This week I took my drone to video Initial Point in Idaho. It’s a rocky outcrop about 20 miles south of Boise that was chosen as the initial survey point for the Idaho Territory in 1867. It has a concrete platform installed at the top with a survey marker embedded. There’s a rocky trail that can be driven to the top if your vehicle has a high ground clearance. I chose to walk to the top.
Initial Point Idaho
My car was parked at the base, I climbed up about 130 feet to the top. The wind was occasionally gusting at the base. It was constant at the top, with much higher gusts.
I carried the drone in my backpack to the top, and launched it from the platform. I manually flew it around the point, but was feeling extremely nervous doing so. I only flew about 36 feet above the platform during the entire flight.
The concrete platform has a metal railing surrounding it, and I didn’t trust the drone to return safely to land without hitting the railing so I manually had it land nearby. As I was hovering the drone before landing, it was holding a fairly constant 20° lean because of the wind.
After hiking back to my car I still had plenty of battery for another flight. From near my car I launched the drone and flew vertically to about 200 feet, centered the drone over the survey marker, and used the point of interest feature to create a video circling the point.
I don’t believe that the wind was any less on my second flight than it was on my first flight. The fact that I was in the wind on the first flight had me feeling significantly more nervous while flying than when I was out of the wind on the second flight. Watching the video from the first and second flight doesn’t appear significantly different. I would have liked the point of interest video slightly more if I’d been on top of the point the entire time, but I was too nervous to do it all while I was sitting in the wind myself.
WimsWorld 