Hi, Barry here from Swansea, have flown my mini 2 se 5 times now and still nervous, but cracking on. Last flight on Aberafon beach, wonderfull photo, s but attacked by a massive seagull. Trouble finding practice area, s and trying to stay away from birds. I, m 75 years old and not too moblile, launched yesterday sitting in the boot of my car. Any tips welcome… Cheers
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Hi Barry @BazzaT and welcome to GADC 
Hi @BazzaT and welcome to Grey Arrows 
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Good afternoon @BazzaT Barry & welcome
Hey @BazzaT - welcome to GADC and also to the AMSC (Attacked by Mad Seagulls Club) 
Hi Barry @BazzaT - welcome to GADC from just down the road in Gorseinon.
Seagulls are a real pain and quite aggressive towards drones. Best plan is to go straight up - birds can’t climb as fast as a drone and height is king in the world of bird attacks. If they persist, after you climb vertically, just bring the drone home. Quite often, once you’ve done one vertical climb they will get bored and leave you alone but they sometimes come back unexpectedly - so keep any eye on them
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thanks for the advice, gonna try bracelet bay tomorrow, cross your fingers. Lol!
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Have you thought about trying Crymlyn Burrows ?? Park at the roundabout by the Shell petrol station on the Jersey Marine and you can walk out onto the Burrows. A few dog walkers about but usually fairly quiet.
Thanks for that tip. I will investigate it asap weather permitting. Great advice from several members. Gonna try a tablet set up for more visual on the RC1, as i say novice at large!
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Hi Bazza, little tip that I learned from members in here which has been very effective. If one of the mad seagulls does attack your bird, Fly vertically upwards. Birds are not particularly adept at flying vertically upwards
Enjoy your stay
Seagulls killed my Mini SE 2, so I understand your reluctance to fly around them, especially at your position towards the bottom of the learning curve. They can be found anywhere but are more prominent on the coast, so you might want to fly at an inland location until you have built confidence.
You will know your local area best; what you are looking for ideally is a fairly level publicly accessible open area with no bushes and short grass, like a sports field in a park, but not on Saturday! This will assist recovery of the drone should you crash or land it a distance from where you are. I’m only 3 years younger than you, incidentally, so understand your mobility issues. Perhaps take a grandchild with to run off and fetch things for you!
Try out the features of the drone and the app to build your confidence, in particular RTH and ‘Find My Drone’. FMD shows you the position of your drone on the map even if it’s crashed in the bushes, so you can get quite close, and then set off the flashing lights and beep to guide you in the final few feet. The beep is a bit pathetic, though…
I’m told that gulls have an aversion to red (for no reason I can see, as there is no bright red flying creature that I can think of that habitually predates on them), so a red skin for your drone, not too expensive, may dissuade them a bit, and make it easier for you to locate after you have taken your eyes off it for a second to glance at the screen. Oystercatchers are by all accounts worse, absolute thugs.
thankyou Johnster for you comprehensive advice. It is very welcome and i will certainly act upon it. I have covered the drone with a luminous yellow skin but obviously that didn’t deter, them also a strobe light to make VLOS more visible. Swansea being a coastal city the Gulls have a far reaching area inland so for now i will take yours and others advice and accend at speed. I have now got my European drone licence,so who knows where i will fly. Thanks once again!
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Hi Barry
Last time in your area I flew around Mumbles pier and Oystermouth castle. I don’t recall being troubled by gulls.
Looking through the limited amount of footage I managed to collect before the gull strike ended the fun, there are gulls in all of the sequences, mostly flying past on whatever business of their own and paying no attention to my drone, sometimes quite close. They must have been aware of my presence, but it didn’t bother them at all, they completely ignored me. A significant difference with the attack was that there was a group of 8 or 9 of them that I didn’t see coming because it was dusk. Perhaps being mob-handed contributed to the attack mentality.
The flight record records five separate attacks (‘Drone tips forward, possible collision’; there was nothing else up there to collide with) within the space of 2.5 seconds, and they followed their victim down to the surface of the water and hung around to see if it would come up again, in which case they’d no doubt have all dived in to finish it off. They were pretty determined.
Inference; gulls going about their business flying in a straight line presumably from a to b are not likely to attack. Groups of gulls milling around and screeching at each other like teenagers on glue with nothing better to do, different story attogether. I think the group and the group mentality gives them the courage to attack, probably just to show off tot their mates, and once one starts, the rest join in.
Feed 'em on popcorn, that’s what I say… I’d happily put razor blades on the props, but knowing me I’ll prolly cut my own throat!
So did the replacement arrive ?
Mumbles amd Oystermouth are nice middle-class areas where the gulls are taught proper manners, unlike the ruffians at the entrance to Cardiff Docks…
Mumbles is so middle class that when it became a suburb of Swansea in Victorian times, the new residents were too embarrassed to say that they lived in ‘Y Bronydd’ (the breasts, anyone looking across Swansea Bay from further east or north will see why), and mumbled the words, which is how the place got it’s name.
Or so I was told by a bloke in a pub in Swansea many years ago, and it’s one of those stories that, if it isn’t true, ought to be!
Not yet, will chase up tomorrow Chris. The railway is out of action as well and I’m well pissed off! My fault for delaying information Coverdrone need or sending the wrong thing, but they keep coming up with new things to need.
Should have gone care refresh.
No questions