High-flying photo drone captures stunning aerial footage in the mountains of Pakistan

 

 

We've seen some impressive drones for aerial photography before but this unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to shoot footage at extremely high altitudes may take the cake.

Called a Dedicam and developed by two inventors from Switzerland, the drone recently shot stunning footage in the thin air over the Trango Towers mountains in Pakistan at altitudes of up 20,500 feet above sea level.

"The difficultly is we had no idea how the drone would react at such altitude," Dedicam pilot Dionys Frei told swissinfo.ch in the below video. "Would it still fly steadily and would the cooling of the engines still work? We couldn't really test these things beforehand."

Davide Tiraboschi, the Dedicam's camera operator, was able to monitor what the drone was capturing high above the Pakistani mountains using special video glasses that transmitted a live feed.

While the two had used a drone to shoot the Lauberhorn ski races in the Swiss Alps, this version needed to be extra light to cope with the high altitude and the long travel time over Trango Towers.

To reach the peak to capture aerial footage of mountain climbers, the Dedicam UAV had to travel remotely for nearly a mile and a half.

Check out the short movie from swisssinfo.ch below about the drone's Pakistan expedition featuring some of that stunning footage. To see more of the high-altitude footage shot with the Dedicam, click here.

And if you like drones, read our story about an impressive eight-rotor mini helicopter called the Turbo Ace X88-J.

(Thanks Phil!)