Drone Pilot in Redondo Beach
LOS ANGELES | CALIFORNIA
Drone pilots in Los Angeles have a lot of options for beautiful locations to capture some really amazing scenery. The pier in Redondo Beach is one of those great spots, especially in the golden hour light just before sunset. It was the perfect place for me to conduct a test flight of my DJI Mavic II Pro that I had just received back from being repaired at DJI.
MO’OREA | FRENCH POLYNESIA
As some of you may have seen over on my Instagram, I crashed the drone while flying it in Mo’orea, French Polynesia back in August on the side of a mountain. I was able to make my way through a swamp and up the very vertical mountain to the last know location. There were almost a complete canopy of trees so I had little hope that I would actually find the drone. Luckily, when I arrived at the GPS ping, the drone was lying there on the side of the mountain, up against a tree. It was in several pieces (battery separated, gimbal and camera broke off and one of the motor arms was held on just by the wiring) but I was able to find everything. Unfortunately that meant that I would not have a drone to fly in Bora Bora but it did mean that I was able to retrieve the footage from Mo’orea. You can see that video (without the actual crash) below.
REDONDO BEACH | CALIFORNIA
When I got back to Los Angeles, I contacted DJI and setup a repair. Within a week the drone arrived back to me, looking good as new. The next step was to take it out for its first flight and see if all of the systems functioned properly. That takes us to the Redondo Beach Pier. While I know that I probably shouldn’t do a systems test over water, I guess I like to live on the edge. From the day I got the drone new, it used to get a gimbal error that made the camera twitch when I made certain moves in certain winds. Whatever DJI did during the repair fixed this issue. The flight was a success and I was very happy with the service. During the flight, I was able to capture some great views of the south Redondo Beach area. You can see some of the video below.