Jumped on a last minute kite trip to the Cocos Islands as soon as they announced the travel bubble between IOT and WA and surprisingly scored 6/7 days of wind! On a 9m too!

Here's a quick snippet of my first attempts with the Skydio 2 autonomous drone while kiteboarding. Mildly terrifying experience, but truly some amazing tech for follow cam action sports!

Very nice. Footage looks awesome mate.

Was contemplating same thing. Is the lagoon foilable? Or is it just TT territory?

Ah what a wonderful sight after drowning in two massive rain dumps on the southcoast in two weeks. That drone system you have is pretty cool and the images are fantastic! Good for you...

Coco's looks amazing... but i'm more excited about that Skydio 2!

Footage looks fantastic. The tracking part concerns me in that I'd be worried if it could see the kite lines while tracking. I guess positioning it upwind is the safest bet if you're alone, but again, with others i'd be worried about obstacle avoidance detecting the lines.

How was your experience using it?

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CH3MTR4IL5 said..
Was contemplating same thing. Is the lagoon foilable? Or is it just TT territory?

You definitely could further to the North of West Island, like around the Jetty would be deep enough. I believe Zephyr do foil lessons behind a boat, but I don't know where they do it

The local Police would be pretty hot on the 400m PFD/PLB requirements as 3 weeks ago there was an search and rescue incident

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neldy said..
Coco's looks amazing... but i'm more excited about that Skydio 2!

Footage looks fantastic. The tracking part concerns me in that I'd be worried if it could see the kite lines while tracking. I guess positioning it upwind is the safest bet if you're alone, but again, with others i'd be worried about obstacle avoidance detecting the lines.

How was your experience using it?

I've done some other over-water flying with the Fliteboard using the Motion Track feature, where you can position the drone anywhere you want using the beacon (in a waterproof sleeve on my forearm) so I was confident of the risks involved



Figured that wasn't going to work with a kite and lines, as they are too small for it's cameras to detect for obstacle avoidance and there are just too many variables and direction changes, so I used the Fixed Angle feature where you can set the drone slightly upwind to never go past the edge of the wind window and there are 4 distance settings ~5/10/20/40 metres that you can control easily enough on the go with the beacon

Unfortunately there is no RTH function (yet) with only the beacon, so the sketchiest part was launching and landing the drone and moving it into position. Especially since I'm riding in boots, so you have to launch the kite, leave it bobbing on the water, strap in, get deep enough for a water start, but still be standing and then launch the drone from the beach, set the position and off you go

It was beeping at me, alarming about the 'high winds' even though it wouldn't have ever been much more than 20kn, but never lost me from the frame, just occasionally was flying not exactly where I set it briefly. Even with some of the basic tricks I was doing involving vertical movements it did surprisingly well.

Excited to test it further, but with a group you'd definitely want to be kiting upwind of everyone else for sure

I'll put together a little edit shortly

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paularity said..

CH3MTR4IL5 said..
Was contemplating same thing. Is the lagoon foilable? Or is it just TT territory?

You definitely could further to the North of West Island, like around the Jetty would be deep enough. I believe Zephyr do foil lessons behind a boat, but I don't know where they do it

The local Police would be pretty hot on the 400m PFD/PLB requirements as 3 weeks ago there was an search and rescue incident

neldy said..
Coco's looks amazing... but i'm more excited about that Skydio 2!

Footage looks fantastic. The tracking part concerns me in that I'd be worried if it could see the kite lines while tracking. I guess positioning it upwind is the safest bet if you're alone, but again, with others i'd be worried about obstacle avoidance detecting the lines.

How was your experience using it?

