Great flight for the first 27 mins today out over Elsted common. Then I needed to land, but arriving rather late to the party, let's see what happens a when a previously absent cart-load of cows rock up at your landing pad... post-flight narration (added to replace the headcam audio which wasn't there because I had previously narrated into it to 'let's stop recording on the craft for a panorama', which resulted in my Osmo Action 3 stopping recording due to having voice commands turned on, and that being one of them !)
Probably won't publish this on the main channel, but will link here so that we can all laugh along and learn from my errors, of which there were at least 3 !
(snowflake warning - some swearing in video)
The best lessons here would seem to be; 'Don't become stressed and forget to reset your home point if you move it' and also 'let your eyes off the craft and down at your screen / away at ground hazards much more often than CAA would like or suggest !'
And of course I submit my choice of fly site for due criticism - it is a Nature Reserve, and I knew that in advance. BUT, I did look up the SSSI citation, thought I could reasonably avoid the birds nesting on the ground and the dragonflies and sand wasps by the moor pools and the rare heather, and have flown here many times before (with MUCH bigger craft) with never the slightest nature-related problem, and there was a total absence of cattle anywhere in my flight, either before launch or for the first 25 mins of it. I simply hadn't seen them hiding in the woods, and had assumed they were way off across this really quite vast area of heath land...
So as we see, all's well that ends well, and we didn't make entirely hopeless decisions, there was speedy action when we needed it, and the craft got down, only muggins here got stressed, and no cows seemed any the worse for the experience. In fact, with hindsight, they seemed to rather enjoy it !
Interestingly, they didn't appear to care less about the presence of an M4P, even when it was the closest it got to them and was descending, which was about 20 ft away and my hand-catch height above them !
Probably won't publish this on the main channel, but will link here so that we can all laugh along and learn from my errors, of which there were at least 3 !
(snowflake warning - some swearing in video)
The best lessons here would seem to be; 'Don't become stressed and forget to reset your home point if you move it' and also 'let your eyes off the craft and down at your screen / away at ground hazards much more often than CAA would like or suggest !'
And of course I submit my choice of fly site for due criticism - it is a Nature Reserve, and I knew that in advance. BUT, I did look up the SSSI citation, thought I could reasonably avoid the birds nesting on the ground and the dragonflies and sand wasps by the moor pools and the rare heather, and have flown here many times before (with MUCH bigger craft) with never the slightest nature-related problem, and there was a total absence of cattle anywhere in my flight, either before launch or for the first 25 mins of it. I simply hadn't seen them hiding in the woods, and had assumed they were way off across this really quite vast area of heath land...
So as we see, all's well that ends well, and we didn't make entirely hopeless decisions, there was speedy action when we needed it, and the craft got down, only muggins here got stressed, and no cows seemed any the worse for the experience. In fact, with hindsight, they seemed to rather enjoy it !
Interestingly, they didn't appear to care less about the presence of an M4P, even when it was the closest it got to them and was descending, which was about 20 ft away and my hand-catch height above them !
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