Masjid Besi

This entry was originally written in June 2016

This mosque was one of the icon of Putrajaya, and formally named after the last Yang Dipertuan Agung, Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin. Due to it's metallic structure, the locals referred it as the Iron Mosque, or Masjid Besi. It was certainly a sight to behold. And in terms of photography, one hope to capture it at night.

But logistically, it was quite tricky for me to do that. Maybe on of the evenings leading up to Raya I might do just that. But for the time being, it was best to enjoy the flight whenever the weather permitting after a couple of failed runs prior to this.

The mosque was located at the edge of the lake and it was to try to capture its beauty at a height and away from the structure, hoping to catch a reflection of the beams on the lake. Luckily I managed to do that on a couple of shots but I thought for the best angle, maybe a sunset flight would have been better, while putting up base on the opposite shore of the lake - maybe Ayer@8 would be a good idea.

Perched next to it was a couple of bridges, one left incomplete while the other named Seri Saujana Bridge formed its background.

Lesson from the flight? Best to pick up your base station away from big structures such as the mosque as you would have a better luck getting a better angle while maintaining a line of sight with the drone to make sure a good radio connection with the controller unit.

Sunset Droning

A few days had passed after my last flight. I decided to be a bit more adventurous. I took the drone out of town, enjoying a 30 minutes drive to Putrajaya.

I could not leave early since I had a meeting in town until almost 6, I had to rush across time to get to Putrajaya. Luckily the traffic was light and I had 30 minutes to spare before sunset.

The gorgeous Harriot-Watt University campusAt the opposite side of the lakeHeading back to the marina from the lakeI had a few choices when it came to the spot to take off from. For that afternoon, I decided to do it at Marina Putrajaya in the hope of catching the sunset.

I got what I wanted and managed to drone around exploring the marina, the nearby Lakeside Pullman Putrajaya as well as a smaller marina nearby which was hosting the floats for the upcoming Pesta Flora Putrajaya.

The Pullman Putrajaya located right next door to the marinaLooking down onto Marina PutrajayaYou can find me there somewhere ....And the sunset was great, despite the cloud cover at the horizon. I decided to use the 1080p resolution this time around rather than 4K since I was still getting familiarise with the drone. I concentrated more on aerial photography this time around after discovering how good the camera was. I felt confident to increase the range of the flight from then on ....

Denied Again

This post was written on Friday, 3rd June 2016

The crave for droning was strong. And I was denied again. This time due to heavy rain. Two days in a row. Even Anita felt sorry for me ....

I managed to get to Putrajaya, had a drink before it started raining. Thunder was everywhere and the lightning made the flight a no go.

If I thought it was bad at Putrajaya, it turned out that the rain and strong winds had caused havoc in KL There were hailstorms and trees uprooted. A few buildings were damaged as well as area of flash flood. It was not pretty.

So, the drones would have to wait that bit longer ....

Droning Around

One of my colleague at work had a drone a few months back and had uploaded footage from the device. Looked pretty fun and the main issue he had was the flying time. The drones really eat up the batteries and if it took a couple of hours to charge for a 10 minutes flying time, it was hardly worth it.

So, I initially bought a small drone just to familiarise with the idea. A couple of hours charge, with only around 6 minutes flying time. With no extra battery unit to boot. Not exactly a great deal, but it got us started. And it only had a lame camera attached to it.

After a couple of sessions, Idlan and I decided to go for an upgrade. And oh boy! Upgrade we sure did.

We bought ourselves the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0. Power edition, which came with a couple of high capacity batteries, which would last easily half an hour of flying. And it captured images at 720p, beamed directly and recorded onto the iPad which we used to control it with.

It took some getting used to, but it worked better than the first drone. It cost a fair amount as well. But if we were to do some droning, might as well go for the proper one.

Would I recommend the drone to people? Well it depends if you wanted it or not in the first place, and if you have money to spend. It certainly was not cheap but if you were willing to invest, this would be the best value for money.

Hopefully I could spend some more time flying it as we only managed to fly it at the apartment compound so far. We might just bring it to a park in town but I was sure it would attract some attention. At least we should be able to get some decent footage ....