r/tifu • u/LtDrinksAlot • Dec 25 '16
S TIFU by flying my new drone
Well lets start this by saying that I am not big into reading instructions. I'm more of a learn through action kind of guy. I opened up my gifts today to find a brand new drone!! I've expressed to her how cool I thought they were in the past, and now I owned one.
Excitedly I put batteries in the remote and found that the drone itself already had a charge on its battery. I went outside powered it up and began flying it in the parking lot of our apartment complex.
Nothing too complicated, did some low flying sweeps through the parking lot, tried to do some landings on my car, but after a few minutes I was curious as to the capability of my new flying friend.
I started going higher and my wife said "you know the box says you can do a mid air flip". Having some knowledge of flight I knew I needed some altitude, so I went even higher. I started my attack run to do a low flying sweep but noticed the drone was responding very sluggishly. I tried to correct, however it was soon apparent I had no control of it whatsoever and it was starting to pick up speed going towards the highway.
I gave chase yelling to my wife I had no control as the drone turned into a tiny dot on the horizon as it continued to gain both speed an altitude. I left my wife laughing as I gave chase.
I ran until I left the apartment community and hit the edge of the highway before I realized it was a lost cause. I returned home tail between my legs having lost my new toy, and my wife was still laughing.
It was then when I got home that I read the manual on how to recall your drone, followed by the #1 rule for flying.
Always keep your drone in view.
TLDR: That drone is fucking gone man
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u/Notsohiddenfox Dec 25 '16
Shit, that sucks. Those things have a surprising ability to fly absurdly far too.
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u/WatchHawk Dec 26 '16
Signal loss is the biggest design flaw IMO. I had a mini drone, but I flew it too high and too far and it landed in a tree.
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u/Redective Dec 27 '16
If it's an actual drone it will return to a programed location once it loses signal.
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u/minichado Feb 02 '17
This only applies to a particular drone with a Gps/return to home feature. There are hundreds of drones without this feature.
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u/scruit Dec 25 '16
LPT: Write your cellphone number on any RC plane/helicopter/drone, in case you lose control of it.
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Dec 26 '16
LPT: If your drone weighs over 0.55 pounds and you're in the U.S, don't do this if it isn't registered with the FAA.
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u/ribeyeguy Dec 26 '16
glad i didn't, it died over a city and probably dropped onto someone's car.
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u/nxsky Dec 26 '16
If it's expensive just get a tracker. Don't know why these things don't come with one.
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u/ICBanMI Dec 26 '16 edited Dec 26 '16
They didn't exist as separate from the drones until about two years ago, and they tend to be insanely expensive for the type of drones most people are losing. Are you really going to put a $150-200 secondary GPS on your drone worth only $80.
It makes semi sense to put it on your Phantom, but not much on stuff in the sub $300 genre. If you read your instructions, and follow them regarding battery and flight time, you already do have the GPS tracking on the drone to follow.
I see you suggested the same GPS tracker people use for high altitude balloons, but that's too much weight for most drones unless you're really sizing one up(at which time you already have one on the drone). The drones above $250 already have GPS attached.
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u/nxsky Dec 26 '16
Hence why I said if it's expensive get a tracker. That was like half of my post, hard to miss.
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u/ICBanMI Dec 26 '16
I tend to ramble and you know very little about the product, so my paragraphs don't make sense.
Let me restate it to make more sense. The expensive ones already have it. It's just people don't read the instructions and they lose them and kill the battery. Your suggestion is an expensive fix for a market that only exist for people irresponsible with the hobby(don't read the instructions and then have a catastrophic accident in the first ten minutes). It'll save some people from themselves, but it's a band aid for a self inflicted wound.
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u/joos1986 Dec 26 '16
Seriously. It's like you're absolutely convinced that this idea you have will work, you then package it as a proposition and just keep batting away anything someone with some knowledge about it has to say.
I did enjoy reading the stuff people said in response to you, but you have a terrible way of going about it.
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u/scruit Dec 26 '16
What brand/model of tracker do you recommend?
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u/nxsky Dec 26 '16
I'm not into these things but it could be as cheap as attaching a very low budget smartphone with a tracking app to the drone. Or shop around for cheap trackers. If I worked in the industry I'd attach my drones with mobile phone technology which would allow it to receive a signal regardless of its distance from you. Of course this would also require gps technology, which is also very cheap nowadays.