I've done some other over-water flying with the Fliteboard using the Motion Track feature, where you can position the drone anywhere you want using the beacon (in a waterproof sleeve on my forearm) so I was confident of the risks involved

Figured that wasn't going to work with a kite and lines, as they are too small for it's cameras to detect for obstacle avoidance and there are just too many variables and direction changes, so I used the Fixed Angle feature where you can set the drone slightly upwind to never go past the edge of the wind window and there are 4 distance settings ~5/10/20/40 metres that you can control easily enough on the go with the beacon

Unfortunately there is no RTH function (yet) with only the beacon, so the sketchiest part was launching and landing the drone and moving it into position. Especially since I'm riding in boots, so you have to launch the kite, leave it bobbing on the water, strap in, get deep enough for a water start, but still be standing and then launch the drone from the beach, set the position and off you go

It was beeping at me, alarming about the 'high winds' even though it wouldn't have ever been much more than 20kn, but never lost me from the frame, just occasionally was flying not exactly where I set it briefly. Even with some of the basic tricks I was doing involving vertical movements it did surprisingly well.

Excited to test it further, but with a group you'd definitely want to be kiting upwind of everyone else for sure

I'll put together a little edit shortly

Love that footage on the foil. The quality really is awesome.

Thank you for the detailed response on your experience so far. Can't wait to see more footage and how you use it while kiting!

Did you find a retailer in Aus or did you have a pre-order with Skydio?

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Love that footage on the foil. The quality really is awesome.

Thank you for the detailed response on your experience so far. Can't wait to see more footage and how you use it while kiting!

Did you find a retailer in Aus or did you have a pre-order with Skydio?

Cheers!

Skydio officially still only ship inside the US.

My girlfriend is from LA, and I actually was aware of their previous drone the R1 and did a day 1 pre-order when they announced the S2. They sold out Batch 1 in 24 hours and the demand was overwhelming by the sounds of it. Since they are based in California they obviously had a bit of a supply bottleneck so it took about 4 months to finally get it over here, which was after the Summer windy season had finished.

I've been talking to them about future feature requests and over-water footage, which surprisingly no one is really dabbling in yet. But I guess there is more pressing concerns stateside at the moment!

I did read that they will be up to date on pre-orders by September though since they just got lots of VC funding for the industrial drone announced a few weeks ago

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CH3MTR4IL5 said..
Was contemplating same thing. Is the lagoon foilable? Or is it just TT territory?

Only either side of highest tide on the main island for tourists - as it's just too shallow close to shore for a good way out.Zephyr take you over to Direction Island which is beautiful to foil -I was early on in foiling so the offshore conditions I struggled with,plus the boats anchored there.Boat support is pretty essential on Direction .

Really nice follow cam footage! Great feature being able to position it upwind, I was wondering how you avoided the lines. You heart rate must have been up with no RTH feature and it beeping at you . Though it looked to be handling the wind fine, how strong was the wind?

I love the end bit of that edit, where the drone 'zooms out' - how awesome!

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dazultra said..
Really nice follow cam footage! Great feature being able to position it upwind, I was wondering how you avoided the lines. You heart rate must have been up with no RTH feature and it beeping at you . Though it looked to be handling the wind fine, how strong was the wind?

You're not wrong haha! The max wind resistance it's rated for is 25mph so ~22kn. I'm going to test it in stronger wind, but it would probably be better if you're riding downwind. The upwind tack was when it was quite noticeable

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BrendanRobb said..
I love the end bit of that edit, where the drone 'zooms out' - how awesome!

Yeah it's called a 'Dronie' you can double tap one of the buttons and it will fire one off automatically. Can take quite a while to return though, which happened right after that shot and I had to stop and wait for it, because I couldn't see where it had gone!

Wow - awesome footage.

Just had a chance to comb through the footage and put together a quick edit today

Enjoy!

Was the drone involved in those drive through the forest scenes!? Wow.. amazing tech mate! Thanks for sharing. #frothing

Making me homesick for the Pacific! Great footage!

That's weird Murray, as the Cocos are in the Indian Ocean!

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NorthernKitesAUS said..
Was the drone involved in those drive through the forest scenes!? Wow.. amazing tech mate! Thanks for sharing. #frothing

Yep sure was. I turned the height floor off so it can fly autonomously below 8ft and it can also track vehicles. I've done some eSkate shots through bushland so I was pretty confident it would be fine!

This drone footage below gives me goosies. Im going in September and will take the DJI air 2S for some recording....
Check this link out.