I love hiking and climbing the rugged, beautiful and high mountains of Utah and I also love research and fun with drones also known as UAV quad rotor copters. So last Thursday I decided to combine both for an epic sunset flight.
<Queue the music Fly Like an Eagle by Steve Miller>
I flew my UAV a DJI Phantom Vision 2+ from the top of a 11,000+ foot mountain summit of Sunset Peak located up Little Cottonwood Canyon and several world class ski resorts like Snowbird, Alta, Brighton, Park City, Solitude, and many more where you can see both Cottonwood Canyons. There was some high wind gusts that concerned me when I reached the summit but I waited until it died down enough to fly. I flew within the FAA legal guidelines and common sense to assure everyone's safety so I did not interfere with commercial air traffic that do fly over the Wasatch Mountain range. I found the air is a little thin and harder to control the UAV at that elevation, but it was epic views and truly felt looking through the FPV goggles that I was an eagle soaring around in the 30 mph wind gusts.
I will be climbing the peak after this weekends snow melts and fly, but this time without wind and take photos to generate a 3D model of the mountain using Autodesk's ReCap 360 Photo.
I ran into only one other human on the summit and he was an AutoCAD user, and I was wearing my Autodesk shirt. Small world.
Here are two photos from the drone looking at Sunset Peak to the East and also a look straight down.
Looking down, do you see me on the trail?
Here is an unedited video of a small portion of this crazy fun flight. You can see the spherical lens distortion which once edited will be corrected. Link to Video
More photos from the hike and also posted to my Instagram ShaanHurley. I am not sure if it is just me but a good Squatters Full Suspension Ale beer tastes even better on the summit of the 11,000 foot mountain summit. I ended up hiking down in the dark with my headlamp. I cant wait to get back up there.
Here is a photo from my drone/ UAV taken at the beautiful Kalaupapa Molokai the same location the movie Jurassic Park III opening sequence was filed. I will be editing and posting some video from these amazing flights.
I may put together a Flight Fest in the Nevada desert during or after Autodesk University 2014 for people to come out and play and learn about them. Imagine a meetup away from Autodesk University in the Red Rock desert at a local RC airpark getting fresh air and having aerial fun. Are you interested as a drone manufacturer,expert, or interested party just post a comment to this blog post or email me?
Cheers,
Shaan
