Aerial Safari with ZMR 250 mini quad

I recently went to a private game reserve thorn dale safari's about an hour’s drive from Port Elizabeth to celebrate new year’s with my family and friends, I brought my quad with hoping I’d get a chance to fly my quad and get some footage. The morning after New Year’s I went off to find some animals with my quad and get the footage I was after. Before I left I made sure the owner didn't mind and he said it was fine as long as I didn’t crash into the giraffe’s ha-ha.

My first problem was finding the animals I didn’t know where they stay during curtain times of the day and the tour guides had the day off so the only large animal I could see from the lodge were the giraffes so I made my way there, some photos of the lodge and the view, stills taken out of my footage.

The lodge:

The view:

Once I found the giraffes I set up my quad and took off when it dawned on me I’m not very familiar with this landscape and I don’t have a OSD with return to home arrow or a return to home function on my flight controller. I was careful to keep my orientation in mind so I used the mountains and roads to find were I was and how to get back to myself, on one occasion I followed the road back to myself I miss judged the direction and ended on the road leading towards myself but about 500m before I could even see myself, but I followed the road and got back safe. If you skip to the end of the raw footage 4 clip you will see what I mean. After this flying I have ordered an OSD with a return to home arrow.

Never the less I continued on my flying and got to the giraffes, at first they didn't seem to mind it too much but they soon started to run away from the buzz that my tiny 250 quad was making, the animals just had babies a few months ago so they were more skittish and this being a hunting farm doesn’t help to relax the animals either.

Part one:

Part two:

Some photos of the animals.

We had spent a lot of time following the giraffes around and filming them, we must have flown to them maybe 4 times till the move just out of range and i return back to myself, after the final time I recorded the giraffes the people that came with me said they saw some other animals so as I got back they pointed me in the direction and I was off. Was a very funny thing with me flying off and my brother saying more left or more to the right but never the less I found them. 

Once I got over them they started to run some of the footage was pretty good however Gemsbok are much faster than giraffes so before I got lost I decided to turn around.

We found them again maybe 1km from where we saw them last and I followed them a little longer, flying over these beautiful animals was really breath taking.

Once I my return to the lodge I was showing the footage to the people there and the one lady that attended the event dose the marketing for this lodge and 2 other resorts, she was very curious about the quad and the practical uses for it. She explained that she has wanted to make promotional clips as people are more believing of video than photos as a photo with the right perception can be completely misleading. She loved how the aerial footage showed the vastness of the farm and the potential to showcase the different species of animals, her problem was always the huge cost of hiring a helicopter to get the same footage. The cost of flying the helicopter to and from the farm would cost two or three times the prices of all my gear, that’s not including the days flying on the farm to find all the animals. The impractically of a helicopter goes further than that as it is very noisy and spooks a lot of animals not just the animals you are filming. Even when I was following the animals with my quad they would stop to see what this thing is so clearly it’s not that frightening.

We were talking and I was explaining how people around the world have already adoption this new technology for that very reason, the next thing she offers me a job! She explained that she wanted me to come back in a few weeks to get some more footage of more animals as well as the lodge and some of the watering holes. I couldn't believe that my hobby just landed me a job something I could do over holidays or weekends, as a student this is amazing and to think someone is paying me to fly my quad! 

I realise that my quad isn't exactly ideal for photography so I order a gimbal, bigger motors that spin 8inch props to carry the extra weight and the OSD I needed, I’m planning on just extending my arms by 2inches as the props I’m currently using as only 6inch. I’m going to mount the gimbal on the front of my quad but turn it around so it rests on top rather than under the quad and I’ll fly with 2 2200 batteries in parallel. Hoping for the parts to arrive soon so I can get the footage I need. Ill defiantly make another article were I show how I turned my ZMR racer into an aerial photography platform and show case the footage I recorded.

Links to the raw fotage:

raw footage 1:

raw footage 2:

raw footage 3:

raw footage 4: