Category: Drone

Cold stones cut..

At the very top of Greenhow Hill sits the highest art installation. Designed by Andrew Sabin in 2010, it offers a commanding view of the quarry and the surrounding countryside.

Despite Andrew Sabin saying otherwise, it kinda looks like female reproductive organs

As much as I hate the quarry, watching the diggers and dump trucks running around, moving rock to the crushers and the regular flow of trucks in and out. But go round the installation up one of the flowing circular paths, you get views back toward Pateley Bridge, menwith hill and Harrogate.

But that’s not all that’s here. There’s also the ruined lime kiln Toft Gate.

Toft Gate Lime Kiln is a largely intact piece of Nidderdale’s industrial heritage, and the first bit you see is the chimney, with its horizontal flue to the burner. Coal loaded in the base and limestone in the top. Designed like this to keep the fumes away from the workers. But young children still would have to go through the flue regularly to clean and retrieve valuable minerals from the walls.

I would of liked to try more drone work, but being a Sunday, too many people about at this local spot. Maybe when I’m on holiday it’ll be quieter during the week.

Rain & Reservoirs

Looks like the biblical rain we’ve recently had has gone someway to refilling the reservoirs..

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I’m surprised they’ve refilled this quick. Unfortunately, I could not see Grimwith, as I was up there, everything was choking on a layer of fog that was so thick, visibility was easily down to less than 10 meters.

You can see in these photos, the bottom image was taken at Thruscross, the top at Grimwith.

The Thruscross image, you can see the immense fog bank on the horizon.

It was like driving into a alien world, like an invisible border had been crossed. I’ll spare you the rants about drivers not having lights on.

But anyway, a few good shots had of Thruscross dam, some piloting experiences amoung the trees.

I do however want to get shots when this dam, and others are overflowing. Might need to wait a few more months for that though..

Cold stones Cut

I’ve been wanting to get the shot for awhile, but the weather has been uncooperative for every day I’ve had off. But a brief lull in the rain got me up there.

Despite a stiff bone chilling breeze, the drone was up and on its way to the installation on the hill. (A video describing how the Cut came to be: https://youtu.be/PnVnl8wyvwQ )

I rattled a few shots off, and then noticed the really low cloud base had started to roll in. The drone now reporting an altitude of -0.7m, the controller started beeping a landing warning, the cloud confusing its sensors.

By the time I’d got the drone back and landed, I couldn’t see the hill or installation. But at least I had a few shots to choose from.

The cloud had rolled in surprising quickly. It didn’t help with constant video breakups, as I was working with reduced range as I’d accidentally switched back to CE mode.

But all in all, a good flight, and I’d got the image I wanted, but I do want to try a different angle taking more of the quarry into view. Maybe a rotating video too.

Grimwith

A short film of our visit to Grimwith. I’ve been out here many times, but it’s the first time I’ve had the drone up. Despite shooting loads, there wasn’t really much to work with.

So, enjoy this short video..

Panoramic shots

Trying out the panoramic feature of the DJI spark. Impressed, but not blown away by it.

I found it really easy Todo, with the drone doing all the hard work taking the images, a great mode for capturing the vista. However, I find myself unable to position the drone where I want, always seeming to stop short. Not a limit on the drone, but for some reason my brain always stops in that same position!

Wind.

The spark has continued to impress with its ability in windy conditions. I’ve flown it in some questionable wind speeds, bit being careful not to take it too far. So far, there’s only been one occasion where I’ve noticed it not being able to cope and that was on blubber houses crag. And by god, it was seriously windy.

Up til now, I have had no way of actually knowing the wind speed conditions, apart from looking on apps and the weather reports, so I’ve invested little more than a tenner for an anemometer from Amazon to measure the wind speed.

This will let me know exactly what the wind speed is, and honestly, for £12, it’s a good buy.

Toft Gate Lime Kiln

So it was a trip to the top of Greenhow hill today. Lord was it cold and windy. But the little Spark did a sterling effort of dealing with the wind.

Up at the top of Greenhow hill is the old Lime kiln at Toft Gate.

The kiln was loaded with limestone through the top and with coal through the rectangular openings in the end and side walls. A stone lined flue runs from the kiln up a gentle slope to the chimney base in the distance. Life must have been hard up here. I’m suffering just with the cold wind, I hate to think what it was like being up here, mining the ore and loading it, moving the spoil, let alone the children that would have had to clean out the long flue leading to the chimney.

Theres plenty of grassy hillocks and curious dimples in the landscape between Toft Gate and Grassington – many of these are remnants of the limestone industry. People would mine the area, and transport it out to the lime-kiln where it would be burnt and heated to release the quicklime, which was then used in the local farms for fertiliser.

I decided to try the editor built into the DJI Go app, and it’s not bad really. Its most useful if your away from the main editing system you use, and just need a quick and dirty instagram upload or something, it wont really replace a dedicated editing software, but its intended use its not too bad. Once you play around with it and learn what it can, and can’t do as the information on using it is a little thin, it can yeild some good results. The auto create function can be a little odd, but that’s what you get for a random selection..