Today the weather conditions were perfect for drone flying! The wind was almost nonexistent, it was slightly above freezing, and as an added bonus there was a good number of GPS satellites overhead. Check out the readout from my UAV Weather forecast app over on the side. You don’t get many days like this in January!  This morning I sent some emails to BCC Security and the Pittsfield Airport and got the “OK” for a impromptu drone flight.

I also sent some emails to key faculty who might be interested and a few folks were free to join me this afternoon.  Our goal was to take some video of the BCC nature trail from a new and different perspective, maybe see some animal tracks.  Since there is still a good amount of snow cover a hand launch and landing was necessary, something I had been practicing over the holiday break (check out my previous videos.)

Below is the full video of the flight.  We didn’t have any problems with birds or anything like I have in the past on campus which was great. A few ravens showed up as we were wrapping up (thanks for the identification Tim!) although we had already landed buy that time. The only thing to really be mindful of was the radio tower and it’s guide wires. I should have used the drone to measure the height of the radio tower for our notes going forward, something to do next time for sure. From playing the video back it seems to be 100 feet, however a precise measurement would be nice if for no other reason to set that +10 feet in the drone settings as the return to home altitude in case the drone looses signal with the remote, something I have yet to experience but still try to plan for.

One of our next goals is to make a full 3D map of this are of the BCC Nature Trail and having this first video as a reference might come in handy.  If anyone wants a copy of the original full quality video just reach out and let me know.  I’m looking forward to the next on-campus flight!