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LITCHI auto flight

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Hey crashburn. ..
that was a scetchy flight..
you're very cool under pressure! !
I'm surprised you lost signal only a mile out..
was that with dbs and amps?
Sure is beautiful country you live in!!
I enjoyed the ride..
thanks ..
turbo....
Thanks Turbo,
No amps this time, wanted to see how it flew with no signal. I wouldn't be doing this unless I knew the Litchi app worked.
 
So that was a stock rc or dbs with no amps??
that's pretty good considering you were in a atrium. .
The litchi app worked well.. pretty cool...
Glad it came back!!
I about soiled myself until I saw it was still flying back..lol..
Thanks Turbo,
No amps this time, wanted to see how it flew with no signal. I wouldn't be doing this unless I knew the Litchi app worked.
 
So that was a stock rc or dbs with no amps??
that's pretty good considering you were in a atrium. .
The litchi app worked well.. pretty cool...
Glad it came back!!
I about soiled myself until I saw it was still flying back..lol..
DBS with no amps. Lots of trees, wifi interference. Hard to get a mile here even with amps, but I can go out in the country and go about 3 miles with amps.
 
Litchi can do much more.


Full way with Litchi waypoints camera manual

Starting at -20 alt just over horizon so it was not possible to go down more

The challenge was that the track led on the other side of the hill so I had the path behind the top of the hill and had to take care just not to loose the signal. I did make a testdrive with camera to the front before to make sure not to crash into a tree, but everything was fine I did not have to make any adjustments. I calculated the alt on google maps before.

This train goes only 3-4x a year so I had to take weather as it was, next year I will modify the path to stay a little more away from the train at the beginning I was to near for this altitude.
 
Litchi can do much more.


Full way with Litchi waypoints camera manual

Starting at -20 alt just over horizon so it was not possible to go down more

The challenge was that the track led on the other side of the hill so I had the path behind the top of the hill and had to take care just not to loose the signal. I did make a testdrive with camera to the front before to make sure not to crash into a tree, but everything was fine I did not have to make any adjustments. I calculated the alt on google maps before.

This train goes only 3-4x a year so I had to take weather as it was, next year I will modify the path to stay a little more away from the train at the beginning I was to near for this altitude.
This was amazing to watch.
You live up to you're avatar name, Machoman.
 
Thanks for comments. As I get several private messages to tell more about how I did it I want to post it for all:

The reason I went over the trees so long was not because I wanted this to do it was just because there were this wood exactly where the train was supposed to have most steam. I had just no other choice then chooseing this way.

First of all I am not 70% satiesfied with the result. There are things which can be done better next time:
1. The 1st minute the camera needs to be 15m more away if there is no way to get lower
2. In the middle the train disappears behind trees 2 times - there the tree crossing of the camera must be later. In one case there is a bigger tree ending the tree front when the camera goes down. Because of this tree the path avoids to go over it.

The planning was just made with google maps calculating alt difference of terrain with my starting point +35m where there are trees. The points where it does down there is absolutely no risk because there are no trees on the side of the camera.

As I needed to stand on the other side of the hill to keep RC - drone LOS all the time I had to go rather high at some specific point where the top of the hill was between.

My girl was equippet with binoculars some 100m away to see the station in 3km distance to give a sign when the train left. As the 1st waypoint was 1,3km away (Homepoint was the only point on the map where LOS could be kept all the way - there was no alternative) it was critical to reach it at the right time. The main reason for failing with such footages is not reaching the 1st waypoint at the right time. I lost several good situations because a train be 10 minutes late or I expected to hear it and didnt reach the starting point in time.

I am planning each mission extremely carefully

- location of powerlines in the area are checked (up to 100KV crossed, over 100 KV avoided)
- ground altitude is checked for whole path
- minimum alt is calculated for each waypoint
- if high trees are near +35m is calculated
- LOS with RC is estimated
- if its a very ambitious path a test drive with camera to front is made

Once arrived in the area binoculars are used to search for obstacles like handytowers which could have been overlooked before

Planning at home is more safe then the DJI method of try+crash because everyone knows you cannot guess the correct distance to obstacles on the tablet. So you would have to fly many times and extremely slow and adjust loosing many batteries with DJI GO. Its not even possible to have so many batteries and even if you had you could not charge them in time.

Generally I almost never use ND filters, while some surroundings have a short shutter effect the train is clear all the time. I prefer the shutter effect to washed pictures though others may not like it. I also can take a very sharp still image of any frame in the movie because of this. However due to the bad weather this does not really apply to this video.
 
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