The day started early for me. Packing stuff, going over my lists, packing food, chairs and a table. I will have 2 GoPro cameras, 2 Nikon DSL cameras, and my drone! Plus various lenses and filters.
We left our motor home right at 8am as planned. Just before leaving we heard sirens! Not a good sign! As we approached the main road U.S. 20 we looked with concern as it was steady traffic headed south bound! Nothing coming North! Yes the sirens!They were to our right about 1/4 mile to the North. An accident with injuries!. We creeped out into the middle turn lane and eased over to the right lane where we proceeded to travel at about 30 mph. Soon we reached 45 then 65! That lasted for about 10 miles then about 1/2 mile from my turn it came to a halt. We moved along at about 5mph. I reached my yurn and away I went, glad to be out of the solar race!
The spot I had selected several weeks ago had space, but we decided to go down the road a little ways, where we came to a spot in front of a huge pile of hay bales.
just enough room for us to pull in and put out our chairs and equipment!
After setting up it was still 11/2 hours before show time!
So I took my drone up to do a test run to make sure everything worked okay. I flew it or should I say I let it fly itself, as I just let it hover in place for about 13 minutes. All went well, so I went to get my camera all setup.
Things did not go well setting up the camera! I could not get it to enable the interval timing that I wanted to make it as much hands free as possible. It worked back at the motor home. Just couldn’t figure it out! Oh well i could still do it manually. I really wanted it to work so I could concentrate on filming with the drone!
T-Minus 5 minutes to start of Totality! I prepare the drone and launch, get it out front and about 100ft up facing SSW to get a good recording of the shadow and darkness as it comes across. I place it in a hover and go to my camera to take some pics. Just before totality the drone decides to fly away from me! I hit the return home button and it response and is coming back! i switch it to my control and reposition it.A minute later it tries to fly away again! So i quickly bring it in for a hard landing and shut it down. Meanwhile the eclipse did not wait for me. I barely got a picture of totality! I also was lucky enough to get a several pictures of the Diamond Ring!
Wow! What a day! Somethings didn’t work but all in all it was an awesome day! Here is a Youtube video I made. 2017 Solar Eclipse
Traffic on the way home was not bad. We zipped right along and were home by 1:30 pm. I understand that U.S. 20 was bumper to bumper headed north and south! We got out in the nick of time!
On to Texas in 2024! Need to start scouting looking where we want to be in April of 2024!
Solar On! (thats like Happy Trails)