What's up Steemians? Long time no see!
My summer break is over and my 11th school year has started. I hope everybody does well and is happy.
Now about the actual topic of this post; my drone crash. It had to happen...
Actually, it's quite hard to crash a DJI drone if you are not that incompetent because the DJI drones have a really good flight assistance and intelligent flight modes. But I overestimated my skill.
How did it happen?
It was a sunny sunday. My family and I made a trip to the biggest waterfall in Europe; the Rhine Falls (German: Rheinfall) in Switzerland. It is a really beautiful place. The average water flow is 600 m^3/s (21,000 cu ft/s) That's 600'000 liters water per second! Of course, I took my drone with me to get some footage for my drone series here on Steemit (Drone Flying with J)
The Rhine Falls:
by
@jbpI took off with my drone and everything went smooth. I filmed the waterfall but I already noticed something. The video signal of the drone wasn't that good. So the video preview of the camera wasn't properly updating on my phone screen. I believe that the video signal wasn't that good because the relative humidity was really high and then the signal gets blocked. I still new where my drone was and I took some more shots without a camera preview. Then my brother asked me something, I answered his question and now I didn't knew anymore where my drone was... I tell you, it's really hard to identify a drone in the sky because it's only a small white point.
As I mentioned before, my drone has some intelligent flight modes. One of them is the return-to-home function. I started it and my drone began flying back to its take-off point. The drone also had only 20% left of its power so I had to get it back as fast as possible. Then I saw a drone in the sky. But it wasn't my drone because this one was only hovering in the sky and mine should fly to its home point. I began panicking because my drone should already have arrived above its home point. Don't ask me why but at this point I turned off the return-to-home feature. At this moment the drone was hovering for a few minutes somewhere..
Suddenly, I had a little bit video signal. I straightened the camera towards the ground but I only saw some trees and the river. I tried to orient but the video signal was lagging and my drone had only 10% power left so it automatically started flying down over the water. Then I managed to fly the drone towards my direction. It still was over the water descending. Strangely, the video signal got better and I managed to just fly to one side of the river so my drone doesn't land in the water. Luckily, I flew to the shore where I was staying and I saw a parking lot. Now, I finally knew where my drone was and I started running towards this parking lot to land there. The drone is descending all the time but I can steer against that. While I was running, the drone flew in a complete false direction. It might was the return-to-home function, which didn't work at all in this situation.. Because of that my drone flew/crashed into the trees next to the parking lot. It really hurts if you see your drone crashing into trees. I only knew that my drone crashed into the trees somewhere next to the parking lot but not exactly where. The video signal wasn't really helpful because it only showed forest soil. There was no alternative but to walk into the forest and search the drone.
And Jesus, I was SO LUCKY! I passed hedgerow and what was lying five meters in front of me? MY DRONE! I couldn't believe it. I prepared myself to see a total loss of my drone. I picked it up and nothing was broken!! I still can't believe that nothing broke. I was really relieved.
To sum up,
I flew with a drone next to a place where the humidity was really high. The video signal wasn't really good and I lost the orientation while flying. I didn't knew where my drone is and started panicking. Then the drone began descending over the water because it only at 10% of it's power left. I just flew into one direction to the shore and saw a parking lot. My drone flew into the trees next to the parking lot. Then I went into the the forest and my drone was five meters in front of me. My drone isn't broken at all and is still fully functional. ALWAYS LUCKY!
What can I do better?
I shouldn't have flown that far away with a bad video connection. I might let do the return-to-home function it's job because I also was steering the drone while it was activated. I should always have eye contact with my drone.
Lastly, I present you the video of the crash! "Enjoy" it:
I hope you learned something from my mistakes.
Leave a comment, upvote and a follow if you liked my post.
See you soon :)
@jbp