A Gateway to a new world

So me Tom and Dan have been planning this shoot for a while and had great expectations and let me assure you we were not disappointed. Dan Hole flying in this photo is 8th best in the world at downhill in his age class so he does not take the sport lightly its safe to say, travelling to races is the norm for Dan. I wanted to show his amazing freestyle on his local Ilkley Moores so we arranged to make a video. We planned to shoot today because BBC said the weather would be good. Don't trust anyone. We found ourselves in high wind and rain, Typical. This did not stop us however as Dan was zipping down the slopes flying here and there and I was all about the shot.

So we had brought the drone along for some awesome tracking shots however due to strong wind we always knew this would be tricky. Tom (our drone flyer) was adamant for these shots so took off anyway. With me controlling the camera and tom battling the winds we managed a few shots before the accident...

We had had one near miss already this morning narrowly avoiding the stream below by emergency landing in some heather but it was when we entered the woods when things took a horrible turn..

Tom had taken to the sky and loved the woods due to reduced wind. Was having no problem following Dan, the drone swerved off course narrowly hitting a tree as Tom took evasive action. Now a con of filming pro bikers is that they tend to opt for the more steep slopes so doing another emergency landing was risky to say the least. With cliffs either side Tom tried to spot a landing but it wasn't happening. He tried to land on a slope which the drone didn't like despite it successfully touching the ground. It bounced and rolled pieces flying everywhere down the cliff edge and we all looked on in horror and shock as £600 of hand built gear rolled to its doom. It reached the bottom and we were all speechless. Tom was surprisingly calm as it seemed to go back together just fine as we recovered the parts however a propeller had snapped and key wires had been severed so it was totalled for the rest of the day however Tom being Tom was more than capable of fixing the broken wires and now the drone lives to fly another day.

Thank GOD!

Miles