Cautionary Tale

Matty1551 · Apr 12, 2018

While flying a drone deploy mission today I had a bit of a mishap and I just thought I'd share because as amazing as we think we are as pilots, no one is perfect. On to the story.

I sent my drone up for a drone deploy mission and after it got to it's desired altitude I pulled my phone out to take a picture from the ground of a nearby sign.

I returned my attention back to the situation at hand and my drone was flying FAR away from me. At first I thought I was experiencing an uncontrollable fly away but it turns out that when planning this mission, I had set the wrong address and my drone was going to the correct place based on the parameters I had set.

At this point I had lost my visual feed and could no longer tell where the drone was or which direction it was currently heading. I hit the RTH button on my remote and prayed it returned before the battery ran out.

Thankfully I avoided a major loss and the failsafes on the drone functioned as they should have. However, had I not diverted my attention away from the drone in the first place, I would have been able to take over control of the drone before it got out of range.

FL_Mike · Apr 12, 2018

Matty1551 said:
While flying a drone deploy mission today I had a bit of a mishap and I just thought I'd share because as amazing as we think we are as pilots, no one is perfect. On to the story.

I sent my drone up for a drone deploy mission and after it got to it's desired altitude I pulled my phone out to take a picture from the ground of a nearby sign.

I returned my attention back to the situation at hand and my drone was flying FAR away from me. At first I thought I was experiencing an uncontrollable fly away but it turns out that when planning this mission, I had set the wrong address and my drone was going to the correct place based on the parameters I had set.

At this point I had lost my visual feed and could no longer tell where the drone was or which direction it was currently heading. I hit the RTH button on my remote and prayed it returned before the battery ran out.

Thankfully I avoided a major loss and the failsafes on the drone functioned as they should have. However, had I not diverted my attention away from the drone in the first place, I would have been able to take over control of the drone before it got out of range.

Thank you.

I'm a noob and just learning advanced flight modes.

My take away as I learn this hobby is that I want a copilot. My first fun flights have been at the beach and ive learned it doesn't matter how far I hike, I get swarmed by very talkative people by my second battery. (Its cool, ive handled it well).

It only takes a second.