Crashed and destroyed my drone and the valuable lessons I learned.

[RodPad]

Rod

 

[Weston Ney]

Here in the US if you're within 400 feet of a tall object you can fly 400 feet over it, so if it's a 400 foot windmill or building or something and you take off at the same level as the base of the windmill you could fly 800 feet. It's a great way to get a boost in hight for a cool view! I often to save time drive to the base of a hill or mountain, fly to the top, write down the altitude at the top, and add 400 feet to that. I hate walking so I use my drone to hike for me!

Oh, you're allowed to fly at 500ft?? we're limited to 400 here in the UK.

 

[Weston Ney]

What a coincidence, this just came back up!

Wind Turbines Cinematic Aerial Video - Comments are Welcome

Shot with Inspire 1 X3 camera which P4 can do also. Hope you enjoy with sound :) Comments are Welcome

phantompilots.com

Wind Turbines Cinematic Aerial Video - Comments are Welcome

 

[Winnie2019]

Yes Rod. Your work is appreciated. And of course, now you're my newest buddy. To be honest, I viewed it with my wife. She was the one that bought me the DJI a few years ago. She was upset in hearing the news, but when she saw the footage, she was a little more forgiving. She even thought it was cool. The blade swinging down and through felt almost like 3D comin' atcha live. Also appreciate OSO for the stills. You're right, if the DJI was a little quicker to get behind, it might have missed the blade. And it would have been a ( Mod Removed Langage) of a video.

If anyone recalls the movie Mission Impossible 3. One of those wind turbine chopped a Cobra heli in half.

 

[cheddarman]

Here in the US if you're within 400 feet of a tall object you can fly 400 feet over it, so if it's a 400 foot windmill or building or something and you take off at the same level as the base of the windmill you could fly 800 feet. It's a great way to get a boost in hight for a cool view! I often to save time drive to the base of a hill or mountain, fly to the top, write down the altitude at the top, and add 400 feet to that. I hate walking so I use my drone to hike for me!

Wow! I'm not sure about that here. I know that if we're on a hill we can still go 400ft above the hill but not sure about high objects. I will investigate.........

 

[cheddarman]

@cheddarman,
Do you want some cheese with that wine.
Up loading a .mov


Rod

Ummm, yes please but I'd rather watch the video
Looking forward to it on YouTube later..................

GOT IT! Found ELMEDIA video player which happily played your "repaired" file!.
The suspense at the end is very real. You know what's coming but not exactly sure when! Well done Rod, great job (and thanks for bearing with an old git)!

At the end of an interesting post and having watched the video one still has to ask why, but then re reading the OP it's quite understandable, you were basically flying blind!
Someone just watching the video and assuming you were flying "normally" with good video feed the question they will ask is why would someone fly straight into a wind turbine blade? From minute.5:15 (80%) into the video and a full minute+ from time of impact it was obvious that the drone was well inside the blade diameter and that it was heading straight towards it, plenty of time to pull back, climb higher or move outside the danger zone.
Really sorry for your loss Winnie2019 but thanks to you and the expertise of RodPad sorting out the corrupted file you've got the video you wanted and we've enjoyed your movie as well (and hopefully learnt a bit more about wind turbines)!

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

Yikes. I knew the final outcome, but I could still feel myself getting more and more tense as the AC approached the plane of the blades. I was even rocking back and forth in my chair as each blade passed by inches from the camera. It looked like you came so very close to passing through the plane unscathed. It was sort of cool to be honest. Of course, sorry that this happened to you but I did enjoy the video. @Winnie2019 - Thanks for sharing it with us.

@RodPad - thanks much for running it through the software and making it available to view.

View attachment 115561

I broke my eyelid looking at that screenshot....

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

Rod is the hero. Rod knows trees.... Wind turbines are like trees... with bigger teeth,

 

[Winnie2019]

Yes. I've watched it several times now. The best explanation I have is that I was relying on my eyes and what I saw in the sky. That drone HAD to be behind the turbine. From what I saw, it wasn't close. The turbine is this big object and the drone was a mere dot behind it (or so I thought). It was hard to look at the screen because of the glare coming off of it. But I knew it 'looked' close. But from my eyes, I thought I was well outside of the danger zone, which is why I decided to move behind it.

If I had to do it all over again, A. I would have drove up and stood underneath the structure and flew from there. B. Program a WayPoint using my Litchi app and let it do an orbit shot on its own. The waypoints would obviously be outside of the turbine. I would have gotten the shots I wanted and be safe while doing it.

 

[Andy9]

Yes, a bare eye estimation can be very misleading. Once the drone is let say 200 or 300 m away it is almost impossible to say weather it will go behind or in front of the obstacle. That's why we have monitors for. But still need to practice on distance estimation according to what you see on the display.
At wind turbine all this may be not enough as the blade comes from 'nowhere' and passes by the drone with high speed so how to decide are you in the safe position. From the outside observer view seems that the blades may rotate slow but at the tip of the blade the speed can reach near 300 km/h which is unbelievable.

 

[cheddarman]

Here in the US if you're within 400 feet of a tall object you can fly 400 feet over it, so if it's a 400 foot windmill or building or something and you take off at the same level as the base of the windmill you could fly 800 feet. It's a great way to get a boost in hight for a cool view! I often to save time drive to the base of a hill or mountain, fly to the top, write down the altitude at the top, and add 400 feet to that. I hate walking so I use my drone to hike for me!

UK fliers beware! After reading this I wanted the situation here clarified so checked with the CAA and they replied:
Thank you for your email.
The limit is 400 ft above the surface of the earth, not above any manmade structures or obstacles.

 

[RodPad]

@Winnie2019, Since you have used Litchi.
and
@GrammatonxXXxCleric, knows I'm good with trees.

