Wicked Witch Test Flights 1 and 2

Michael and I went out yesterday and successfully flew the 'Wicked Witch' RC video plane yesterday. We chose a dirt road out highway 36 past Joes, CO where a developing thunderstorm was in the area. Winds were brisk at about 20 mph with gusts to 30. Lightning was in the area as well as light rain. Flight number one suffered from video that was not quite dialed in causing some false-color overblown video. Flight number two I failed to note that the landing from number one had thrown a layer of dirt over the camera lens.

I plan to use a video Y cable and route the video from the camera to an onboard mini-DVR to record better video quality. This will require always retrieving the plane even after an encounter with a tornado. At the minimum though, video like in the clip above can always be obtained from the transmitter in real-time.

Next steps are to gain more and more experience flying in closer to the rain free base and rotating wall clouds and then finally a tornado!