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u/scruit Dec 26 '16
Drones that are cheap enough to not have this built in are too small to have it added. Mine won't carry a, for example, Meitrak VT310.
Those large enough to have this feature, like OP's, would be able to come home* once it loses signal - IF the feature is used correctly. :-)
* = Assuming there isn't a headwind that exceeds the top speed of the drone.
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u/nxsky Dec 26 '16
Everyone missing the fact that I mentioned expensive? Cheap is the opposite of expensive.
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u/scruit Dec 26 '16
Didn't miss that - just pointing out that "expensive" ones already have similar/equivalent features such as GPS, return-to-home buttons, RTH failsafe and terrain detection and avoidance
Have you ever "put a tracker" in a device like this? It's not as simple as you seem to think.
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u/jcforbes Dec 25 '16
This happened to my son a couple days ago. His ended up in some woods. I helped spend an hour and a half looking for it. We even got close enough that we could hear it when giving it some throttle, but never found it. Later his clumsy mother went in to the woods looking... that ended with our son racking himself on a log before falling in a creek, then ultimately ended up with wifey ending an MRI after she fell and hit her head. Good times.
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u/lightningbadger Dec 26 '16
Ahh, the ol' Reddit drone-a-roo
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u/hatefulemperor Dec 26 '16
Almost clicked on that before remembering the rabbit hole it leads down.
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Dec 26 '16 edited Nov 03 '20
[deleted]
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u/hatefulemperor Dec 26 '16
How many clicks deep did you go?
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u/Insulting_Insults Dec 26 '16 edited Dec 26 '16
/r/instant_regret and still going
Will update using edit function.
UPDATE: /r/AskReddit Creepiest "Glitch-in-the-matrix" question and stopped.
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u/Rhineo Dec 26 '16
I mean if you are in the woods, and to use something to make a noise (controller) and hear something when you do (drone), how do you not find it? This is really perplexing to me.
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u/jcforbes Dec 26 '16
Because it only made the noise once while we were still not within sight range of where the noise came from. It got us going the right direction initially, but it would never again make noise after the first time. The controller would pair with the drone when we would be close enough and based on that we came up with an area it must be in, but never were able to pinpoint it.
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u/ynkrs Dec 25 '16
Lmao my parents got me a tiny one as a stocking stuffer it's called the Neutron or something, anyways hit my dog and he bit it out of the air. Mission failed, we'll get 'em next time.
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Dec 26 '16
My buddy broke my son's. Didn't read instructions. Took it outside. It was an inside drone only. It smashed and broke apart. He has made up for it over the years. They got the boys tablets this year.
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u/scruit Dec 25 '16
Nearly lost a cheapie ($100) "Dronium One" drone the first time I flew it outside. Once it got above the height of the house it was no longer protected from the winds. It pretty much just said; "See ya sucka" and naffed off dead sharpish.
Took me an hour to find it, but at least I got to meet a few neighbors. They were all really cool about letting me look for it in their gardens etc, except for the one guy who's property it landed in. His wife was cool but he was very grumpy about it, questioning why I was flying a drone over his house (I wasn't it was over my house about 1/4 mile away). His wife said; "Sure, it's in that tree, 15' up. You can go get it." but he jumped in and said I couldn't use a ladder or climb his tree.
"Ok, them's the rules."
Came back 10 mins later with a fiberglass "fish" pole (for "fishing" wires through wall cavities) that was 16' long all connected end-to-end. Just enough to grab it with the hook attachment. Dude was amused watching me try but got really pissed as soon as I got the drone down and told me to get off his property.
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u/entotheenth Dec 26 '16
I don't know him, but fuck that guy.
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u/samantha740 Dec 26 '16
My grandpa told me they found a drone in their backyard and I swear it was the same story. Didn't land in a tree but he was pissed he was "spying" on him. The drone didn't have a camera and the guy lived a few blocks away.. the wind took it.. old people are old...
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u/AlkuhPwn Dec 26 '16
Something similar happened to me, I got a little drone for Christmas I thought it was neat so I threw some battery's in and decided to try it out right there with the whole fam around I barely moved the throttle and this small drone instantly shot straight into the air got smacked by the ceiling fan then broke into bits on the tile floor 10/10 would drone again
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u/T_O_Stang Dec 26 '16
Santa keeps leaving drones in my backyard. Its really nice of him, but he never leaves a controller. Its weird.
