Drone vs drone...!

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I spent all morning retrofitting IOS, reinstalling apps and recovering flight records. Then I took her up for some test flights, and for the second time in two weeks I encountered a swarm of bees - this time it was a massive swarm of huge drones. Looking at the video I flew into the swarm at around 200 feet, and they followed me down right to the ground, and only dispersed when I powered down.

Made a real mess of my quad, which made a bigger mess of the drones....

It is the middle of Spring here, so lots of bees about. Any entomologist want to venture why bees should be so attracted by the quads?

WP_20150927_002[1].jpg
 
That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing. Guess they are drawn to the sound of the rotors? It'll sound familiar to them. Hope it didn't take too Long to clean off the Phantom. Any permanent damage?
 
Nasty! Wash ‘em off (Windex/Alcohol) before they dry and become much harder to remove.

They sure didn’t like that “buzz” in the vicinity!
 
I did clean it up quickly! No obvious damage but I did find bits of bee in the vents and in the gimbal mounting, which I cleaned out as best I could with a small paint brush.

Wibble, don't know if you're serious or not, but no, VPS is always turned off.
 
Amazing. You might have to clean the vent slots on the shell, even maybe clean off the PCB inside as 'bee debris' might be stopping proper venting.

Maybe the sound of the P3 is the cause?
 
I did clean it up quickly! No obvious damage but I did find bits of bee in the vents and in the gimbal mounting, which I cleaned out as best I could with a small paint brush.

Wibble, don't know if you're serious or not, but no, VPS is always turned off.
I assumed he asked because it uses sonics and the manual cautions its use around dogs and such. But even still it shouldn't be on at 200' even if activated in the app.
 
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But even still it [VPS] shouldn't be on at 200' even if activated in the app.
I thought the VPS was always active (but not in control) when you have it turned on in the settings, no matter what height the barometer or GPS think its at.

So if you for example start from the ground and fly close above a roof, you suggest that the VPS ultrasonic is not active, and thus will not detect the roof?
 
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I thought the VPS was always active when you have it turned on in the settings, no matter what height the barometer or GPS think its at.

So if you for example start from the ground and fly close above a roof, you suggest that the VPS ultrasonic is not active, and thus will not detect the roof?
If you look at the app while flying there's an icon that shows when it's on. I assume it would turn on detecting a roof as well as the ground when it's within 3 meters or whatever the threshold is.

Edit: Actually it'd make more sense that the sonar is always active and when it detects the "ground" the bird will utilize this for stabilization and that's when the app lights up.
 
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I did clean it up quickly! No obvious damage but I did find bits of bee in the vents and in the gimbal mounting, which I cleaned out as best I could with a small paint brush.

Wibble, don't know if you're serious or not, but no, VPS is always turned off.

Yes very serious. You can buy mosquito repellers and also rodent and squirrel repellers etc that use ultrasonics. I had one for getting rid of mice - didnt work but my friends dog used to howl like mad when it was turned on.
who knows what it might do to bees???
 
Video Please!

Not much to see.
I only started recording once I realised what I was seeing. I thought I was experiencing video break-up/pixelation after all my restores.

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Yes very serious. You can buy mosquito repellers and also rodent and squirrel repellers etc that use ultrasonics. I had one for getting rid of mice - didnt work but my friends dog used to howl like mad when it was turned on.
who knows what it might do to bees???

Got it!
 
I spent all morning retrofitting IOS, reinstalling apps and recovering flight records. Then I took her up for some test flights, and for the second time in two weeks I encountered a swarm of bees - this time it was a massive swarm of huge drones. Looking at the video I flew into the swarm at around 200 feet, and they followed me down right to the ground, and only dispersed when I powered down.

Made a real mess of my quad, which made a bigger mess of the drones....

It is the middle of Spring here, so lots of bees about. Any entomologist want to venture why bees should be so attracted by the quads?

View attachment 32052
That's an amazing story:) Thanks for sharing
 
Not much to see.
I only started recording once I realised what I was seeing. I thought I was experiencing video break-up/pixelation after all my restores.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Thats AWESOME.
 

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