery. Because no appointment was available at my local MOT centre for weeks to come, I grudgingly presented my car at the Cookstown DVTA Centre. On the long way back I came across a signpost to Tullaghoge Fort. Hoping to prevent the drive from being a complete loss, I stopped for a nosy. I instantly realised that this site was right up my alley, and so I returned shortly thereafter with Tinks to have a proper look.

The site is not so much of strategic but cultural significance, having been the inauguration site for chieftains since ancient times. It is not known when the site was created, and historical records only prove that the chieftains of the O’Neill clan were inaugurated here, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the site has been in use much longer than that.

The last known inauguration to take place here was that of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in 1595. Claims that Felim O’Neill of Kinard was crowned here in 1641 are disputed. The site fell into disrepair after the Flight of the Earls in 1607, and very few features of the once substantial and culturally important site remain. Particularly, the missing inauguration stone, Leac na Rí, has been shrouded in mystery ever since.

The superficial similarity to a defensive rath has been dismissed by archaeologists as coincidence, and current academic thinking is that the arrangement of the ditches and earthen walls was unsuitable to be used as fortifications, and were of a ceremonial purpose only.

I used Quik again as the editing tool, followed by polishing in iMovie on my MacBook Pro. However, on this occasion I am much less happy with the outcome. The individual clips are much too short in my mind, and make for a unnerving viewing experience. Essentially, one never has a chance to properly take in any scene, before Quik already cuts to the next. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be settings to make Quik less hyperactive: The result is of the ‘take it or leave it’ variety.

I have therefore subsequently abandoned Quik again, and returned to doing my own editing using iMovie. Unfortunately, the raw material got corrupted and lost in most peculiar circumstances, so I am no longer able to re-edit the Tullaghoge movie above into something more to my liking…

Roughan Fort

Tinker Bell‘s next flight was going to be a wildcard. Having heard only recently and by pure chance about Roughan Fort, and being unable to find out anything about it, not even its exact location, I decided to go hunting for it equipped with GPS and Tinks. My good old friend Mary ― who has learned to live with my outbursts of geekiness ― tagged along as an extra pair of eyes, as I found in the past that as the driver, concentrating on the road, it is easy to miss hints or even something as obvious as a sign.

After several hours of cruising the countryside in the neighbourhood where I knew the castle was, we finally found it. Still, it took us two full circles around the castle and associated lough before we found what we think was the official access to it ― I am still not entirely sure that we did, but nobody challenged us on crossing this farmer’s field…

Very little is known about the castle other than that it was built in 1618 by Andrew Stewart, and that Sir Felim O’Neill of Kinard hid here from 1652 to 1653 to escape the English, who were looking for him because his involvement in the Irish rebellion of 1641. Accounts vary, but Sir Felim O’Neill was eventually betrayed and arrested in 1653 either in the castle, or on the nearby crannog. He was subsequently taken to Dublin, and hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor.

We know that the castle was still used in 1662, which is the last time it is mentioned in official documents, at least as far as we know of. Sometime afterwards the castle was abandoned, fell into disrepair, and is now ruined.

I brought Tinks with me on the off-chance that it would be worth my while, but was glad that I did. The ruin has been made safe, but not much has been done to allow access, so without Tinks we would have seen very little of it.

I chose to have the editing done automatically by GoPro Quik this time, and have to say that I was quite impressed with the result. For this particular motif and chosen background music, it did a very decent job. Finished off with some polishing using iMovie on my MacBook Pro.

Gilford’s Abandoned Linen Mill

When I left the Philippines to return to my job, Mel was very sad to see Tinker Bell go. For consolation, I promised her I would send Tinks to a surprise location back in Northern Ireland, to shoot her a video. This has a long tradition between us, as Mel has always been curious about Northern Ireland and our strange traditions ― like seasons (!!!) ― so I tended to send her videos from my dashcam before Tinks entered our lives.

The surprise location I came up with was Gilford’s abandoned Linen Mill. The first mill was built at 1841, and the site had since rapidly grown ― and Gilford with it ― until the heydays of linen milling in the 1880s. Strangely enough, it is not fully known when the current building was constructed other than sometime between 1841 and 1880. Following the decline of the linen industry, the mill eventually closed in 1986, and its fate has been bickered over ever since.

The work one can see that has been done to the roof and windows was in preparation of the mill being turned into the Outlet retail center, now renamed as the Boulevard. However, GML Estates ― the company behind the original plans ― changed the location from the mill to the current site in Banbridge when the latter became available, and now the fate of the mill is up in the air again.

Aircraft control via DJI Remote, and edited with iMovie on my MacBook Pro. Again, editing is minimal, the video pretty much shows the flight as flown.

RC Test Flight

The next flight was to be yet another test flight, this time to try out my new DJI remote controller for Tinker Bell. As I hoped, range is much improved, however it is still strictly line of sight only. I wonder if the larger drones have the actual control circuit on a different frequency, e.g. similar to remote-controlled airplanes, to achieve better control and range.

Anyway, this requirement for having line-of-sight with the drone at all times will require future flights to be carefully planned, and require more editing of the videos, to cut out times when the drone was stationery awaiting me to get to a new vantage point, in order to maintain line-of-sight for the next planned leg of the flight.

Edited on iMovie, initially on my iPad, then handed over to my MacBook Pro. To my surprise, the handing over of the project from one device to the other went reasonably smoothly, only minor edits were needed afterwards. Since this was only a test flight, editing was very light, and the flight is pretty much presented as flown…

One other thing I noticed about the remote control is that while the range is much improved, the video feed not necessarily so. I wonder if this is due to the fact that the remote only works with my iPhone, but not my iPad. My iPhone is quite an old model, with limited memory and processor power, so it may just not be able to stream a high-quality video stream in real-time. At some point I will have to look into this and investigate further.

St Thomas Aquinas Parish Church

The next flight was the first one not done entirely to check out the drone, and practice piloting. It is my strong belief that the visually most interesting objects for drone flights should have a strongly three-dimensional character. This way, the drone’s ability to explore these objects in three dimensions leads to a viewer experience that cannot be replicated by any other means. If the object can be fully covered by just walking along it, what is the point of unleashing a drone in the first place…?

With this view in mind, I nearly instantly had my eyes on St Thomas Aquinas Parish Church in Mangaldan, by far the highest building in the area, and with a nice open area in front of it which directly borders the public park.

I used Hover to confirm that I was not in a No-Fly Zone. There were no immediately obvious “Don’t Fly Drones” signs, and the place was reasonably empty. As for the Parish itself, there was nobody obvious around I could have asked for permission, and given that Filipinos are usually quite open to new technology, I hoped that nobody would take offence and launched Tinkerbell…

Control was still with my iPad, so I continued to be limited by its range, and some of the jerking towards the end of the video is caused by temporary loss of control to the drone. Recovery of the drone was by gesture control, which worked surprisingly well.

Edited in iMovie on my iPad.