First dual controller flight!

First dual controller flight!  This wasn't super-exciting or anything, but it did give us the chance to get our feet wet with dual control.  Debbie was controlling the gimballed camera for this entire video, and I was flying with the FPV camera.  If you decide to suffer through this video, you'll clearly see that we need (much) more practice – but we did actually manage to capture video as intended.  You just need to ignore all the bits where we screw up (and in future videos, it's likely we'll just edit them out anyway).  Mainly here you get to be amused at our feeble attempts to play wildlife  videographers.  :)

Tomorrow morning we're going to pile all the drone gear in our car and head out to Blacksmith Fork Canyon.  With luck, we'll find some deer or a nice bald eagle.  Even if we don't see any wildlife, there are still a couple of landmarks we can take some video of...

Zoom lens test...

Zoom lens test...  Yesterday I received a new lens for my drone's camera: a Panasonic Lumix MFT, 14mm to 42mm power zoom.  Of course that meant that I needed to fly with it and see what it could do.  The video at right shows three simple little demonstrations of it.  Bottom line: it's a great addition to my drone kit, especially the telephoto capability for our hoped-for wildlife videos and photos.

A key element of the wildlife photography capability is for Debbie to be able to control the camera independently of me piloting the drone.  This morning I got all the equipment required for that together, set it all up, and tested it out.  I had a bit of confusion trying to get it all linked up by radio, but once I did that it all worked just great!  Debbie's controller has a stick that controls the camera's panning (back and forth movement), and another stick that controls the its pitch (up and down movement).  She can tap the screen to set the focus and exposure for a particular place in the scene, and can use an on-screen “thumb wheel” to set the zoom level.  The gimbal on the drone keeps the camera perfectly pointed in whatever direction she left it, so if she let's go of the controls, the camera stays pointed correctly – even if wind is buffeting the drone, or I move the drone around.  Nice!  We'll try operating the drone together later today, and I'll probably take some video of that.  Unless it's laughably bad (not an improbable event!), I'll share it up here...