Scotland RC/FPV Road Trip June 2012 - Part 1

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!