I’ve wanted to film a Combine in action for some time now, but always in the wrong place or time! On my way home yesterday from playing an inordinately bad game of golf (13th Aug), out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a combine in all it’s glory working hard in a field near where I live.
I abandoned, the car on the verge opposite and couldn’t wait to get my mini 4 Pro in the air. Too hastily, it transpired, as I forgot to remove the gimbal cover. Doh! Then the owner of the rather long drive, (that I was partially blocking) came out in his black gangster top of the range Range Rover whilst the drone was hovering 2m above his car looking at me questionably. After, persuading him that I was a harmless soul trying to get footage of the action across the road he simply drove back down his drive. Result!
Eventually sent the drone out, convinced I’d missed my chance, and noted a couple of Pylons and the routes of their cables so took the drone up to 45m, about 10m above them,unfortunately … I had subsequently lowered the drone to get some orbits and forgot to increase it’s height as I carried out a reverse shot away from the combine.
The date was the 13th … but I was a lucky bar steward as I missed everything as the insulators on the pylon came into view! Took my hand of the stick’s and moved the drone side ways out of harms way and completed a ‘signum crucis’ across my rapidly beating heart.
Still, I won the war and fate was on my side this day and the little DJI survived to take another video despite my best attempts to trash it!
This is one of my bucket list things to do but I fear most if not all the fields have been done around me - cracking footage and glad it all worked out for you.
May have to travel a bit further away as most of the fields I have passed locally do seem to have been harvested or turned over. But will keep an eye open for sure.
@Drumsagard Ah, thanks John, Suno AI is an awsome website. Feed it the lyrics, give it a style (New Age in this case), and let it do its thing. I get the foot tapping stuff too, my neck aches from nodding to it whilst editing!
I know I’m sounding a bit formal here but did you ask the farmer’s permission to film them? I did one yesterday but stayed up quite high as I didn’t want to annoy them as once I got told off for filming some bailing without asking them!
@Dave1981 No Dave I didn’t ask them as I didn’t want to disturb them at work and they might have said no. .
It wasn’t planned, which is unusual for me. Apart from an error on my part (lowered the drone whilst doing a parallax) I was 45m up or higher. They wouldn’t have a clue that I was there. I couldn’t hear it 10m from me due to the noise from the combine.
I was filming from the other side of the road right next to the entrance and could see them, and they could see me, the entire time I was there.
Tried to find out the owner of the field after to show them the video of them at work but come up with a blank so far.
@Arthur2588 Nice one Arthur, by sister-in-law text me yesterday and said they come passed their house to do the field behind them all the time. They didn’t know I wanted to film them and would have said if they did! 3yrs waiting… doh!
Too hastily, it transpired, as I forgot to remove the gimbal cover. Doh! 
Then the owner of the rather long drive, (that I was partially blocking) came out in his black gangster top of the range Range Rover whilst the drone was hovering 2m above his car looking at me questionably. 
After, persuading him that I was a harmless soul trying to get footage of the action across the road he simply drove back down his drive. Result! 
