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Very cool flight, Phil. Thanks for sharing.
Most welcome! More to come in the future.
In these videos, you always seem to walk all the way to the beach, rather than launching at the first open/flat place, near the beginning of the beachgrass. Is that a trick of the camera about the distance, or a safety habit about surroundings, or to set up cameras better, or …
The access to the shoreline is locked and vehicles cannot enter it, hence walking is the only option to reach the ocean. My friend and I are the only ones flying the place. We both have a cart to lug our gear around. The path is about 8’ wide, half a mile long facing south and the vegetation up to 8’ tall on either side of the path during the warm part of the year. There is no space to launch from unless the wind directions is dead on coming from the south which is rarely the case. Any cross wind, even light, will generate rotors over the path making any inflation very difficult and approach a bit dicey. There is no “beach” per se, only a few sand strips here and there and all cut off by salt water ditches to control the mosquitoes population who need stagnant water pockets to breed. The tide moves in and out thus making it unsuitable for larvae. It is impossible to run even a couple feet in the greenery. The muddy water starts right where the greenery ends.
I always plan where I will place the cameras based on wind directions, distance to land on and space which can actually be a pretty small area especially during high tide - it is not a beginner friendly location. The place is also infested with ticks and chiggers. Landing in that stuff would be a complete disaster. We have to be really careful where to launch and land. We sometimes take a bit of a risk but we have been flying there so many times year round that we pretty much know what we can get away with to keep our flying on the safe side.
The marsh is also a strong thermal generator around midday and it can be a bit bouncy at times.
We do not have the luxury of site choices. Long Island is packed like sardines in a can and where every inch is fought for. The local advanced PPG pilots have to constantly be searching for new spots to use which most of the time require a good technique and strong experience.
We are impatiently waiting for the official beach season to be over (Labor Day) and we will again be able to access the south shore beaches with the parking lots touching the beach. This is the reason why most of my videos during the official beach season are made at the marsh we also call Mosquito Alley. It is very frustrating to all of us here but once one knows how to handle short takeoff/landing locations, it gives us more flexibility to handle less friendly sites.
Here’s the same place a few years ago when I discovered it and the path was accessible to 4x4 which eventually destroyed it. The town rebuilt it last winter and gated it but the public can squeeze on the side of the gate to enter and take a walk or bicycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuWsgiNnC0w
Apologies for the long answer.
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Merci. I had forgotten that green doesn’t always mean solid land.
As the joke goes "What does the frog sing at night in the marsh? “Knee-Deep! Knee-Deep!.. Knee-Deep! Knee-Deep…”. This is why we can’t land in that stuff😁