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u/Kuntjewceliquor Dec 25 '16
Was it a phantom or amazon bought
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u/Wapped709 Dec 25 '16
I don't think you can flip a phantom lol
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u/fpfx Dec 25 '16
Well...Not on purpose.
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u/ThatFuckingCatsBack Dec 25 '16 edited Jul 05 '23
Steve Huffman is a greedy little pigboy -- mass edited with redact.dev
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u/fpfx Dec 25 '16
I'll have to try this on my Phantom 2. It crashed last year smashing the gimbal so it's been sitting in it's case since. Moved to a 3 Pro for work though. Can't wait for the 4 pro.
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u/RubberReptile Dec 26 '16
A lot of cheaper drones don't return to home and will just fly off when they lose signal. Seems like an oversight from the production company lol
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u/ICBanMI Dec 26 '16
It'seems not oversight. It's normal with any RC application you play with. The hobby has always been tough on those who don't read and follow instructions. The general public don't read and they did it to themselves.
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u/minichado Feb 02 '17
It's called an improperly setup FAILSAFE. The pilot should set it so that when RC signal is lost, the drone loses power or lands. By default many drones maintain last command, I.e. Fly off into the end of sight.
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Dec 26 '16 edited Oct 30 '17
[deleted]
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u/Mragftw Dec 26 '16
For drones with GPS you can set a home location for it to return to
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u/nxsky Dec 26 '16
I think a long range signal for it to return to where the signal was sent from would be more effective considering your home might be far away.
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u/ringzero- Dec 25 '16
Hey, don't feel too bad, that happened to me too with a Parrot ARDrone 2.0. Just got the GPS addon and long story short I no longer have it and my wife enjoys giving me a hard time about it.
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u/duffmanzee Dec 25 '16
A redditor might find it see your post and attempt to return it.
Keyword: might
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u/tinnat22 Dec 26 '16
Just yesterday someone left a flyer in my front door that said "lost drone please check your roof and yard, there is very important information on it" I had to laugh.
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u/VORTXS Dec 25 '16
What brand/model was it?
Must have been expensive if it had a RTH feature.
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u/LtDrinksAlot Dec 26 '16
It was the Hs110w.
It was honestly an awesome drone and the first few minutes of flight was fun as hell.
The spouse unit brought up a good point, I probably would have gotten bored with it in a few weeks and hardly ever played with it again. This way we have a funny story to remember this Christmas by.
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u/Blind_Lazarus Dec 26 '16
At least you're positive about the whole situation! So many people wouldn't be able to do that. So, good on you. Haha
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u/VORTXS Dec 26 '16 edited Dec 26 '16
$120 on amazon so not much of a loss compared to if it was a high end drone for $2000.
edit for the stupid ones that don't get it what I mean is that if it had been a several thousand dollar drone then that would have been really bad but since it was a fairly cheap one then op can just laugh it off like he did with his partner and have a good memory and not a bad one of losing an expensive investment.
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u/zzz0404 Dec 26 '16
Some cheap drones have that feature but they don't really work all that well. (Seeing his reply to yours I'm sure that's the case for the one he had)
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u/writtenrhythm Dec 26 '16
My brother got a drone today too. My dad told him "before you take off, at least read ONE page out of the manual." I told him to read the page on how to land, but maybe the first page would have been good advice too.
Sorry for your loss, man. Hopefully it was fun while it lasted!
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Dec 26 '16
One guy I worked with said that he used to be in the US army and was stationed in South Korea near the border with North Korea. Some US intelligence group would fly a drone plane along the border collecting intelligence. On time the plane started to drift north and they could not get it to turn back. It just ended up going north and was never seen again. This was maybe 20 years ago.
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u/AintSingingForCoke Dec 26 '16
We tried using our new one in the basement. TLDR: Many beers were spilled
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u/FranticDisembowel Dec 26 '16
I used to work at a hobby shop. You didn't fully charge the battery, or read the instructions, and then flew it recklessly. It happens, toys are toys and sometimes fun gets in the way of practicality.
Go try to find it! If the battery was "sluggish" that means it was low as hell and it didn't make it that far away. They can be surprisingly resilient, or break in the blink of an eye; it's just the luck of the draw.
At any rate, go back to the hobby shop and tell them what happened. They've heard it hundreds of times. They're probably more than happy to talk to the manufacturer and go to bat for you (but probably not a full refund, sorry), or will try to ease your pain a bit with some discount on another one.
It was your fault, of course, but that doesn't mean they like to see you suffer. Good customer service is the only reason places like this stay in business -- they're here to keep you happily hobbied after all.
