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I finally crashed my drone into a tree on the 47th flight

Was testing some new manual camera angles in the park near my place in Austin and clipped a low branch. The gimbal locked up and it dropped about 30 feet onto a patch of dirt. Had to spend an hour with tweezers and a tiny screwdriver to free the camera arm. Has anyone else lost a drone to something dumb like a random branch or a fence?

4 comments

4 Comments

kelly38524d agoMost Upvoted

Read something the other day about a guy whose drone got taken out by a random power line that was barely visible in the late afternoon sun. He said it was like the line didn't exist until his props hit it and then it was just chaos and a loud crunch. Made me realize how crazy it is that we don't talk about that stuff more since it's way more common than birds or people messing with your drone. Your tree branch thing is super relatable honestly, I've heard of people losing drones to stuff like a stray soccer net or even a hanging garden hose. Really makes you think about all the invisible threats out there that we don't even consider until we're pulling dirt out of a gimbal for an hour.

wadew511mo ago

Power lines are my nightmare now after I sent my Phantom straight into a guy's cable modem wire hanging across his backyard, took me 20 minutes to untangle the mess while his dog barked at me the whole time. Funny how the dumbest stuff like a single thin wire or a tiny branch can take down $1000 in hardware.

paige3311mo ago

Read something the other day about a guy who lost his drone to a flock of seagulls, can you believe that? He said they just swarmed it like it was a fish and one of them actually grabbed the thing midair and flew off with it. That would be insane to watch but I bet his wallet hurt more than mine did. Your branch story reminds me of my buddy who forgot to set his return to home altitude and his drone tried to land on a light pole instead of the ground. At least yours just hit a tree and dropped, mine once got tangled in a power line and I had to call the utility company to get it down. That was a real expensive lesson in checking your surroundings before you fly.

michael6691mo ago

And to think we worry about birds more than power lines and light poles, which are way more common but way less fun to tell stories about. I wonder if drone companies keep a map of all the weirdest crash spots people report, like a secret shame database they use for testing. @paige331, your buddy's light pole landing is exactly the kind of thing that makes me triple check every setting before liftoff now, even if it feels like overkill.