Sorry to keep you all hangin. Here's the story. I am an avid surfer, stand up paddler, and racer. Every day I get my time in the ocean has been a big part of my life. As someone that has a love for the water and a firm belief in God, I was asked to be a Mentor with an organization that started in Arizona to help struggling teens cope with life by making positive choices. We camped on the beach for 5 days to challenging these young girls through surfing, team building, meditation, and devotionals.
So anyways, day 2 came and I wanted to capture some of those moments while they were out there in the ocean. I've flown my P1, P2+, and now P3 regularly over water. In all my time owning these, I've never even tipped them over while landing. I'm pretty cautious when it comes to flying.
It was a sunny day, I had my P3 set up with my iPad
air 2 and I was setting it up on the beach but under a staircase so I could see my ipad without glare. I must have hit some button to activate the auto launch. Auto launch came up and I must have misread it. How does that happen? It's my personality. I'm not patient, I don't like instructions, I like to be in control of situations, and I'm over confident. Those are my downsides that sometimes get the best of me. I read it as a pop up telling me the phantom was ready for take off and then I could take off using my controls. I have it on a cardboard box and as I said I was under the stairs for shade. Stairs were about 12-15' above me.
When I read the popup I thought, yep all systems a go (haha...not really), then I slid the slider across and it fired up the motors and immediately when for take off. My impulse reaction, even though it was stupid and 99% of the people would not do this, it was my reaction to save the unit from crashing into the stairs. I immediately pushed my hand over the phantom to keep it grounded and turned the battery off. Success! Phantom, blades, camera was perfect. Still never even tipped this thing over...hahahaha. But now the phantom the controller, cardboard box had been painted with some blood. Why didn't I do this? Why didn't I do that? I know! I say that everyday with a lot of things but usually still no regrets. My phantom is alive and well while my cuts will heal. Yes I've learned my lesson and won't make that mistake anymore.
In reality the cuts aren't that bad. My forearm looks like road rash from a skateboard accident and my 3 of my fingers got some pretty good cuts. 2 of them with some superglue will be just fine. 1 of them scalped it pretty good and thats the sensitive one. My middle fingernail split into 3 pieces and my pinky nail lifted up a little and broke but not too bad. By now my middle fingernail is completely black. The top of my hand (not shown in the pictures) took a big blow so it has a big lump and decent cut, again I love superglue!
All in all, it was a big mistake I made that hopefully others can learn from my dumb mistake if they haven't already. Good news though, you can stick your hand directly over the props while under power and ascending and come out probably okay. Still don't recommend it at all though.