Operator error causes loss of an expensive drone

[Meta4]

Old news ... it happened a year ago but the story is interesting and gives you an appreciation for DJI technology which would have prevented this incident:
$250,000 Little Ripper shark spotting drone lost at sea due to Operator error

 

[macoman]

Wow they incorrectly recorded the home point far away in the north and the drone got lost. This is why is very important to set properly your home point when the aircraft is ready to take off.

 

[tevek]

Hard to believe that a piece of kit costing that much and with such an important function didn't have multiple layers of fail safe redundancies. Understand the operator error aspect, but you have to wonder the level of training these so called pilots receive and the quality of the software package.
Wonder if the new iterations of SW are similar to either the DJI app or even Litchi for that matter.

 

[Meta4]

This is why is very important to set properly your home point when the aircraft is ready to take off.

Actually with our Phantoms it isn't very important.
You have to be very fast and impatient to launch before the Phantom automatically records a home point as soon as it gets a good GPS fix.
But if you did launch before that, the Phantom would get a good fix very soon after and record a homepoint that would be pretty close to where you launched anyway.

 

[macoman]

Hard to believe that a piece of kit costing that much and with such an important function didn't have multiple layers of fail safe redundancies. Understand the operator error aspect, but you have to wonder the level of training these so called pilots receive and the quality of the software package.
Wonder if the new iterations of SW are similar to either the DJI app or even Litchi for that matter.

I agreed, it will be much more cheaper if they had bought instead a DJI inspire 2. I am wondering if they paid that much money just because the battery can last for a long time. It could be that and the extended range too.

 

[tevek]

I agreed, it will be much more cheaper if they had bought instead a DJI inspire 2. I am wondering if they paid that much money just because the battery can last for a long time. It could be that and the extended range too.

Not really sure regarding the circumstances surrounding forking out that sort of money for a few extra minutes of flying or distance advantages, when you look at the current DJI products that can run the same trip with extra batteries.

 

[With The Birds]

I agreed, it will be much more cheaper if they had bought instead a DJI inspire 2. I am wondering if they paid that much money just because the battery can last for a long time. It could be that and the extended range too.

Can the inspire 2 carry a 15kg payload and remain aloft for 3 hours? Will it perform an autorotation landing following a propuslison system failure? Does it have laser terrain tracking? Small production run highly specialised equipment costs serious money.

 

[macoman]

Can the inspire 2 carry a 15kg payload and remain aloft for 3 hours? Will it perform an autorotation landing following a propuslison system failure? Does it have laser terrain tracking? Small production run highly specialised equipment costs serious money.

In that case then I agreed with you. That's really a specialized design drone.

 

[lickitysplit11111]

Wow they incorrectly recorded the home point far away in the north and the drone got lost. This is why is very important to set properly your home point when the aircraft is ready to take off.

The P4P does that automatically, No ? And if acheap $1500 DJI drone has this installed why don't one that cost 1/4 million bucks don't is an epic fail..