Phantom operators helping the community

Dpanetta · Jun 11, 2017

With all the bad hype surrounding drone pilots, I thought I would start this post.

I have more hours logged with my P4 than I care to add without any crashes significant enough to cause anything more than a chipped propeller, and have had my share of close calls. Flyaways, hitting trees, uncontrolled spins, and have recovered from all of them. So I consider myself a pretty good pilot. A few months ago there was a baptism in my community church. One of the parents brought in a mylar balloon, and as fate would have it, it got away from them inside the church. It stayed up there several weeks, so last Sunday I asked the pastor if the balloon would be gotten down. The pastor told me that they normally need to pay a contractor to bring in a lift a few times a year to clean the rafters, and it would be taken care of then.... in August! I told the pastor that I could safely recover the balloon with my P4. That Wednesday after church services I met the pastor and recovered the balloon with my drone. I made it look easy. It's amazing what a few zip ties a coat hanger and some Ingenuity can accomplish. Since then, I have been contacted by other community groups to do similar aerial acrobatics.

How about you? If you have ever thought of donating to the community by using your drone, put down your experiences here. This could make for some good press for us UAV pilots.

ryantrax · Jun 11, 2017

Awesome! Always love donating my time to my local church too!

wa5tef · Jun 11, 2017

What exactly did you rig up to recover the balloon? Very good idea!
Jim
WA5TEF

lunicy · Jun 11, 2017

no knocking your good deed, but a few pieces of PVC conduit can do the same. In fact, I put 4 lengths together to get my neighbors kid's toy drone out of a tree.

Duchunter · Jun 11, 2017

Don't mylar balloons usually deflate and come down in a day or two?

wa5tef · Jun 11, 2017

Yeah, but using a drone is much more fun!!

Jim
WA5TEF

Dpanetta · Jun 11, 2017

Mylar balloons can stay in the rafters for months before they deflate enough to come down by themselves. The PVC would have been a good idea, except the rafters are about 4 stories high (it is a BIG church). Here's a picture of the rig I made up. The black stuff on the P4 is velcro. I used it to prevent the coat hanger from scratching the drone. At the top is some 2-sided tape that I used to grab the balloon string. I used zip ties to secure the hanger to the drone. The air current from the propellers down draft kept the balloon string straight at the top of the drone. Once the tape touched the string, I spun the drone a mess of times to be sure the tape had a good grab on the string. The rest was history.

randun41 · Jun 11, 2017

Dpanetta said:
View attachment 83774 Mylar balloons can stay in the rafters for months before they deflate enough to come down by themselves. The PVC would have been a good idea, except the rafters are about 4 stories high (it is a BIG church). Here's a picture of the rig I made up. The black stuff on the P4 is velcro. I used it to prevent the coat hanger from scratching the drone. At the top is some 2-sided tape that I used to grab the balloon string. I used zip ties to secure the hanger to the drone. The air current from the propellers down draft kept the balloon string straight at the top of the drone. Once the tape touched the string, I spun the drone a mess of times to be sure the tape had a good grab on the string. The rest was history.

When there is a will, there IS a way! Well done!!