This was the end of a 15 min Litchi Flight, that I had ran before.

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I create all missions on the hub, I downloaded it to the iPad, somewhere I guess I added a waypoint, trying to change maybe a camera setting, etc.
I set the last few waypoints at 10, 5, 3 mph. I had stepped out of the security camera view to hand catch it. At 10 meters elevation is my last waypoint and it set to land.
Above my reach it took of at cruising speed 30 mph to the East, well it missed the truck but the tree took it down.

Of coarse feeling discussed, I closed the app because it telling me I was "DISCONTENTED"
That erased my proof of what I may have actually did.

At least now, when I download a mission to the iPad, it says it is locked.
To make changes, it has to be unlocked.

Hasn't happen again, and I have ran the same mission.


Rod

 

[joelet]

Yes if you are within 400 feet of a structure and lets say the structure is 500 feet high you are allowed to fly 400 feet AGL above that structure with a 400 foot radius.

 

[skiptv]

The vortex in front of the windmill will 'suck' in a drone from 50 feet out. A vortex is like a sideways tornado. The wing tips of a typical windmill move at 70mph, although it does not look like it from the ground. I have inspected many wind turbines.

 

[Droning in AR]

Is the drone footage of the crash on Youtube yet?

 

[RodPad]

Not sure about Youtube.

But does look like many missed this post?
Crashed and destroyed my drone and the valuable lessons I learned.
I told @cheddarman I was uploading a .mov on Wednesday.

It is still on my one drive as a .mov
Winnie


Rod

 

[droningandmore]

Oh, you're allowed to fly at 500ft?? we're limited to 400 here in the UK.

There is some rule about flying around a structure where it does not count the height from the soil... imagine if an aircraft needs to fly above 1200 feet. If there are high risers below it, or a huge antenna, the reference also changes.

 

[FL_Mike]

Thanks. Right now, I can't even fathom buying a new drone. My wife bought it for me in 2017 for my Bday. I'm sure at the time, it was nearly $800 for the P3A. But for my next one, I would want something with a 4K camera. Perhaps the Mavic 2. I want something with more sensors to avoid crashes as much as possible. I've crashed the P3 a few times, but it was always at tree level onto grass. One time, I did a programmed flight and did not account for a very high tree and it fell. But DJI was able to put it back together for $80. This was more of a traumatic experience as it took major damage and completely unsalvageable.

Locally I see the P3A and P3P on craigslist for $400 or under consistently. If you have extra batteries etc it might be nice just to stick with a used one that matches your current kit. Upgrade later.

 

[RedDog7]

My 4 year old is enamored with Wind Turbine (I think you know where I'm going with this). She saw a wind farm during our road trip and just loves to see them. So I promised her I'd fly my drone over one. We found one and parked the car about a 300 yards away (Mistake 1). I should have been underneath it. I did my usual checks and made sure it was GTG. Flight temp was about 30 degrees. I got up and start flying. As I got nearer, I wanted to do a full orbit flight. There was a lot of glare on my phone as it was a sunny day (Mistake 2-should have used my sun shield). I'm looking at the phone, and it looks like the drone was right next to the wind turbine. But when I looked at the sky, the drone was a small blip far in the distance. It looks like it was at least 100 feet or more away from the structure. So I continue to orbit until I was behind it, when I heard a thud. Like a hollow object getting hit with a golf ball. I looked at the screen and the battery showed zero and blinking red. I looked up and the drone was gone. My heart sunk. I was at least 300 feet up above a cut corn field. The ground was pretty hard as it's been in the 20s the whole week.

So my daughter and I walked up to the Wind turbine. We found it. Broken into multiple pieces. The camera is no where to be found. The base (with SD card) was about 4 feet away. 3 props were missing. 2 Prop guards were missing. The battery was laying about 2 feet away. One of the 'arms was sheered off. I was devastated as I knew this couldn't be fixed.

The worst part is, I have a 1gig MOV file that seems to be corrupted. I can't even play it. I tried doing multiple fix and conversions, but the file itself seems corrupted. The card is undamaged. i have other footage that I can play on the card. But that footage from the wind turbine cannot play. I would be grateful if anyone can show me a way to recover the files. Again, on the card, it shows a .MOV file that's over 1 gig. But Itried playing through VLC and others and nothing starts.

So the most valuable lesson is this. For Wind turbines, you have to realize how big the structure is. So the drone in comparison was a dot. I saw the dot next to it and thought it was much further behind when it was literally next to it. I moved it into the blade and it literally decapitated my Phantom 3A. Lesson 3- If you're going to fly it over a wind turbine, be underneath it, so you can see how far the drone is away from the blades.

It was stupid. I've always wanted a drone shot of a wind turbine. but I've always been weary because of what can happen if it drifts into it. Yesterday was that day. Now I have to figure out what to do. I love video shots from the air. I've done multiple YT videos of drone shots from the air. I just got back from Colorado last month where I few multiple flights over mountains and lakes. Time to save some money.

I logged onto a site which was able to fix your video,
https://fix.video

They gave me a preview of it, but they wanted me to pay to download it. The repair job looked spot on and definitely showed your Windmill. The funny thing is they advertise as a free service and then demand money to download the fixed file. At least we now know it's fixable. I hope you find a replacement soon.

 

[RodPad]

I logged onto a site which was able to fix your video,
https://fix.video

They gave me a preview of it, but they wanted me to pay to download it. The repair job looked spot on and definitely showed your Windmill. The funny thing is they advertise as a free service and then demand money to download the fixed file. At least we now know it's fixable. I hope you find a replacement soon.

"At least we now know it's fixable."
That is good news!

Rod