Nube question - How do you gauge if you are high enough just using the screen to just skim the top of a tree?

[DavidT_ NZ]

Right, except that, in many drones, the "full up" position is substantially above looking horizontally. My Mavic Mini will point up to 30 degrees above horizontal, for example. But when I set it at 0 degrees, it works as you describe.

Check the Fly setting that allows the gimbal to point above the horizontal. The Fn button (on my Air 2) will still return the gimbal between down and horizontal, even if I have had the camera pointed above horizontal - e.g. for some nice cloud shots.

 

[B52-D]

Check the Fly setting that allows the gimbal to point above the horizontal. The Fn button (on my Air 2) will still return the gimbal between down and horizontal, even if I have had the camera pointed above horizontal - e.g. for some nice cloud shots.

Personally I use a sofrigginfistigated system called WAG, Wild Arse Guess, serves me well so far.

 

[wardtom084]

If you want to do it YOUR WAY, attach a string of a known length with a little weight at the bottom, take up your drone, there you go.

 

[cheddar-man]

Keep in mind, you are measuring the height of the trees near you. As you fly away from your location, the ground level can change as well as heights of the trees.

But the drone's barometer is set to zero at takeoff so doesn't matter what the ground does as you fly away, and the tree's height is fixed.

 

[RGS2010]

I try to stay away from "Drone Catchers" but I sometimes do skim over trees. I estimate where to be and then, from further away, I use my 1080 resolution zoom and estimate with that so I can do a smooth, nonstop video in whatever resolution I then need.

Just my .02

 

[vindibona1]

First I would learn to fly about a 2 ft over the water , you will notice that this is tricky enough , but this will teach you quickly how far from the water is comfortable after 50 ft out .. let Say 3 Ft for the next couple hundred feet and what you will find is that you will be smart to in gradually keep lifting up as you go further out.

Now that you survived that Water Skimming , and gotten the feeling of being able to trust your drone or NOT !

Once you see how difficult it is on the water where you have perfect line of sight, that will determine quickly the skills and challenge and Vantage point needed to be successful at the Art of Skimming the Tree Tops .

Even with that training , you need a few things to Tree Top Fly , as it something we do a lot of .


Take notice to how the flight allows me to gain perspective of the trees before the attempt to fly over them.
You can do this same thing by flying next to the tree line and finding your incline over the top .

Once you learn that trick it will be much easier with some practice to do this.
Today of course we just race out over the top of the trees now as seen in other our other videos.

Trust in your drone :
A good vantage point from which to see the drone .
A good vantage point to see clearly your distance from the Tree tops
A gradual incline up the further you go out.
Notes of how far you went before a gradual incline .

You might even consider getting the Rescue Jacket to save you from your mistakes.


Phatnomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

I like the idea of flying super low to get a perspective on skimming, I think (without a Rescue Jacket) it might be more prudent to do that over a solid area, like a bike/running path (with no people on it, of course). There are far too many stories of folks flying close to the water and then the bottom sensors do something strange and the drone just goes in. No thank you.

There are a few bridges that I'd like to fly under, but while I'm confident in my control skills I don't feel I have a handle on screen perspective in terms of how far my drones are to object. I was practicing flying thru one of those picnic structures the other day and was directly behind, but pretty far away, trying to use my screen to navigate through. No problem there. But what I could not determine was how far in or out of the structure the drone was. I thought it was still in the structure when in fact it was beyond, determined by hovering and yawing in a circle. So disconcerting. The one good crash I've had was that I passed between trees, but needed to "jog" left to follow the path, but hadn't completely passed by the tree and no way to know how far I had gone past (or not) and ended up turning into the tree branch. Another 3 feet and I would have cleared it. It's easy to fly far from stuff, but close???

 

[James G.]

So lets say I want determine the height of a tall palm tree. Standing next the the tree, fly vertically until the top is in the center of the view finder. But how low does it need to be to just clear it? Bottom 1/3rd? Totally out of the viewfinder?

Palm trees are bushy at the top, you cant really tell from VLOS. I know, when in doubt, fly higher but that's not what I am trying to accomplish, I want to know what the actual hight of the tree is using the drone. Or any tall object for that matter. Lots of lamp posts in my neighborhood.

That's pretty easy. I have two very tall palm trees behind me in neighbors yard. I flew up above the tallest one and when I was directly overhead I pointed camera down and started to descend. I got within a couple of feet as viewed through my camera and I could see palm leaves waving from my prop wash. 94' was what I determined when I looked at my altitude readout.

 

[Tristar500]

I also fly hot air balloons and one of the ways we know we are above an obstacle is to look out at the horizon. If the object is higher than the horizon that you aren't going to clear it. This works well for tall objects in the distance, not for actually measuring the height of said object.

 

[Capt KO]

Simple. Just go high enough that all objects are below the horizon. That's your RTH height setting. Luckily I'm near the coast so the horizon is visible.

 

[LA 2020]

So lets say I want determine the height of a tall palm tree. Standing next the the tree, fly vertically until the top is in the center of the view finder. But how low does it need to be to just clear it? Bottom 1/3rd? Totally out of the viewfinder?

Palm trees are bushy at the top, you cant really tell from VLOS. I know, when in doubt, fly higher but that's not what I am trying to accomplish, I want to know what the actual hight of the tree is using the drone. Or any tall object for that matter. Lots of lamp posts in my neighborhood.

I use a range finder like they use on a riffle range, works great. It will measure even if you are off at an angle. The other way is to take off right next to the tree and fly straight up to the top and watch the altitude on the controller.

