Floriade as you've never seen it before. The hexacopter eye view

Great shot…you can fly over the top of floriade in a hot air balloon on any day (weather permitting) and see this first hand. 30 people are booked are in to fly this Friday. Just try either of the two local companies to get a ‘rare’ look at all the patterns etc.

Personally I reckon its the only way to view Floriade. you might just catch me in the sky this weekend 🙂

AP_OZ said :

Hi all,

Thanks for all the positive feedback.

Please keep the questions coming… happy to answer what I can.

Cheers,

John.

I nearly had a heart attack last night when i saw how much the MikroKopter costs – nearly 6K! The site you listed seems to be more with my price range!

In Floriade’s early days anyone could go visit at night and there were special lights all over the place, it gave a completely different experience to going through the day and it was magic. No Floriade has been as good since then IMO – though am going today so maybe this one will be different.

Great work. Will need to revisit once some more blooms come out?

Yes great shots from above. Every year I think I make the same comment that what Floriade is missing are elevated platforms that are not an expensive Ferris Wheel!

Hi all,

Thanks for all the positive feedback.

Regarding the hexacopter; you can buy several different kits from several different manufacturers. As ‘troll sniffer’ mentioned the most known brand available is MikroKopter which is a German company that has been on the scene for a number of years. The one I am using is from http://www.multiwiicopter.com which is an Australian company in the first 12 months of producing airframes. The difference in quality is negligible with both companies making very nice carbon fibre kits. The key difference however is price; with a standard mikrokopter costing several thousands of dollars for a basic airframe. The one I fly can be set up for a fraction of the cost and (in my experience flying both kits) is just as smooth in the air. The last thing ill mention is these things aren’t designed for people to start flying with no experience – I have been flying both real and model aircraft for over 10 years to enable something like this to be achieved. The other thing besides ‘flying ability’ is technical knowledge of aircraft and electronics – if you can’t solder or have a basic understanding of code you will be on the back foot straight away. I am happy to help people get started but as stated above – some RC and electronics knowledge is mandatory (and this applies to both multwiicopters and mikrokopters).

The key thing that comes into play with aerial photography platforms is 1) a good quality gyro controlled gimble, and 2) the ability to carry a good quality camera. I am currently working on a couple of gimbles at the moment that will stabilise & smooth the image so no roll or pitch is seen in the video. Following this I intend on mounting my SLR (600D) to the aircraft which will produce a beautifully warm and radiant 1080P image. At the moment I am using a Go-Pro which while good for basic film making is limited in its abilities due to having a poor lens.

Please keep the questions coming… happy to answer what I can.

Cheers,

John.

troll-sniffer said :

john87_no1 said :

johnboy said :

john87_no1 said :

Im interested in getting one but cant seem to find any site in Aus, or any hexacopters on ebay. Any suggestions?

Send our man an email!

Soza didnt see that part – emailing now!

He cant be the only wholesaler of such copters though!

There are two Mikrokopter agents in Australia. Aerobot and Blip. They sell the genuine German engineered Mikrokopter kits, either as build it yourself or for quite a lot more, ready to fly kits. Building the kit is an experience involving some very steep learning curves, basically youy start with a pile of components needing assembly and soldering, with some very mediocre instructions on the web site. Satisfaction reigns once it is built though.

There are a range of other brands, particularly Chinese made versions. All are capable of the same type of flight as in the video, but the smoothest most stable flight still belongs to the Mikrokopter rigs. For amateur purposes though, what you see here is plenty good enough, and investing in a genuine Mikrokopter would probably be a waste of money.

Thanks for the advice! So the one used in the above video isnt a top of the line model? Sounds like I will need to draw on some of my Year 9 soldering skills on this project! Also, is the hexacopters camera providing a live feed back to the controller or is that the reason a spotter is needed?

john87_no1 said :

johnboy said :

john87_no1 said :

Im interested in getting one but cant seem to find any site in Aus, or any hexacopters on ebay. Any suggestions?

Send our man an email!

Soza didnt see that part – emailing now!

He cant be the only wholesaler of such copters though!

There are two Mikrokopter agents in Australia. Aerobot and Blip. They sell the genuine German engineered Mikrokopter kits, either as build it yourself or for quite a lot more, ready to fly kits. Building the kit is an experience involving some very steep learning curves, basically youy start with a pile of components needing assembly and soldering, with some very mediocre instructions on the web site. Satisfaction reigns once it is built though.

There are a range of other brands, particularly Chinese made versions. All are capable of the same type of flight as in the video, but the smoothest most stable flight still belongs to the Mikrokopter rigs. For amateur purposes though, what you see here is plenty good enough, and investing in a genuine Mikrokopter would probably be a waste of money.

johnboy said :

john87_no1 said :

Im interested in getting one but cant seem to find any site in Aus, or any hexacopters on ebay. Any suggestions?

Send our man an email!

Soza didnt see that part – emailing now!

He cant be the only wholesaler of such copters though!

john87_no1 said :

Im interested in getting one but cant seem to find any site in Aus, or any hexacopters on ebay. Any suggestions?

Send our man an email!