Pele's daemon - Scary Kilauea volcano active lava field drone flight

11,419 Views · Posted 6 years ago

Flying a flowing lava field was an incredible and very scary experience. We hiked a whole 3 hours off trail through lava fields to get to this place, which is just outside a national park. Just as the day drew to a close I just had the time to fly a very rapid 2 batteries before we headed back down (So we could at least have some light still to have a rough idea of which direction to take for the three hour hike back!).
Not the best conditions for drone flying, strong winds, very turbulent near the ground due to the volcanic chimneys. The lava is really hot, so I wasn't sure the drone would make it! I couldn't stand 3-4m from the flow. But the constant airflow of the props made sure it kept cool enough.
Flying in this environment is very scary. There are no reference point, so flying just 100m away from you there are no landmarks to indicate how to get back. I had to fly back 'by ear' more than once!
You essentially listen to see where the drone is and try to fly it back by listening to the quad.
I haven't seen many fights like this, hope you'll enjoy!

Don't like youtube compression? Check it out on airvuz:
http://www.airvuz.com/video/-Peles-daemon---Flowing-lava-fpv-flight?id=5af0028b913f3b703f4202dd

Location: Big Island, Hawaii

If you've seen the recent news, just 2 weeks after this video was shot a new crack opened up on the island forcing thousands of people to be evacuated. Our thoughts are with them!

Setup:
Strix screech
Hobbywing 2207 2450kv motors
Hobbywing 4in1 esc and fc
Crossfire full tx and micro rx
TBS unify vtx
Strix hoot antenna
Azure 5150 prop
tattu rline 100C 1550mAh 4s
runcam swift mini
Gopro hero5 black @ 2.7k 60 fps, -0.5ev protune flat

On the ground:
Fatshark HD3
Furious fpv goggle module
TrueRC X2air directional antenna
strix hoot omni antenna
Frsky Taranis X9D remote controller
Strix backpack

I'd like to thank my sponsors for supporting me to find the gear that I use go and check out these folks:
http://www.hobbywing.com/
http://www.genstattu.com/
http://www.readymaderc.com/
http://www.aphobby.com/

Video Tags

#lava, #volcano, #hawaii, #drone, #quadcopter, #flow, #flowing, #freestyle, #fire, #fpv, #first, #person, #view, #mountain, #field, #hiking, #adventure, #risky, #sketchy, #pele, #daemon, #gopro, #hobbywing, #tattu, #runcam, #teambacksheep, #readymaderc, #strixrc, #brainfpv, #truerc, #teamcanadafpv, #aerial, #photography, #aerialphotography, #drl, #azure, #azurepower, #airvuz, #fpvracing, #proximity, #burning, #night, #dusk, #rock

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