Leave No Drone Behind!

[rbhamilton]

So my little guy went wandering today. I was out about 2200 feet and up maybe 350 feet zooming around the desert. Perhaps I got too close to Phoenix Sky Harbor? But suddenly my little guy severed all connection to home base. He never came back at all. I suspect an auto-land kicked in which makes me lean more towards a flaky battery but I really have no idea.

I knew the general direction and my GPS narrowed the search. Finally after half an hour I found it. Mainly because it's lights were still blinking. Very skillfully perched on a small flat rock. Right in Papago Park.

Only minor problem... it was hundreds of feet in the air on the tip top of the arch at "Hole in the Rock". Although the drone was blinking I couldn't establish any connection or control or even get the rotors to fire up.

If you have ever been there you know there are stairs on the back side of the mountain up to the hole but from there to the top of the hole... well it's way past my abilities. It looks easy in this picture but the scale of the mountain is deceiving. I did try. I went towards the left and made some progress. Sadly my feet slipped and I ended up stuck up there crying like a little girl for a while until I slid down to safety.

Lucky for me a friendly amateur rock climbing park ranger happened by. He walked up there, picked up the drone and bounced back down like a mountain goat. Amazingly cool to watch.

The video shows some glitched out MP4's, a bit of bouncing around and an hour of sitting on a rock facing a cliff so I don't even have any great video to show for my efforts. But the drone (and I) are safe and sound and back on the deck sipping a coffee. Well.. me. The drone is sipping electricity.

 

[MapMaker53]

Sounds like a bad battery that caused it to decide to suddenly land like that. How does the battery check out now that you have it home? Any day you can return home with the bird is a good day. You're very lucky it didn't tumble down that rock, considering how narrow the landing gear is.

 

[rbhamilton]

Sounds like a bad battery that caused it to decide to suddenly land like that. How does the battery check out now that you have it home? Any day you can return home with the bird is a good day. You're very lucky it didn't tumble down that rock, considering how narrow the landing gear is.

I've been reluctant to plug anything into the computer until all the bugs are worked out with the new firmware. Guess I've waited long enough. I have to update, plug in and check it out.

Just like when I used to come home from flying the Cesna... any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. That and "blue side up" were words to live by.

 

[mede8er]

Been to Papago quite a few times...that's about as bad a spot as you could find to land.... :mrgreen:

Glad you got her back...BTW, my Marco Polo will be here Wednesday...I'll never fly without 'protection' again.... :mrgreen:

 

[rbhamilton]

Yep. That little GPS saved me. Well... that and a blinking drone. My little tracker is handy. Not entirely sure what it's saying in Chinese but the map is a standard link to Google Maps so easy enough to use.

Still, not sure I'd ever have noticed my little guy up there if I wasn't in exactly the right place and if the lights weren't blinking.

 

[480sparky]

.....Not entirely sure what it's saying in Chinese..........

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo[/youtube]

 

[msinger]

That little GPS saved me

Which GPS tracker are you using?

 

[rbhamilton]

That little GPS saved me

Which GPS tracker are you using?

I've got the RF-16 from some sketchy company on Ebay. But hey... it's cheap, only 27g and it works well enough once you muddle through the HORRIBLE manual. It's really just a teeny tiny cell phone with the ability to auto-respond to text messages. I put a $10 T-Mobile SIM in mine. A flytrex3g would be better for sure.

 

[flyNfrank]

I actually find this situation priceless because I feel like it may give others some insight as to what to expect when they experience the same loose all connections.

rbhamilton, when it lost connection, did it hover at that point and land?
Or did it travel some distance before landing? If so how far away?
And what percentage of battery was left at the time in lost connection?

Btw, sorry for asking these 4 questions but this is the first time I know of this happening and the quad was found. All other times they never found it and blamed it on a flyaway.

 

[mede8er]

As someone who has also had a flyaway which I recovered I'll add my results....

Bird took off at launch and proceeded to fly away very quickly at 60' alt for approx 500 yds...
I shut down the remote.....
Bird then returned very slowly towards my home point but not exactly mirroring it's outbound line....
Bird came to a hover approx 100 yds from homepoint....and slowly descended into a neighbors tree....
Bird had 70% battery when it came to rest in the top of the tree...**** thing blinked all night.... :mrgreen:

 

[flyNfrank]

As someone who has also had a flyaway which I recovered I'll add my results....

Bird took off at launch and proceeded to fly away very quickly at 60' alt for approx 500 yds...
I shut down the remote.....
Bird then returned very slowly towards my home point but not exactly mirroring it's outbound line....
Bird came to a hover approx 100 yds from homepoint....and slowly descended into a neighbors tree....
Bird had 70% battery when it came to rest in the top of the tree...**** thing blinked all night.... :mrgreen:

Glad to see you got it back. I take it this was with the older controller? And do you remember the firmware version the quad had at that time? What reason did you give for this happening to start with?

 

[malibusteve70]

So it sounds like we should turn off the auto land/RTH feature when the battery gets low?

 

[Idbird]

Yep. That little GPS saved me. Well... that and a blinking drone. My little tracker is handy. Not entirely sure what it's saying in Chinese but the map is a standard link to Google Maps so easy enough to use.

Still, not sure I'd ever have noticed my little guy up there if I wasn't in exactly the right place and if the lights weren't blinking.

:shock:
Glad you found your bird!
Do you think you could have called the tracker and perhaps tracked the bird down audioabilically
even if you couldn't see the lights? Seems like that would be an advantage if your Phantom battery ejected?

 

[rbhamilton]

Do you think you could have called the tracker and perhaps tracked the bird down audioabilically

New word of the day! Well done. By the way, if you google "audioabilically" you get exactly one listing - your post. So that's called a "Googlewhack". At least until Google gets back to reading this post and spots my reply. But at the moment you can claim you created a Googlewhack and wow the babes. Very well done!

It has a fairly loud ringer on it. If you were within ear shot you could hear it ringing. It can also be programmed to auto-answer so you can listen in. I think more for the Chinese abduction situations it was intended for.

 

[flyNfrank]

I actually find this situation priceless because I feel like it may give others some insight as to what to expect when they experience the same loose all connections.

rbhamilton, when it lost connection, did it hover at that point and land?
Or did it travel some distance before landing? If so how far away?
And what percentage of battery was left at the time in lost connection?

Btw, sorry for asking these 4 questions but this is the first time I know of this happening and the quad was found. All other times they never found it and blamed it on a flyaway.

there is more then 1 question.