I saw this video and had to say something. This has to be the most irresponsible, amateurish display I have ever seen from a Pro AP company. These guys look like high school boys trying to impress their girl friend at the end. Do they ever realise the risk they just took?
http://vimeo.com/45214504
Flame away if you want but I had to say something about this very dangerous flight for sub par footage. If this went bad it would have been a national story, something like "Drone hurts people in crowded stadium"

100% agree with you!!!

And people wonder why they are trying to regulate these machines, stupid people like this is the reason they are. People like myself do video in a very controlled environment and not over people for sure and everybody knows what the reality of it is and is aware of the situation. The people in this video has no clue as to what could happen they just think its cool and in a PERFECT WORLD it would be but that does not exist nor will it ever. If poeple used common sense with these machine no one would have a problem with them but with people that did the video just gives all the fuel needed to the fire. Its really sad because it hurts the good guys.

Michael64

I am glad I am not the only one.
Do you see at the end the pilot takes his eyes off the copter before it is even fully rested on the ground. This tells me he is someone who trust the tech way more then he should and will find out the hard way not too. Total amateures, it is pathetic.

As someone who has been to the ER due to trusting high end gear that turned out to have a firmware issue.... Yikes, bad call guys.

Right on!
Jim

Originally Posted by Tarro

I am glad I am not the only one.
Do you see at the end the pilot takes his eyes off the copter before it is even fully rested on the ground. This tells me he is someone who trust the tech way more then he should and will find out the hard way not too. Total amateures, it is pathetic.

That's not the pilot, that's the cameraman taking his eyes off the copter. The pilot never looks away. If you are going to throw somebody under the bus publicly, at least get the story right...

Plus, if you dig a little bit, they obviously have done test flights at the stadium when it was empty, they say that they are insured, have hundreds of filming hours, and they fly with the best equipment that money can buy. They also mostly kept the copter away from the crowds and flew over the infield. Their footage was not bad (better than most) and they took at least as many safety measures as a full size aircraft would have taken flying over a stadium full of people...

I'm not sure what you are saying about how not to run an AP business..

Good Equipment? Check.
Liability Insurance? Check.
Flying at site before the event? Check.
Staying not directly overhead of bystanders? Check.
Experience? Check.

Flying is always risky. I think they deserve some kudos for doing it as well as they did. The only possible negative about the entire thing is that true "amateures" would watch the video and think its easy and try to replicate it with cheap chinese junk and a gopro...

Originally Posted by MauiNate

That's not the pilot, that's the cameraman taking his eyes off the copter. The pilot never looks away. If you are going to throw somebody under the bus publicly, at least get the story right...

Plus, if you dig a little bit, they obviously have done test flights at the stadium when it was empty, they say that they are insured, have hundreds of filming hours, and they fly with the best equipment that money can buy. They also mostly kept the copter away from the crowds and flew over the infield. Their footage was not bad (better than most) and they took at least as many safety measures as a full size aircraft would have taken flying over a stadium full of people...

I'm not sure what you are saying about how not to run an AP business..

Good Equipment? Check.
Liability Insurance? Check.
Flying at site before the event? Check.
Staying not directly overhead of bystanders? Check.
Experience? Check.

Flying is always risky. I think they deserve some kudos for doing it as well as they did. The only possible negative about the entire thing is that true "amateures" would watch the video and think its easy and try to replicate it with cheap chinese junk and a gopro...

They threw themselves "under the bus" when they posted this unnecessary flight on the internet. Do you believe that footage and little show for the crowd was worth the risk? Having insurance has nothing to do with what I am talking about here. If that flight went wrong they would have been charged with wreckless endangerment. As far as being as safe as a full scale heli, I don't see a comparison.
In any shoot there is a risk, the problem here is if anything goes wrong the risk of hitting someone is soooo high. Any post crash investigation would show total negligence on the part of the client and operator to assess the risk.
You seeing no problem with what they did says more about you and how you operate then it does about me.

I've seen many videos here and elsewhere that more dangerous flying is shown, particularly of flying over people and buildings, nobody says a thing about those! Besides which, I'm sure that the stadium operator would have required a full risk assessment and proper insurance before permitting this flight to take place.

Originally Posted by GordonTarling

I've seen many videos here and elsewhere that more dangerous flying is shown, particularly of flying over people and buildings, nobody says a thing about those! Besides which, I'm sure that the stadium operator would have required a full risk assessment and proper insurance before permitting this flight to take place.

More dangerous then flying in a stadium packed with people? Care to show one of those videos?
As far as the Stadium Operator requiring a "full risk assessment" Who do you think would be doing that? It would be the pilot in command and if he is a Cowboy disparate for work, what do you think he is going to say. Besides most people do not see these things as dangerous. When I fly my copters with people around I am always surprised at how they will just walk up to it as if nothing could go wrong.

