Summiting the Matterhorn with a Drone

February 18, 2023 9:05 AM

Joshua Turner flies a drone up the Matterhorn's epic Hornli ridge.
posted by ShooBoo (24 comments total)

Beautifully executed. Of course any reference to the Matterhorn on a Saturday morning is going to make me think of Yosemite Sam in Piker’s Peak: ”50,000 kronkites for the one what dares climb the Schmatterhorn, and I dares.”
posted by furtive at 10:01 AM on February 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

What's the thing that looks like a cross between a dumpster and a shipping container at about the 59 second mark? A shelter for final summitting prep?
posted by hanov3r at 10:23 AM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's the Solvay Hut, hanov3r, an emergency shelter.
posted by tomsk at 10:29 AM on February 18, 2023 [17 favorites]

that's one courageous drone, though I could've done without the music. Sometimes a score just can't help but diminish.

I do wonder how long it will be before I can pay a few buck to put on a VR headset and fly my own drone to such heights.
posted by philip-random at 11:38 AM on February 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

I want a Toblerone.
posted by chavenet at 11:51 AM on February 18, 2023 [6 favorites]

Done right soundtracks really enhance visuals. But sometimes, like this video, they just detract from the whole thing. I hit the mute halfway through.

A particular problem with nature videos. I know it is not always practical, but I would much rather hear the natural soundscape.
posted by Pouteria at 12:35 PM on February 18, 2023

Goes at a death-defying 5.4.
posted by alex_skazat at 1:10 PM on February 18, 2023

Poutera, the problem with the natural soundscape with a drone video is it just sounds like a squadron of wasps on meth.

Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dJ_8YqAIT0
posted by barc0001 at 1:32 PM on February 18, 2023 [6 favorites]

It's so barren up there, they could have planted some trees and shrubs or something...
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:43 PM on February 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

Wonder if any drones-in-nature video eschewed the music and used a recording of their location?

I've seen that - well, either that or they had an amazing unidirectional shotgun mic mounted on it that filtered out the noise of the drone itself.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:46 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I do wonder how long it will be before I can pay a few buck to put on a VR headset and fly my own drone to such heights.

Well, these days you can probably get a ready to fly or DIY super basic FPV drone for well under $100, complete with a remote and batteries, but likely not including an FPV headset. But the floor level entry price for FPV drone toys is ridiculously low these days for a backyard or park flyer.

There's a comment on the video stating that this was filmed and flown using just a 1500 mAh battery, which is less than most smartphones and is totally ridiculous. I think it's also a DJI drone platform.

Note that the linked video isn't using FPV footage but an onboard 4K GoPro with post stabilization and editing. Even good high def live FPV rigs and feeds are really grainy compared to a GoPro and not cinematic quality. People generally don't use the FPV part of the drone for the footage but just for live piloting and navigation, while a dedicated onboard camera captures the good video for later.

But, yeah, every so often I dive down the general RC aircraft hobby rabbit hole because of some family history and memories about the hobby, and every time I go poking around at it it blows me away how far these toys and tech have come and how cheap some of it is.

Like you can get super cheap ready to fly small indoor or park quad rotors that often have a bunch of advanced features like GPS, full gyro/accel inertial navigation, multiple cameras for positioning/navigation, collision avoidance and flight stabilization and other advanced features that used to solely be the realm of multi-thousand dollar platforms, but now you can get all of that for less than $50-150ish and the remote and drone together are so small they'll fit in a single coat pocket.

The DIY quad/rotor racing and FPV scene is even crazier on a cost per value basis. Some of those hobbyists have DIY racing drones that will hover rock solid in mid air even in a strong wind and nearly instantly accelerate to 200+ MPH and move and change directions like something out of a UFO sighting video

And they're doing it at price points that would have barely got you a basic dirt racing RC car with an analog radio and NiCad batteries back in the 80s or 90s, even before adjusting for inflation.

I'm just spitballing here, but today a budget of like $500-1000 will get you a pretty competitive drone, FPV video rig and goggles, a good digital radio, batteries, chargers, spare parts and a whole setup that would likely be capable of flying to the top of the Matterhorn and back with a GoPro.
posted by loquacious at 2:18 PM on February 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

Quieter toroidal propellers are coming, but I don’t think there's any way they would be quiet enough to allow natural sound on this video.
posted by jamjam at 2:20 PM on February 18, 2023

Also they're getting insane with weight capacity:

"Flowcopter's ultra-long range hydraulic drone is lifting serious weight "

This unique heavy-lift UAV out of Edinburgh promises to obliterate the power and range of electric drones using a Rotax engine and bent-axis hydraulic motors similar to those used on huge tree harvesters. It's now lifting 95 kg (210 lb) in testing.

