Post by Dave on Jun 24, 2020 9:14:23 GMT
Daymark Revisit 23rd June 2020
With the government giving the green light for pubs, cafes hotels etc to reopen on the 4th July, it is very likely I will be called back to work at some point. I know I have wasted many of the days I have not worked while on furlough, but I have told myself it was ok as I have worked hard all of my life.
Being able to go out when ever I wanted to was something I was so looking forward too, yet I have ended up having to force myself out the door on far too many occasions. But these last three months have not been normal and a part of me wanted to stay indoors where I felt safe and less likely to catch the virus.
I personally feel the government is rushing far to fast to unlock our country, only time will tell, but I think we are all wanting to get our lives back to some sort of normality, what ever that will look like.
On Sunday my UAV forecast app on my phone was showing me that Monday was not a good day to fly the drone, strong gusts of wind and much worse the higher up the drone would have been, but Tuesday was looking good.
I got up at 5.30 am my normal time and that has not changed since the day I last worked, for some reason I have never been able to stay in bed once I woke up. Once again today was more about just getting the drone up in the air again, sadly I have let unnecessary fears get in the way of me putting her up in the air recently.
I have flown at Broadsand’s so many times and so I decided it would be good to fly at the Daymark again. I wish there were more structures like the Daymark around South Devon or old castles etc, I watch so many great videos on line from fellow drone pilots in the UK at some amazing locations.
I got ready and set off and was soon parking the car in the National Trust Brownstone car park. There was only one other car parked in there and I started my walk to the Daymark which is just over half a mile away from the car park. It looks closer and you think it must be around the next corner, but the path goes one way and then another way, it took me about fifteen minutes to get to the Daymark.
It is an easy flat walk; it is only if you carry on walking past the Daymark to the Brownstone Battery that the path becomes very steep. The field that the Daymark stands in is used for growing crops (wheat?) but from the entrance gate to the structure there is a narrow pathway. The last time I was there it was a bit mucky with manure all over the field, while this time it was full of a growing crop. It meant I had to rest my very light landing pad on a part of the crop.
After going through all my pre-flight checks I was just about to take off when I got an error message about the memory card in the drone. This was a brand new and never used before SanDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB microSDXC Memory Card that I had just bought from Amazon.
Thankfully I had put the card I was using before in my drone case and was able to swap it over with the new card which is going back to Amazon for a refund. It was not the stress free flight I had hoped for, due to a flock of 100 plus rooks flying back and forward to the sea from a field on the other side of the Daymark. It meant I had to pay more attention to them that what I was doing.
After using up two batteries I decided not to use the third one as I had tried out a number of the drone features I had not tried before, some I was impressed with, others I will not be using again. Time to walk back to the car park and now the sun was out very brightly and also rather hot. A nice morning and a bit of much needed exercise as well as getting the Mavic up doing what it was made for.
