White Mountains and the Catskills – New Video Footage!

During the Mount Washington Valley Ice Fest and the Catskills Ice Festival, the NEice helicopter, ARDU, took the air to capture the some footage.  We are excited at Year Two of this project to be able to fly longer, farther and higher than ever before.  Our model ARDU, which was designed and built from scratch is flying very well and reliably.  Doug has become an excellent pilot.  He has practiced all summer and it shows. We’ve been able to get very stable footage from smoother flights.  Here is what we captured in New Hampshire at Cathedral Ledge and Frankenstein.

[iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/85887387″ frameborder=”0″ width=”640″ height=”360″]

The next task was to find a camera with better quality for long range, as well as something with a better zoom.  The GoPro has worked well as far as being a small, lightweight camera but since it’s designed as a helmet cam, the wide angle and lack of clarity for distance shots is less than desirable.  After the New Hampshire festival, we added a Sony Handycam to our tools, it reduced the ‘fish-eye’ affect of the wide angle lens and allowed us to get the closer shots we were looking for.  Here is some footage we captured in the Catskills during the 16th annual Ice Fest.



Now it’s time to stage some climbers on the routes for the money shots!

-By Courtney Ley