Fiddler Ferry powerstation

Decommissioned some time ago and to be demolished sometime in the near future, it’s a landmark in its own right and will be missed.

Taken with the Air 2S

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I’ve looked at this for a possible FPV site. As i understand it, it’s currently under demolition, but the demolition will take a while. Mostly interested in diving the cooling towers and that chminey.

What was the security presence like on site?

I’ve thought about it with the Avata, not diving the towers but a quick razz around, I was going to have a go this weekend but need to get a better vantage point. Need some research :grin:.

The security was onto me. Don’t know if by chance or they saw a drone in the air and also know a lot of people take off maybe from where I did🤷‍♂️.

Anyway we had a chat, nice enough. She did mention that I wasn’t allowed to fly over the site from fear of the drone falling from the sky and causing somebody an injury. A site where its mandatory to wear hard hats😁.
At which point I stated I was perfectly legal to do so if I wanted, but wasn’t going to, and moved onto the next subject.
The girl was quite OK to be honest, but on a grander scale of how easy it would be to get on the site maybe and not get lifted I couldn’t give you an answer mate. There are loads of no drone flying notices, but these can be ignored at will😂

I’d love to have a proper uninterrupted scoot round there😁. Let us know if you find anything out security wise👍

I’ll have a look at some of the urbex sites I still have accounts on and see if anyone has infiltrated it.

The other possibility is a zero fail type mission. Fly in from half a km away, do the dives, fly back out, exit swiftly. :smiley:

To be fair, if some of the others were to do it with 5" quads, they would get noticed straight away, but my 2.5 is pretty quiet in the grand scheme of quads (and still powerful enough to do these types of thing).

So possible TOAL locations I can see for a more long range sortie.

or

But for diving the towers, I would probably go somewhere here and only dive the outside. Maybe do it as a sunrise type thing and 1 pack only.

That’s my kind mission, too old to be legging away from security now a days😂.

Like you’ve posted, there does seem to be a few places for take off, the industrial estate, Johnsons Lane, looks the best, that’s what I was eyeing up, you only have power lines inbetween yourself and the coolers then

My only issue would be my siganl range with the Avata, even in FCC, I’m going to give it a go, but the car park where I took off from on Saturday has a large line of the dredded foliage of large trees, so I’m going to have to find somewhere better.

Hope you can sort it out, it’ll make for some awesome footage👍

If not I might do a mission to Willington. Not take loads of kit. Basically just a drone, some packs, goggles and radio. Go in at sunrise, fly as many packs as I can for 15-30 mins and then bug out before anyone notices. Maybe even fly from outside the perimeter, or setup somewhere partly camoflauged.

For Fiddlers Ferry, the south edge of that fishing pond coupled with a 5am flight time would probably be ideal. i doubt anyone would be on either site at that time. From that location you have about 200m to the nearest tower, but as you said it does have the dreaded power lines kicking out EM. I would only dive the outside a couple of times and be real conservative with the dives, like no pulling out of them at 4m from the ground. :wink: If you lose it inside, then you need to do an incursion which could be sketchy. Best to avoid anything where you might lose signal or crash.

Man that’s militarian. Thought I was bad😂. Guess you’ve done it quite a few times then.

The way I’d have to approach it, is use a couple of batteries and fly about the area, behind objects and the like, to see if I got any break ups in signal, I wouldn’t fancy a retrieve mission going into/onto the site :scream:.

Willington looks a good one​:+1:. Just had a quick look, the coolers are slightly smaller by 74ft foot apparently, not that size is everything so I tell the missus :joy:. I’ve been practicing diving with the Avata in manual, but at the moment I don’t think I’d get away with doing a power station​:joy:

Keep us posted if you do either or, would love to see the footage :+1:

Are you really drone flying if you dont take lots of kit :joy:
Haven’t been to willington for a while - has access improved these days?

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Some places that were definitely going to be a hostile crowd. :rofl: Or some places that are just very public. For example I would like to dive the India Mills Chimney in Darwen, but the site is mega public. It would need a Sunday morning flight at the crack of dawn, using a single pack. Get some footage and proverbially do one straight after. :grin:

I think it was @Yith that mentioned they were shit hot on kicking people off site that were flying. Not to mention some numpty farmer that has a general bee in his bonnet.

All the kit I take, even when going to say Matlock, fits in a large Home Bargains Toolbox, which fits in my Ski Rucksack. So one quad, one radio, one goggles and a selection of Lipos (for most bandos I tend to carry 3-6 3S and 6-12 2S). Pack light, stay light. Generally hit the spot and be gone before anyone turns up and gives you grief (if flying somewhere sketchy). if it’s like a big abandoned site without security, then less need for hit and run type tactics.

Sometimes I take two quads or maybe take a big one and a small whoop (with suitable lipos, but most of my whoops run 2S). But yes, some others (no names mentioned) seem to turn up with everything bar the kitchen sink. My rule is break everything go home, so don’t break everything. If I was going to travel say 200 miles to fly a bando, I would take considerably more, but most of the places i fly tend to be within an hour of home, so worst case I can bail out to there pretty quickly.

For Corby it will be different, maximum kit and spares, but I might also go fly some local stuff while I’m down there. Maybe 2x main quads and some whoops. I aim to be flying from as early as possible to as late as possible, like 2-3 flights before breakfast, 40-50 flights through the day and some dusk packs as well. :slight_smile: Corby should be fun. i hope to get a race circuit setup somewhere that we can use for general fun and faffing around. Also some cubes for IGOW style antics.

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Like it👍

@notveryprettyboy is working on this :+1: :+1:

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Hi there, I went the week before last if you go down Marsh Lane about half way down there’s a lay by. Park up n fly no issues.
Out of site out of mind.

For those of you with this site on your ‘bucket list’, wifey lifted this from her Faceache this morning. The 8 towers are shortly to become 4

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That’s very handy to know👍 Thanks Dave