The idea for the Whitetail weighted drone take-off mat began during a filming job on Stac Pollaidh in the Scottish Highlands.
While working on the Channel 4 documentary “Paradise Hunters”, Whitetail’s founder Steven Gourlay took a conventional drone take-off mat up the mountain. The location offered spectacular views, but preparing the drone for flight exposed a frustrating problem.
When the mat wouldn’t stay down
Prop wash kept lifting the sides of the mat. Something intended to provide a suitable take-off surface was moving around beneath the aircraft.
It was a practical problem encountered during a real shoot—and it prompted the idea for a different design.
The reason for the weighted edge
The answer was to add weight around the edge, helping the mat resist lifting under prop wash without relying on stakes.
That matters when working on rock or hard ground, where pegging a mat into place isn’t an option. A weighted perimeter gives drone operators another way to prepare a launch area across different filming locations.
From a mountain shoot to Whitetail
That experience on Stac Pollaidh became the starting point for the Whitetail weighted drone take-off mat.
Its purpose came directly from location work: providing a practical take-off surface while addressing the lifting edges that had caused problems on the mountain.
The photograph looks back at the filming trip for “Paradise Hunters”—the setting where the idea began.