Drone in Sinkhole

Hello all. I’ve had my drone for a couple of years and have always wondered in its safe to fly it into a Sinkhole. I live in SE New Mexico and have a fairly large sinkhole about 20 minutes from the house.

It’s large. several hundred feet across and have been told it’s well over 100 feet deep. Id love to explore it from the air if it’s safe for the drone.

thanks in advance for any advice you can give me.
Let us know if they find any corvettes down there! And this guy was flying in a dome! So it can and should be done.
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At least you wont be getting wet :p

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I would DEF fly one of my cheaper drones down into that drain hole and capture video. How cool would that be?
 
The only issue you should have is the loss of signal when the drone leaves your immediate line of site. The signals will bounce though, so aim your antennas at the opposite side of the sinkhole. They will bounce off the rock and give you a bit more range. Your control signal should be lost long before your GPS signal. I would probably do the entire flight in ATTI to avoid any GPS switching issues.

Take it slow and immediately ascend when video or control starts to break up. Don’t chance LOS before flying out. Nothing wrong with flying at the edge of control, just make sure stay inside the positive control envelop. There are few things I want to capture that are worth risking the loss one of my drones.

That location would be great to capture images for a 360 panoramic image.
 
ok. So I finally got the video. Ive never posted one, so please tell me what to do next. Its a 5 min video around 950MB...

Thanks,
 
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Y'all don't laugh. Here is the link. Now that I got all my fears out of the way I'll go back and get a really good video.

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Y'all don't laugh. Here is the link. Now that I got all my fears out of the way I'll go back and get a really good video.

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With that attitude, you'll get into trouble the next time. Lol Remember, there is no getting it back if it goes down.
Here in WV. I have been in a cave that was 350 ft. high. We have to repell at the 250 level.
 
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I went about 17 meters down and figured I was about 3 meters from touching down. Stayed really in the middle of the hole. Didn’t get the best footage but played it safe. lol.

Not sure why my software switched to metric. lol. gotta switch it back while I’m thinking about it.
 
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I don’t know anyone else with a drone. We have had some serious wind the last several days so I haven’t been able to venture out. I will be super careful while trying to get some good video even if I can’t got too far below the surface
What about setting your Return To Home altitude at like 400 ft? The rationale here is that, upon loss of signal, when the drone initiates RTH, it always climbs to the altitude set in App then flies home. In this scenario, upon loss of signal, your drone would raise out of the hole to the pre-set RTH altitude. As soon as it does this, and you have it in sight, you can cancel RTH and regain control and bring it back to you. Just a thought.....
 

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