Crash into the world's largest Buddha (Hong Kong)

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Hello all,

A crazy thing happened to me yesterday. All this took place without me ever knowing about the crash into the world's largest sitting Buddha, located in Hong Kong. Here are the details.

1) The area is in a restricted air space due to its proximity of the Hong Kong International Airport. The altitude limitation was set automatically by the phantom at 120m. As a result, I could not elevate the phantom above 120m even if I tried.

2) I did a fly around of the statue and the line of sight was lost. This also triggered a loss of control signal as well as the FPV feed to the iPhone. As a result, the Phantom entered a failsafe mode and initiated an automatic return to home (RTH).

Problem is that the Phantom was directly behind the Buddha statue when the RTH function triggered, so guess what happened ... a head-on crash (literally) into the back of the Buddha head.

The link to the video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEM4M45 ... e=youtu.be

What's amazing about this is that the Phantom completely self recovered after the crash and resumed flight as if nothing has happened. I therefore did not suspect anything had gone wrong because when the FPV resumed, everything was perfectly normal.

I continued flying the Phantom during the whole day in various areas around Hong Kong with no issues whatsoever and only learned about the crash when reviewing the footage when I went back home. I was completely shocked.

Needless to say, I learned a lot from this event and feel very bad about the whole thing as it could have lead to unfortunate outcome. Luckily it didn't.

This does however show how well built these things are and the incredible technology involved in order to completely stabilise the unit in mid-air after a hit. This is why we pay additional premium for the Phantom and also why we cope with the absence of after sales service from the company in certain areas.

Let me know your thoughts. I have not seen other videos like this before.
 
pgaucher said:
Great video. :)
I saw a similar video where someone had flown behind a tower, lost connection, triggered RTH and
flown full speed into the tower. However, that P2 crashed to the ground and the pilot, unaware of exactly where it was, drove around and magically found it. :)
 
did you have propguards fitted, took a good impact there & did well just to recover & carry on without any damage
 
No prop guards, just regular plastic propellers. I noticed a greenish/brown color on 2 props during the day and figured that was due to bugs or something that might have been chopped in half by the propellers. Now I know why. I will be changing all the propellers just in case.
 
awesome video. im sure that if you did that 5 times 4 times it would have went down. im glad it didn't even get hurt. maybe it was the Buddha...
 
This is exactly why the FAA should regulate flying around religious artifacts. :)
 
That's awesome :D
The video is sped up, right? Because it looks like the tourists are running away :D
 
badbrad97 said:
This is exactly why the FAA should regulate flying around religious artifacts. :)

Indeed! Especially everywhere in the world other than the US :lol:

Hong Kong resident: "What is word Advisory?"
FAA: "That means it's law everywhere."
 
RiverPirate said:
That is pretty sick... How many people can say they ran into Buddha's head... And pulled it off!!

I'm guessing not many. But trust me, that was absolutely not the intent. This took place without me even knowing about it.
 

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