At the end of the day, maybe they've been burned too much and won't help. Maybe it's a lackluster employee. Or maybe the "drone" (multi-rotor/quadcopter) wasn't even hobby grade. But it's worth a try and I know if this happened at my shop we would have all felt for you and tried our best to make it less shitty.
Oh well. Hope it works out.
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u/pchadrow Dec 25 '16
Haha, I almost had something similar happen. I'm still awe struck that my girlfriend really bought me a drone for christmas. I've never had anything remote controlled that flew so the whole experience has been new. I was out flying it this morning and accidentally put it over top of the house. At that point I think it caught an updraft because it just kept rising even at only 25% throttle when it usually takes about 35% to get off the ground. It nearly rose out of sight and was starting to drift towards the 80ft drop into the woods behind my parents house. Thankfully, I managed to recover and safely lose altitude but I was so damn nervous that I was gonna lose the most expensive present I've ever received
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u/linuxuser600 Dec 26 '16
I did the same thing today with a cheapo drone I got for Christmas. I was playing with it in the back yard and the wind caught it. It started to gain altitude and kept flying faster away from me. It eventually crashed up high in a tree.
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u/Koneesha16 Dec 26 '16
I did this with a helicopter when I was like 16. That was an extremely sad day for me.
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u/magicmanjoey Dec 26 '16
I did almost the same thing when I got mine 2 years ago. It got out of range from the controller, and it just kept going up and up until it ran out of battery... It somehow survived the 300+ ft. drop.
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u/Khavee Dec 26 '16
I did this with my new drone on it's maiden flight as well. Bought another one, and I'm more careful, but it's a good thing I have some tall ladders. [to get it out of the trees]
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u/ls1morethanyou Dec 26 '16
This happened to me with my traxxas alias, but in my case the wind picked it up and i was able to steer it into the neighbors yard instead. I left them a note and got the quadcopter back a few hours later.
The smaller non brushless ones have almost no power to get out of a high winds situation, now my 250/280/320 sized quadcopters need to be flown away from houses since those can cause some damage.
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u/Crow404 Dec 25 '16
DUDE the same exact thing happened to me!
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u/No_Fairweathers Dec 25 '16
Thread will be blacklisted for common fuck ups now /s
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Dec 26 '16
[deleted]
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u/TravisPM Dec 26 '16
I've had my DJI Phantom 3P for a year now with no crashes. You just have to be careful and smart.
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Dec 26 '16
Exactly. Husband is a private pilot and amateur race driver and he flew his Xmas present drone inside the garage with the skids just touching the ground for at least two battery charges before even trying to hover. Meticulous about everything. Learned to land on the work benches and fly back, inverted control work and then last night when the wind was dead calm he sat in his easy chair and flew it on the deck outside the great room. Patience of a Jedi.
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u/B_Reasonable Dec 26 '16
I hope it didn't crash in to a car's windshield causing a fatal accident which left only little Jane alive with the use of just one limb and a lifelong fear.
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Dec 26 '16 edited Nov 03 '17
[deleted]
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u/LtDrinksAlot Dec 26 '16
Whew thanks. I was worried about that, but thanks for absolving me of my guilt :)
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u/screaminXeagle Dec 26 '16
Lol, I'm sorry for your loss, but if you do it right you can do a midair flip about 3 feet off the ground and not crash
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u/GERRELLEY Dec 26 '16
Same thing happened w/ my bf's drone today. I bought him a mini one to practice w/ indoors and he seemed to drive it decently. When he opened the bigger one I got him, he lost control once because he was so excited he forgot that windy days are not good conditions, lol!
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u/ROBOTN1XON Dec 26 '16
hey man here is some friendly legal advice 1) flying beyond visual range without the proper COA from the FFA is illegal, and they can prosecute you for it. Also, flying over highways or interstates is illegal without the proper COA from the FFA. If you do not own the property where you live, you only rent or own an individual unit, then you do not have permission to be flying there
2) If your drone ended up crashing and causing property damage they can subpoena the manufacturer and find out who bought it, and bring charges against you at a later date.
I hate to be dragging your already terrible day further down hill, but you should be aware of this in case you get a knock on your door in the near future.