Flowcopter promises an extraordinary 900 km (560 miles) of range and more than six hours of endurance, as well as a huge 150 kg (330 lb) max payload. It's built for an ultra-long range niche, particularly targeted at making deliveries to super-remote settlements and offshore oil rigs, as well as extended search and rescue missions and long-endurance agricultural use.
posted by aleph at 3:34 PM on February 18, 2023

If nothing else, I would imagine there must be some pretty brisk winds at the top of the Matterhorn, so kudos to the pilot for keeping the view so steady and stable throughout.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:17 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fucking mountains. Not even once.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 5:00 PM on February 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Amazing video, but I was also bothered by the super bad blue JPEG banding around 90 seconds into the video. (I'm an old video codec nerd and am particularly bothered by this, and may also see and care about this more than most people).

I was watching the 4K version in Safari on macOS 13, with a LG 5k monitor.

Right-click "Stats for nerds" shows VP09 as the codec.

Why bother with 4K when you posterize the blue channel?
posted by soylent00FF00 at 5:05 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fucking mountains. Not even once.

That's a weird "Never Have I Ever" round...
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:21 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is the tech close to the point where amateurs could assist in search and rescue, ocean, death valley, etc?
posted by Beholder at 9:50 PM on February 18, 2023

Flowcopter promises an extraordinary 900 km (560 miles) of range and more than six hours of endurance, as well as a huge 150 kg (330 lb) max payload.

No matter how much I love this matterhorn shoot, this made one word pop up in me head that might derail this thread - feel free to delete, mods, if you share that fear.

That word: Ukraine.
posted by DreamerFi at 2:38 AM on February 19, 2023

It's still a prototype. But yeah. With it's weight capacity I thought about dangling a harness underneath and making it a personal helicopter but it would be a bomb delivery vehicle (for the future) as well.
posted by aleph at 5:32 AM on February 19, 2023

Is the tech close to the point where amateurs could assist in search and rescue, ocean, death valley, etc?

I would say yes. and it's probably already happened a lot.

I've also seen drones make appearances at protests being used by the protesters themselves and their allies to document and watch for things like police violence for later use as evidence.

If nothing else, I would imagine there must be some pretty brisk winds at the top of the Matterhorn, so kudos to the pilot for keeping the view so steady and stable throughout.

Yeah, I noticed them mostly staying to the leeward side of the ridge, but that may have had more to do with staying in radio contact and line of sight for the live FPV feed so they could pilot visually.

On the other hand I don't think modern and higher end drones are bothered that much by wind short of a full on gale, hurricane or tornado. They're basically flying bricks with advanced avionics. I've seen mid range drone platforms like DJIs go up in heavy winds and they just churn through it and can still lock in a stable, static hover just because their nav systems and power controls are just that good and fast.
posted by loquacious at 10:02 AM on February 19, 2023

Yeah, it's used in SAR situations already, as early as 2016 according to local news outlets for our SAR outfit (Vancouver, BC). I'm not sure if they're piloted by amateurs or not... If you have a Canadian address, there is a cool reality show about SAR called "Search and Rescue: North Shore" that's free on the knowledge network. One of the episodes discussing filming a drainage with a drone to look for signs of missing people after the spring melt. It's also used proactively by some skiers to scope out cornices and similar hazards they wouldn't be able to see.

I'm kinda torn about drones in the woods. Their usage has enabled a ton of really great outdoor films that I really enjoy -- it no longer requires renting a helicopter to shoot a ski or mountain bike film for example. This lower cost means we can see and enjoy viewpoints that would otherwise not be feasible. This is good, and drone footage probably makes up a significant % of the media I regularly consume.

All this said: god I am sick of mediocre drone pilots flying illegally in parks, then talking about it online. Drone are annoying in person for the noise reasons discussed above. Then the followup posts... these always go roughly the same: someone posts drone footage online, someone tells them its illegal to fly drones there, the pilot belligerently tells people usually in order that they're wrong, then when it's clear that they're not wrong, that they don't care.

I understand drone pilots are not born knowing how to fly drones, and there will be a learning phase but boy there are some assholes in that group.
posted by yeahwhatever at 12:27 PM on February 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Looks like you could replicate that for about $1000 (excluding travel costs).
posted by blue_beetle at 3:30 PM on February 19, 2023

That ridge looks so sharp. I have little idea of the scale, other than the hut.
And that's the 'easy' way up, as far as I can tell.
posted by MtDewd at 7:07 PM on February 19, 2023 [1 favorite]