First Ever Light Painting With a Drone - Experimenting with Smoke Bombs

I'm Getting the Hang of flying the drone manually. It really helps to have painted half the underside bright fluorescent orange, in determining which way the drone is facing - especially in daylight.  My favorite time to fly is just at sunset and immediately thereafter. Mostly because the lights and therefore direction is more easily seen.

I have just started to try my hand at loops and figure eights. My favorite thing to do is maintain position in strong winds and gusts that come and go here on Maui.  There aren't that many "still" days. When there are, that's when I head to the expansive fields of the nearby golf course to take her higher and higher, again, using the wind as a measure of control so I don't lose her again.  I think those days of learning what to NOT DO are done.

I have posted a bunch of my early video's some made with the stock video camera, but most with the Runcam 2. Have a look. If any are locked out, that's because they were uploaded by mistake and will soon be removed. What you will see are many crashes and experiments. The latest being hanging an RGB LED light strip from the drone and flying over my Canon Camera laying on the grass nearby.  Here's the result of the first ever LIGHT PAINTING WITH A DRONE:

 15 second exposure with the shutter locked open - over which the Syma8C
with Runcam2 was flown.  That's the moon in the center of the image.

As if learning the fly and maneuver a quadracopter without GPS is challenging enough, I tied a smoke bomb to a rubber band and affixed that to the quad landing gear. I lit the fuse, launched the quad and much to my surprise, the prop wind blew the fuse out!

Second attempt! I put a length of string, about 8 inches, between the smoke bomb and the rubber band.  I rigged that onto back two legs of the drone. I put Dronie on a picnic table near my Canon Video camera set to record video. I lit the fuse, rolled the video and when the first sign of smoke appeared, I hit the throttle and off she went....

It looked great, even though the video is out of focus, you still can get the idea that at the right time of day, it would make for quite a show...especially if several different colors of smoking balls were dangling behind this super sailing ship!

I  wrecked my first Syma8C after too many "Learning Curves" not well navigated - until finally a motor gave way. We won't mention the irate homeowner who's house it came down on, after its third major escape! let's just say I really abused the bird but the plastic never cracked.  This time I got a call from a cop who returned it; sharing the temper of the "abused" homeowner. It obviously was put thru a thrashing in order for the plastic on two motor pods to be cracked and broken beyond repair.  But at $80 for "quadracopter flying lessons" and the fun of seeing one's very first aerial videos.... just can't be beat at any price!

I hope you enjoy some of these posted videos; the high flying escapes 

and other early flights from Dec 2015 thru March 2016

http://bit.ly/1MsYAUK