GS200 at Sail GP in Plymouth. The story.

A hydrogen powered drone

We were both delighted but apprehensive about being asked by Amis Productions to try our GS200 Stabilised camera at the Sail GP in Plymouth. The idea was to try it on a hydrogen powered drone, over the water, to see what could be achieved with a drone camera. We hoped to be able to get RCP control from vision control in Ealing but some comms issues prevented this. Setting the camera CCU over the phone with vision control was frustrating!

Taking off from the back of a boat proved challenging as the drone GPS wasn’t happy that the position was constantly moving but a quick adjustment to the software fixed this.

The hydrogen drone has a flight time of around 90 minutes which is incredible compared with battery drones at around 15 – 20 minutes.

The GS200 worked amazingly well. We just took it out from its flight case and clipped it onto the drone in about 1 minute. Adding the RD-12 Radio Data unit and securing the cables took another 5 minutes and that was it - no adjustments or fiddling around.

Explaining the controls to the cameraman took longer, but that was mastered within the first 2 short test flights.

Stable pictures

The pictures were really stable and were often at the tight end of the 18x zoom although in some conditions we limited this to 12x. Being able to fly at mast top height, or lower, around the race boats delivered some really great footage.

We were even allowed to film the Duchess of Cambridge who was out on the water as the patron of the series. She took part in the Commonwealth race on the Team GB boat.

Some early issues with the video downlink, due to the high radio noise floor, were fixed by some clever RF engineers from Riedel. Sometimes the drone was flying half a kilometer away from the boat with perfect control and pictures. The pictures were then relayed out via the Riedel Mediornet system, with very low latency, to be cut into the program.

2 days rigging and rehearsals and 2 days live action on the water without any incidents. Both BR Remote and the Amis Productions drone team were extremely pleased with the results, view them here.

It’s obvious which were the shots from the drone and which were from mobile phones. We have much more footage including shots of several minutes duration.

Amis Pictures on the GS200 performance

“I was chatting with Wesley (pilot) and we both agree that there is no better system on the marketplace right now, for stability, ease of use, compatibility with our drone systems and integration into the broadcast world” Will Glover – Amis Productions.

In addition to the GS200 every boat had a BR Remote designed camera on the bow. These were specifically designed and built for yacht racing. They are waterproof and incorporate wash wipe, auto horizon and pitch levelling and 360 degree panning. All controlled from the shore.

Learn more about GS200