 

[cneedelman]

First I would learn to fly about a 2 ft over the water , you will notice that this is tricky enough , but this will teach you quickly how far from the water is comfortable after 50 ft out .. let Say 3 Ft for the next couple hundred feet and what you will find is that you will be smart to in gradually keep lifting up as you go further out.

Now that you survived that Water Skimming , and gotten the feeling of being able to trust your drone or NOT !

Once you see how difficult it is on the water where you have perfect line of sight, that will determine quickly the skills and challenge and Vantage point needed to be successful at the Art of Skimming the Tree Tops .

Even with that training , you need a few things to Tree Top Fly , as it something we do a lot of .


Take notice to how the flight allows me to gain perspective of the trees before the attempt to fly over them.
You can do this same thing by flying next to the tree line and finding your incline over the top .

Once you learn that trick it will be much easier with some practice to do this.
Today of course we just race out over the top of the trees now as seen in other our other videos.

Trust in your drone :
A good vantage point from which to see the drone .
A good vantage point to see clearly your distance from the Tree tops
A gradual incline up the further you go out.
Notes of how far you went before a gradual incline .

You might even consider getting the Rescue Jacket to save you from your mistakes.


Phatnomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

That was pretty close!

 

[Brojon]

Trust in your drone :
A good vantage point from which to see the drone .
A good vantage point to see clearly your distance from the Tree tops
A gradual incline up the further you go out.
Notes of how far you went before a gradual incline .

You might even consider getting the Rescue Jacket to save you from your mistakes.
Phatnomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

That video shows the change in perspective at distance and close. You know that all the balconies are probably the same height. Lesson is you can't really tell when you're too close - better to ascertain from a distance where the top is by using level gimbal and the center cross.
Water freaks me out. I've known many folks over the years that have lost their drones in water.
It's well known that too low will trigger a landing. I think a guy named Ed Ricker on YouTube did some tests to prove it.
Yes, found it.

 

[Brojon]

There are a few bridges that I'd like to fly under

A bridge is what did in my first Mavic Pro.
Metal in the bridge caused a loss of GPS, up she went into the bridge - kaboom into the mud..
No, it would not respond to the sticks.

 

[SethB]

Thanks for your suggestion guys. So being late at night cant fly right now, I found the simplest way to test this out. Without flying it inside the house, I powered up the drone, hit the default gimbal reset to 0, turned on the screen grid with rule of 3rs and hand held it as if it were flying over a flat top chair. What I discovered was as long as it's always in the lower third it will clean the obstacle within about 6 inches including accounting for a forward tilt if it were in flight.

The catch is the closer you get the to object the more it comes into frame. Also, with big flat objects, you have to account for perspective. So when I tried this experiment over a large flat table, just focusing on the front edge would have caused a collision, it would collide because the back part of the table is higher up in frame. So it's the far back edge or total outlined of the object one must use as the guide to keep in the lower 1/3 of the screen to just clear it. Your results may vary.

I do a lot of shots at low altitude, and frequently want to have a nice smooth flight path to an object. So easy to make a mistake, my standard method is to start the drone at the end of the shot, fly it backwards, then reverse it in the edit.

I’d think you could get a nice treetop flyover using that method …

 

[EpicFlight]

Turn on the cross in the DJIFly display and use that as your horizon.

Also, it's spelled like boob, not lube

 

[Richiebricker]

So lets say I want determine the height of a tall palm tree. Standing next the the tree, fly vertically until the top is in the center of the view finder. But how low does it need to be to just clear it? Bottom 1/3rd? Totally out of the viewfinder?

Palm trees are bushy at the top, you cant really tell from VLOS. I know, when in doubt, fly higher but that's not what I am trying to accomplish, I want to know what the actual hight of the tree is using the drone. Or any tall object for that matter. Lots of lamp posts in my neighborhood.

DONT skim the top of a tree. Trees are the enemy although drones sure like them. Maybe with one o those 360 cameras on a stick in chase view could help but I would stay away

 

[Dbez1]

I turn on the grid lines. There usually is a center crosshair. If I want to check the height of the tallest utility pole around me, I’ll fly close to it and line up the crosshair with the top of the pole. Then I add a meter to my height. Off course I set my camera on 0 elevation. I suppose you test this on a small bush a couple meters off the ground.

Use the x crosshairs with this method and don’t forget about downdrafts, especially when flying from over concrete to over vegetation.

 

[swcon]

I turn on the grid lines. There usually is a center crosshair. If I want to check the height of the tallest utility pole around me, I’ll fly close to it and line up the crosshair with the top of the pole. Then I add a meter to my height. Off course I set my camera on 0 elevation. I suppose you test this on a small bush a couple meters off the ground.

Thats what I do it works well !

 

[Richiebricker]

DONT fly close to a tree or anything else. Trees love drones as well as chain link fenses, so DONT. When you fly close to something, GPS or not , the object will cause an "Air Effect" and you might crash while not even moving the sticks. Take this advice from a Repeat Offender. Rc Planes too. I even got a Rc Car Basher stuck in a tree. STAY AWAY!!!

 

[eva2000]

So lets say I want determine the height of a tall palm tree. Standing next the the tree, fly vertically until the top is in the center of the view finder. But how low does it need to be to just clear it? Bottom 1/3rd? Totally out of the viewfinder?

Palm trees are bushy at the top, you cant really tell from VLOS. I know, when in doubt, fly higher but that's not what I am trying to accomplish, I want to know what the actual hight of the tree is using the drone. Or any tall object for that matter. Lots of lamp posts in my neighborhood.

If you're just trying to figure out where in the viewfinder/screen that marks the top of a tree, can't you just do it safely using a pot plant or waist-high plant and fly your drone and visually see where the top of the plant is and where it lands on the viewfinder/screen?