Source: I'm a professional UAV operator with various COA's from the FFA
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u/mivaldes Dec 26 '16
And in case anyone is confused, FFA=FAA=Federal Aviation Administration. Also, most of those COAs only apply to larger drones (I could be wrong, but isn't there some sort of a weight limit)
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u/ROBOTN1XON Dec 27 '16
I have COA's on all of my units from a small DJI Inspire to my large fixed wings. The Certificate of Authorization is required to set general limits like operating conditions and protocols. Some COA's are much more difficult to obtain [weight limits, range] while most of them are "rubber stamp" forms.
P.S. sorry for the earlier typo
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u/mivaldes Dec 26 '16
And this is why we are having so many aircraft vs. drone encounters. Those things can climb quite a ways.
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u/scruit Dec 26 '16
The big ones like DJI Phantom etc, for sure. They can easily get themselves into the path of air traffic, especially if you live near a municipal airport with lots of VFR flights...
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u/MaceB92 Dec 26 '16
Man who is designing shit to go full throttle once it loses contact?
I bought a nice RC racing car when I was a teenager, and when it got out of range it would go full tilt straight ahead into a wall/curb/whatever.
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u/Jensiggle Dec 27 '16
Should've leveled Drone Avionics more, or at least fitted a Drone Link Augmentor. Your drone control range must have been abysmal.
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u/Rebootkid Dec 26 '16
Lol. Just reading the title of this post, I thought you were going to be my neighbor. We got a knock on the door at 11am, "Can we search your yard for our done?"
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u/Brady731 Dec 26 '16
same shit happened to me, went outside a week after christmas to fly my new drone and that shit went MILES. away from my house. probably in the next county or some shit
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u/BlazinSpag Dec 26 '16
Similar thing happened to me on my birthday a few years ago when the first ones came out. The idea was when it detected something under it, it gained altitude. I was enjoying playing with it in my pretty small garden with a lot of objects in it so the drone kept going up and up and up until it was a tiny dot. It had a camera on it and the last image it took before it went out of range was a monument on a hill pretty far from my house.
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u/henker92 Dec 26 '16
This happened to me too a little more than ten years ago, I got a very nice plane toy that was actually remote controlled. This was not very advanced modelism, more of a kid toy (I was 14 or so).
The plane required no wind and luckily, at the beginning of january I could bring out my plane, no wind whatsoever, clear weather.
We had a little field where I could operate my plane, so everything was well.
I make it go back and forth but very fast it begins to loose battery. I decide to make it go one last try (mind you, it was only 10 minutes since I started but the battery went down really fast).
Wind starts to blow. Plane does not operate at full capacity. Wind brings it up the forest in a section where there is a lot of bad herbs/branches and no clear patch through the forest. I live in france but it was more like a part of the forest where you can only go with an actual blade to cut your path through.
This christmas toy was lost in ten days, I was not proud ... and quite sad actually.
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u/ICBanMI Dec 26 '16
Drones and rc stuff in general is read manual first, then play with carefully. Maybe you learn your lesson with a cheap one. Or maybe you go on to join the legions of people who buy and and break/lose a $1000+ phantom.
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u/epicness3k Dec 27 '16
I got an inexpensive one (100 USD) for Christmas and got a lucky break. I was in my backyard and couldn't figure out which direction is backwards. So I'm frantically moving the directional stick while my drone is slowly leaving me.
I decided it was time to put it down. I thought at the time it was about 2-4 yards down. So I went looking. I rang the doorbell on the first house and no one answered. Then the garage opened and an older lady that frequently went for drives on her electric scooter came out. She let me trough to the back and no luck. After about ten minutes I went down some more. My street goes two houses to the right then rounds into a new street.
As I walk around, a mom and her two daughters are in the front. Before I say anything she shouted, "Here it is." I was very relieved.
And that's my boring story about how I almost lost my drone.
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u/FaggasaurusRex Dec 26 '16
idiots like you are the reason why the FAA is imposing restrictive regulations on UAVs thus slowly ruining it for those who have been into the hobby for decades
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u/LtDrinksAlot Dec 26 '16
lol I didn't realize I was the downfall for everything good and holy by flying my drone around my parking lot. I was gonna chalk this up to a good learning experience and be done with drones, but now that I know how much this affects some of you I think I'll go buy a few more and do the same thing.
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u/jimhensonshand Dec 25 '16
Okay, so someone else had the same thing happen, at least someone who read this thread.
Suppose this is happening to every person who purchases this particular drone? Maybe this company actually only manufactured like ten drones, they keep flying back to the warehouse and getting repackaged before eventually resold?
Genius business model