Having Holidayed in the South West of Scotland over the past
ten years; in recent years as I’d ventured up there with my wife and two
children, I’d often thought to myself what a stunning place it would be to
capture some aerial videos. Having got into FPV flying in the past twelve
months, it just seemed like something I would have to turn into reality!
Having been wife endorsed, I suggested a date in June to my
RC/FPV buddy Steve and we duly booked another of my friends holiday owned
cottage in a place called New Galloway where I have previously stayed many
times. Prior to the trip, I knew of many
locations where we could fly from and we set off for a few days armed with
various flying contraptions from multi-rotors, flying wings and gliders.
The result was five days of truly spectacular flying (yes we
had crashes), lots of insect bites and some amazing footage which I will share
with you as I get through the 68 gigabytes of video footage captured from
twelve plus flying locations!
I hope you enjoy the videos as much as we enjoyed flying,
capturing and trying to bring the videos alive.
;D
Here are the first seven videos and more will follow: :)
Big Water of Fleet Viaduct – Dumfries &
Galloway...
Situated near the small town of Gatehouse of Fleet in
Dumfries & Galloway. This 20 arch viaduct (as featured in the 1935 film 39
Steps) provided the awesome engineering backdrop to a first session of flying
on our RC/FPV trip.
The video below shows Steve’s cracking little DJI450 Quad
using a CopterControl board in action. Although you probably won’t pick it up
from the video, it was fairly breezy which didn’t make flying easy. Especially landing our gliders on the narrow
grass verge just past the viaduct. I’m waiting for the “did you fly through the
arches questions” . The answer is yes, although only with the multi-rotors as
we didn’t want to run the risk of busting the aircraft up on the first day out!
From 1861 until 1965, the Portpatrick and Wigtonshire railway - worked its way
across south western Scotland, from Dumfries to the ports of Stranraer and
Portpatrick. The railway was closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching act. This
viaduct which was part of a pair, the other nearby known as the Little Viaduct
was blown up by the army in a training exercise. Luckily the Big Viaduct
survived this process and I can share the viaduct as it is today with you.
Flying with Red Kites at Woodhall Loch close to
Mossdale – Dumfries & Galloway.
The next two videos show us FPVing around the very
picturesque Woodhall Loch close to
Mossdale. What really made things interesting was when we were joined by the
stunning Red Kites. We felt lucky to see
one in the first video and get some good still shots, but on our second visit
there we were stunned by the presence of two Red Kites who were very
inquisitive as to what had invaded their territory/airspace! We were also treated to some awesome Red Kite formation flying! Flying FPV with my excellent Graupner Elektro
Rookie, I managed to get a few glimpses through the goggles of the birds of
prey, but the lowering sun made it difficult to pick out that level of detail,
so with that I handed over my radio to Steve who flew line of sight to get a
bit closer and tighter to the birds As you’ll see in the 2nd video, there
looked to be a close miss. How close it was is hard to tell! It didn't scare the Red Kites off, so it probably looked closer than it actually was from the angle filming from.
Zephyr II Wing FPV Flying around Sandy Hills beach.
For a bit more of an adrenaline ride; I gave my ZII a blast
around the horse-shoe shaped beach. Again it was fairly breezy, but the ZII
handled it very well. What a blast!
Clatteringshaw Reservoir Dam
Clatteringshaws Loch reservoir was created 1929-1935 over
the Black Water of Dee to feed Glenlee Power Station via a 3.5mi/5.63km tunnel,
370ft/113m below. Clatteringshaws Dam is the largest on the Galloway Hydro
Electric Scheme, a gravity structure 1562ft/476m long.
For the close up shots which we wanted to get; Steve’s
trusty Quad was selected for this Dam Busting video operation! All the video
was taken away from the water side of the dam as again we didn’t want to risk
losing this versatile little machine.
Kippford
Port
Here's another two videos, this time around the beautiful Kippford
Port on the Coveland Coast of Dumfries & Galloway. I already knew the tune I
was going to use for this one, I just needed to turn up, hope for a nice
morning and put it all together. Enjoy!
First video was flown with the Graupner Elektro Rookie:
The second video see's Steve's versatile little quadcopter back in action!
Murry's Monument
Finally back in the air with the ZII for a bit more
adrenaline pumping action. This time flying around a spectacular amphitheater overlooked
by Murry's Monument. Time for some RC hill surfing!
Back to a bit more video editing now!
