This video was made partly in jest and partly in all seriousness. When flying at night, the FAA highly recommends having a way to illuminate your landing zone, bright enough to be seen from the air, but not so bright as to mess with your night vision in the dark while flying. A famous YouTuber, Ken Heron, recently posted a video about recording a fireworks show, then explained how he crashed his drone because he had lost sight of his landing zone and had too many people (kids) in the area of his landing zone. He made the safe decision to land in an empty field nearby, rather than risk flying over people at night and perhaps causing an incident.
As our viewers are aware, we recently recorded a fireworks show as well, but here’s what we did for our landing zone.
We got there before the show, during daylight, to scout out the nearby trees and obstacles, just like Ken Heron did. But we illuminated the perimeter with traffic cones that had small battery powered lanterns inside them, plus used engineer surveyor’s tape to mark off the perimeter by attaching it to the cones and stretching it around the perimeter of the cones. We also used a sheet of Masonite, because we weren’t sure about the quality of the surface when we packed my gear earlier that day. (It had been raining earlier in the day, so mud was a possibility.)
We also mounted a 12v spotlight on top of my SUV and pointed it to the landing zone just as the drone was ready to land. We landed once during the show, switched batteries, and took off again to record more of the show, before landing after the finale of the show. Like Ken, we’re also certified for commercial night time flying and f0llow the FAA rules and recommendations for safe operations.