I had an opportunity to do a shoot at the South by South West Festival. They wanted me to fly my octocopter over a band that was doing a concert on the top of a 5 story building. The concert was going to be shown live by projecting the imagages on the sides of the building with the crowd standing all around the building watching it. I had the producer send me images of the rooftop and the locations of all the other cameras and the frequencies they were using. There was over 20 cameras all of which were wireless spread out on the rooftops of the surrounding building as well as the building I was to be flying over. Most of the frequencies were 2.4ghz. I told the producer that the shoot was too risky, that the RF enviroment combined with the crowd 5 stories below made this a no go for me. She thanked me for my honesty and wellingness to turn down a job for safety reasons and said she would not attempt that shot. 3 weeks later I got a call from the production assistent that originally contacted me and he said that the producer found another company to try to get those shots. He said they complianed about having "battery problems" all day. Then when it was time to do the shoot for the concert they crash. That the copter was totalled and luckly no one got hurt. He said I look very good now for turning that shoot down.
If I had voiced my concerns about that shoot I am sure there would be more then a few amateures on here telling me how there was nothing overly dangerous about that shoot. The bottom line is we are all ambassadors of this new industry and if we do not police ourselves believe me others will. You can not let the client dictate what risks are accceptable and what risks they are willing to take. Believe me when things go wrong the client is not going to step up and say, "I told him to do that". The client will say "I thought he knew what he was doing".

Originally Posted by MauiNate

That's not the pilot, that's the cameraman taking his eyes off the copter. The pilot never looks away. If you are going to throw somebody under the bus publicly, at least get the story right...

Plus, if you dig a little bit, they obviously have done test flights at the stadium when it was empty, they say that they are insured, have hundreds of filming hours, and they fly with the best equipment that money can buy. They also mostly kept the copter away from the crowds and flew over the infield. Their footage was not bad (better than most) and they took at least as many safety measures as a full size aircraft would have taken flying over a stadium full of people...

I'm not sure what you are saying about how not to run an AP business..

Good Equipment? Check.
Liability Insurance? Check.
Flying at site before the event? Check.
Staying not directly overhead of bystanders? Check.
Experience? Check.

Flying is always risky. I think they deserve some kudos for doing it as well as they did. The only possible negative about the entire thing is that true "amateures" would watch the video and think its easy and try to replicate it with cheap chinese junk and a gopro...

+1



Here is a tiny bit about their equipment on their website:
http://beatcopteraerial.com/equipment

Meet our copter, Artemis. We combined today’s most innovative technologies into an eight rotor masterpiece. This machine has been optimized for stability and control while flying under the weight of our ‘state of the art camera system’. Electronic controls reduce noise for close-range flights, and vibration reduction technologies create cinematic quality video. Our Flight Operations team is composed of two professionals; a flight controller and camera operator. Hundreds of hours flying together make for unparalleled cooperation. Beat Copter Aerial is fully insured, our equipment is tested daily, and additional safety measures are considered before ALL flights.

And they are at a baseball stadium , a sport where the object is to beam 6 ounce hard spheres into the crowd leaving the bat at 120mph..

Originally Posted by Tarro

More dangerous then flying in a stadium packed with people? Care to show one of those videos?

Yes, flying OVER crowds with a quadcopter or similar. No, I don't care to post a link to one of the videos as that would be singling out one individual, but they're on here, for all to see.

Well if it were the Yankees I really wouldn't care, but those seem like nice enough folks. I think if all the crap we buy wasn't hobby grade from China then some one could pull something off like this. The problem is these systems are not built with redundancy, there is no back up, I repeat no back up. Why can't they just use the wire cam, that thing is the best for large crowded areas. It seems more like a dog and pony show featuring the quad. Someone is eventually going to get hurt and then they will pass more laws prohibiting "responsible" people from doing their work. The thing that sucks is at the end of the day they are making money doing AP and I am not. Its just a matter of judgment and ethics that separates us.

Originally Posted by spacecase

Well if it were the Yankees I really wouldn't care, but those seem like nice enough folks. I think if all the crap we buy wasn't hobby grade from China then some one could pull something off like this. The problem is these systems are not built with redundancy, there is no back up, I repeat no back up. Why can't they just use the wire cam, that thing is the best for large crowded areas. It seems more like a dog and pony show featuring the quad. Someone is eventually going to get hurt and then they will pass more laws prohibiting "responsible" people from doing their work. The thing that sucks is at the end of the day they are making money doing AP and I am not. Its just a matter of judgment and ethics that separates us.

There is redundancy on them... I don't know exactly which FC he is using but I know on my system we are using the MK FC and full MK electronics (Navi and GPS). If we loose any type of radio connection with our copter it will auto ascend to a pre-set alti, which we program on each shoot according to the highest point) then it flies back to where it took off from and lands. I have tested this before and it works just like it should.

Also he is flying an OCTO which can loose any 2 motors while in the air and still be controllable.

Just my 2 cents.

Josh