Flying from Marina South Pier to Sentosa

Today’s flight is a bit of a departure (pun intended) from my usual pattern of flying my drone for mostly cinematic purposes (though of course, I’ve tried my best with the resulting video).

DJI’s page states a range of about 2km for the Spark under optimal conditions (here), and some people on YouTube have reported flying about 4 miles (about 6.3km). My video has been consistently cutting out at around 300m when flying around VivoCity or Marina Bay Sands etc.

The one thing I found different between my flights and theirs is probably that they consistently do these tests over open land/mountain ranges/open water.

Which brought me to the idea of trying to fly from Marina South Pier to Sentosa, which is actually about 2km:

This is not only within the Spark’s specifications, but coincidentally also about as long as the world’s shortest scheduled passenger flight between two Scottish islands.

The weather was perfect for a bit of flying and after about 30 minutes on the MRT train, I arrived at Marina South Pier Station:

After a bit of setup between a few fisherman already at the pier, I was off and away and tried my best to reach Sentosa Island. Actual distance reached was the furthest I’ve flown my drone so far and almost all the way to my goal!

Probably I could’ve pushed on further, but at that point the video link to the controller started cutting out and I guess the connection was negatively influenced by a huge container ship under my drone which may have got in the way of my radio signals.

Even this position was already close enough to see the shore of Sentosa and the ship traffic in one of the world’s biggest container ports is beautiful to look at from the air.

Have a look yourself:

Marina South Pier – Flight to Sentosa (2018 Apr 8) from Flo on Vimeo.

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Flo