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  • "Chasing A Ghost: The O&W's Utica Division" (video)

  • Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New York State.
Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New York State.

Moderator: Otto Vondrak

 #1515300  by johnpbarlow
 
Very interesting and creatively/artfully produced video! This may be the first drone video I've seen that covered such a large linear distance (most drone RR videos I've seen the drone goes up and hovers to capture the action or moves only short distances) and I'm curious how you went about doing this. It looks like the aerial footage was captured in 4 flight segments and then stitched together in the editing process? What kind of flight range does your drone have? As I'm guessing you weren't following along on the ground by car, the drone must have been out of visual range for much of the time? And once you judged that drone was approaching the limit of its control signal (0.5 mile to 1 mile?), you had it return home? Well done!
 #1515409  by ut-1
 
johnpbarlow:

Thanks for your feedback!

Yes, the drone had four separate "missions." We had to re-video the first segment because we began the turn too far to the east. This was done on a different morning; hence the difference in the lighting conditions.

The mission "coordinates" were uploaded to the drone using GPS. We followed by car, maintaining visual contact. The drone could fly 1 mile point to point; however, the curve in the first segment allowed the drone to fly a bit more than a mile (it was still a mile from the beginning point to the end point, as the crow flies).

Once the drone reached its end point for each segment, it hovered for a short time until my friend, the dronesman, took manual control and flew it a short distance back to us.

We gamed all of this out beforehand, of course.