DJI Wookong M Hexacopter Howsham River Derwent

Howsham is a small village off the beaten track between York and Malton in North Yorkshire, and just before you get to the village there is a nice stone bridge over the River Derwent.

Yesterday was nice and sunny, wind less than 6mph and quite warm for January so I decided to drive out to this little bridge and film some of the river and surrounding countryside.

I used up five lipo batteries, but wasted the first one because I had the camera angled down. People new to aerial photography may think that angling the camera down is a good idea, but it isn't - at least not unless all you want to record is grass. The only time pointing down is effective is when you're really high up, or you're trying to do an above shot of a particular subject, otherwise it is always best to point your camera forward to get the best view.

The flight was done with my DJI Wookong M driven hexacopter, which I continue to be impressed with. I have the hexacopter setup in X mode, meaning there are two booms pointing forwards and two backwards in an X shape, with the other two pointing straight out sideways. I have recently attached the Mikrokopter HiLander legs, one to each of the booms of the X. This means the gap between the legs at the sides is much wider than the gap between the legs at the front and back, which looks rather odd at first. However, I found yesterday that there is a nice advantage to this, so long as you are not using a wide angle lens and getting the front legs in the shot, in that it's very easy to see your orientation when flying line of sight, looking up at the Hexacopter, because you know if you see wide apart legs you're looking at one of the sides.

The only part of the video I'm not that happy with is the footage flying low of the barrel-shaped hay bales because I didn't fly straight and keep correcting the direction. This was partly because I was flying from the side I think, and perhaps it would have been better flying FPV (first person view) with my video goggles for that bit. In fact, if I'd had the googles and FPV gear (I'm waiting for a replacement transmitter) I probably would have flown under the bridge above the river instead of the path. Then again, I might have chickened out on that seeing as it's winter and the river water is quite high.