drone – Riveted

Ford’s Terror, Endicott Arm

Laura Domela — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 01:57:00 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska

Ford’s Terror is a very steep and narrow fjord 60 miles southeast of Juneau in Alaska’s Inside Passage. You can only enter or exit the fjord at high slack tide when the rapids (and the 2-3 foot waterfall!) have turned calm and there is enough water covering the shallow area to let you pass.

The Ford’s Terror name comes from a naval crew member (Ford) who, in 1889, rowed a dinghy into the narrow entrance of the fjord at slack tide. The tide began to rise, forcing its way through the narrow entrance, and Ford was trapped by the turbulent current for the next six hours. It is mostly uncharted, but with local knowledge and some careful timing, getting in and out of this fjord is a calm and peaceful experience.

The Ford’s Terror “waiting room”:

We arrived early (for the evening high slack) and parked ourselves over by the tall waterfall and binoc’ed the entrance. Yep, white waters over there. We decided to fish for a bit to kill some time. (Caught nothin’.)

When it was time (about 20 minutes after high slack tide in Juneau), we pointed our stern at the waterfall and headed carefully across, between the two shoals toward the entrance. We watched our depths as we made it around the shallow bend in totally calm water. I took no photos because I was concentrating at the helm, but it was really a non-event. Once inside, it was like going back in time.

Photos alone cannot possibly capture the beauty and the feel of this place. One person said it was a bit like having Yosemite all to yourself. We decided that might be slighting Ford’s Terror a little bit.

We had the place to ourselves and decided to stay two nights in Ford’s Terror. We arrived on Tuesday night around 8pm and didn’t leave until high slack tide on Thursday morning. It was not enough time.

I made crab cakes on Wednesday morning and we did a little Crab Cake Benedict for breakfast:

Then, we saw black bears on the shore:

Kevin had flown the drone earlier while gathering footage for his Ford’s Terror video, so it was all ready to go and he was able to get some footage of the bear (drone in upper left of photo):

Then, three or four Dall’s porpoises came over and swam all around our boat for a while:

Kevin and Tiffani went out in the kayak to see if they’d come close, and they did. They came closer than in these photos and were swimming all around the kayak.

Here’s an additional photo, for scale. White sliver = kayak:

We went for a dinghy ride and saw two eagles…one in a nest and the other keeping watch:

Ford’s Terror was worth every bit of the anxiety about getting in and out of there that I’ve had for the last month. It’s funny when you hear about a place like this. Phrases like “favorite anchorage in SE Alaska” and “favorite anchorage in the world” were by far the two most common, but in so much of the literature about this place, the entrance and exit sound so ominous. It’s poorly charted, and extremely remote, and so the “what ifs” your brain can create about things that could go wrong are plentiful. Luckily, with some careful planning and just general good thinking and common sense, it’s not much of a thing to get in and out.

And as I said, as nice as these photos might be, they cannot possibly capture the scale of this place. Alaska is ALL about scale.

Here is Kevin’s spectacular video of Ford’s Terror, taken with his new DJI Inspire 1, which is proving to be worth every dime spent to get it, and get it to Ketchikan. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Birth of a New Drone

Kevin Morris — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:00:31 +0000

(Posted by Kevin)

My last drone was lost at sea in March. Apparently we didn’t do a blog post about it at the time, which is a mystery because it was exactly the kind of event we’d normally blog about. We were on the Oregon coast, and I’d been flying the drone over the beach and along the rocky shoreline all day. The GoPro HD camera was capturing the best-quality video I’d ever gotten from a drone – smooth, sharp, no vibration – and the gimbal was keeping the camera nicely level. I had spent a few weeks building and tuning it to get those excellent results. In First Person View (FPV) mode – it could go more than two miles away – with its long range control and video radio links.

On about the fifth flight of the day, I invited Laura out to watch on the “guest” video goggles. It’s like taking a ride on the drone. I was flying it along the beach, and cut out over the water for a bit – the drone was about 1800 feet away from us when the video suddenly went to static – with no warning. We tried various rescue techniques (just in case it was still out there hovering) including activating the “return to home” feature. We waited a few minutes… there was no sign of it “returning to home”.

We reviewed the video link recording (the lower-quality flight video, not the stabilized HD video), and stepped one frame at a time through the last few frames before we lost contact. Studying the telemetry, we figured out what (most likely) happened. One of the connectors where the battery power comes into the drone had apparently come loose and the whole thing fell out of the sky and into the Pacific Ocean. We hiked along the beach at the spot closest to where it went down. There was no sign of it – and the current/waves were pretty extreme out there where it must have gone down.

Here’s the downlink video of the fatal, final flight:

I ordered all the parts to build a new one that week.

Now, five months later, all the parts have arrived and the new drone construction has begun. This one has numerous upgrades over the lost one – including a much more robust connection where the last one probably failed. Here are some photos of the construction process:

Almost ready to bolt the top on:

The new drone – a TBS Discovery Pro FPV Quadcopter – is now complete and has survived the first 16 test flights.

It has almost three hours of flight time logged, and seems to be even more stable than the last/lost one.

We plan to use this one to do more aerial videos and stills of our travels, and probably more fun projects like our “Chasing Ships” series:

New Drone!!

Laura Domela — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 21:17:01 +0000

Kevin finally got all of the parts from Team Black Sheep to build his new Discovery Pro FPV Gimbal Quadcopter. He hasn't flown since The Incident, (I can't believe Kevin didn't do a post about The Incident on Riveted, but this'll give you some background if you want, plus more technical stuff than you probably need…) and I was happy to see the box from Hong Kong arrive on the porch a few days ago. He's busy building now and it should't be long 'til he's got a new flying photo machine in the air again!

This is our kitchen table right now. (He probably doesn't need that salad bowl right there in his work space now, does he?)