I love using large sensors in the air. I drove to Palomar Observatory today and sent the Phantom 2 Ricoh GR up for a few pictures (nowhere near the structures). Last year, I read Richard Preston’s First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe, which made visiting the observatory all the more special.

The modified Phantom 2 is a bit heavy to fly at 5,620’ (elevation of the observatory), but it did fairly well. It was a windy day, and the quad was much harder to control than it is at sea level. I routinely saw large changes in pitch and roll, even when all I was doing was throttling up. The most important thing to note when flying at altitude is that descent has to be done *very* slowly and carefully. A heavy bird at this altitude can easily end up falling through its own prop wash without enough lift to get it back in control. This started to happen to me when I was bringing it in for landing, and I had to pitch forward really aggressively to move laterally out of the turbulence.