I was practicing some real estate video shots of my house today and almost taught myself an expensive lesson. I was flying a "reversing upward reveal" --as I call it-- and took my eyes off the bird for a moment to see the shot on my ipad. During this moment I grossly misjudged my trajectory, and looked up to see my P3P just before the propellers made contact with some leaves from a tree about 30ft up across the street from my house.
Fortunately I kept my cool --though my heart was in my throat-- and made a small correction to move away from the tree, luckily not hitting any large branches. My bird stayed afloat, seeimngly unharmed, but the sound of practically turning my Phantom into a flying weed-whacker scared the pants off me. I immediately landed and checked for damage. Luckily, there was none. Had to clean off the green, chlorophyll marks of shame from the leaves though.
Lessons learned:
Fortunately I kept my cool --though my heart was in my throat-- and made a small correction to move away from the tree, luckily not hitting any large branches. My bird stayed afloat, seeimngly unharmed, but the sound of practically turning my Phantom into a flying weed-whacker scared the pants off me. I immediately landed and checked for damage. Luckily, there was none. Had to clean off the green, chlorophyll marks of shame from the leaves though.
Lessons learned:
- Use a visual observer if you can, especially in an area full of obstacles
- VLOS rules exist for a reason
- Something we always said in the Marines, "complacency kills."