Shamelessly copied from mi post at RC Groups 'cause it’s 5 AM and I don’t feel like writhing an original for the Dope… 
Link to video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDBxAZFmAS0
They called me crazy!, the called me loony!
Well, they were right… but I did it anyway! 
Today I came back from my vacation to Bali and Eastern Java, of course I carried my Sidekick with me and the big thing was to fly it inside the Ijen caldera.
The Kawah Ijen is a 2800 meter high active volcano in the Banyuwangi region of Indonesia, it’s remarkable in that it has the largest lake of sulfuric acid in the world. It’s an active volcano and from the vents sulfur is mined, it comes out as a deep red liquid and solidifies to the familiar bright yellow. The miners pry slabs of sulfur, put them in baskets and carry the load on their shoulders (65 to 100 kilograms) almost 200 meters up the crater walls and 4 kilometers or so down the slope of the volcano. I tried one of the loads and let me tell you, it’s just plain unbelievable what those guys do on a daily basis.
Anyway, so we got up at 3 in the morning, the guide and driver picked us up on a 4WD and we went up the uninterrupted series of potholes, coarse gravel and mud pits that is charitably referred as a road that goes up the volcano. The “base camp” is located 600 (or 800, can’t recall) meters bellow the crater rim, so the last three kilometers need to be on foot.
Disappointingly enough the day was very cloudy, we hoped that the top of the volcano would be above the cloud line but when we reached the rim it was densely fogged, at times visibility was less than 100 meters. It was a bit better down the caldera though.
We took the narrow and slippery path down the caldera passing miners coming up with their baskets, it’s simply mind blowing how hard that climb is and they do it twice a day.
The guide said it was too dangerous to go all the way to the bottom of the crater that day, so we stopped halfway down on a sort of terrace by the side of the path. It was a good spot for launching the plane since the tourists stopping there to take photos had worn out the gray layer of rock eating sulfuric sludge that covers every nook and cranny in that hellish place revealing the ochre colour of the rock underneath, therefore making a nice, conspicuous marking in the landscape to locate home through the plane’s camera.
So in that spot I set the tripod with the receiver, the goggles and assembled the plane for the flight; as of now the plane has an FPV camera and an HD keychain camera to actually record the flight, so that’s what you see in the video bellow.
I took off in the direction of the mining operation and flew right into the volcano plume which contains sulfuric acid and volcanic ash so it’s not an entirely healthy place for an airplane or its pilot. I wore two surgical masks with a wet towel in between to keep the nasty stuff out of my lungs, it worked surprisingly well (at least I hope so!)
So, whited out inside a cloud of acid somehow I found a way out and started to get my bearings. I was getting a little confident with the whole crazy thing when it started raining so there’s were I called it quits (the plane has stick and tissue wings, no good wet) and landed after a meager minute thirty of flightime.
I waited half an hour for the rain to stop and then attempted a second flight. It wasn’t so good, I could hardly see anything the video signal was very poor and later I found out that the lenses were covered with a thin layer of something, I suppose a yummy mix of water, sulfur and ash so that made the image foggy. On top of that I found out that flying in a foggy crater is not so easy, at times is entirely impossible to know, looking at the landscape, whether the plane is straight and level, banking or plummeting down; all the landscape features are broken and skewed, the gas and clouds go sideways and up and down the walls and the only positive orientation guide is the lake.
After all the verbiage here’s the short video of the first flight. I’ll see about uploading the other later plus some photos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDBxAZFmAS0
So all in all it was a bit disappointing in terms of the bad weather but it leaves me the intention of going back some day. Maybe after Mount Bromo stops erupting I’ll be back to the region and try again.
Later I will also post here a few other videos I shot in other locations around Bali and Eastern Java.