I learned a valuable lesson about flying anywhere near water or people a couple of weeks ago. I live in Hastings on the south coast of England and a couple of weeks ago I thought I’d take my drone to the seafront for a fly as the light was getting that nice warmth of early evening. I took off as usual where there weren’t too many people and flew out to sea as there was a speedboat going around near the shore. I filmed it for a bit and then it approached the beach to pick up passengers so I was hovering just behind it facing the beach.
Suddenly the drone spun round to the left 90 degrees facing along the beach. I tried turning it back but it jolted round again. I was over the water at this point and beginning to worry so I decided to bring it back in to land. As I flew in it was behaving erratically and about 1/4 of the way up the beach it wouldn’t come any closer. I lowered it into a hover just above head hight then as I began to run down the beach towards where it was hovering I could see something dangling from it. It turns out it had been hooked by a young lad fishing! He had cast his line just as I was nearing the beach and the spin to the left I had seen was the initial impact.
I was annoyed by the kids dad though as he ran towards where my drone was hovering and got there just before I did and he ignored my shouts to leave it alone and not touch it (I wanted to hand catch it rather than risk a landing with loose fishing line wrapped around it) and instead he chose to try to extract the fishing line in the hover. As it was looped around a motor he managed to stall a prop and send it crashing down on its back on the pebbles.
Miraculously no harm was done - not even a mark! After untangling it and giving it a good check over and testing the systems as best I could from the app, I was able to take off again and follow the speedboat as it sped away from the shore again! Needless to say when I approached the shore again I did so at a much higher altitude before descending vertically to my landing site. The young lad who had hooked it came over and we chatted about it for a couple of minutes and I shared with him the footage of him hooking it.
It could have been much worse - I’m amazed and very lucky that the fishing line didn’t stall a prop over the sea and if the dad had cut himself on the props from his own stupidity and ignoring my shouts not to touch it I could have been in trouble. A number of lessons were learned that day...
Suddenly the drone spun round to the left 90 degrees facing along the beach. I tried turning it back but it jolted round again. I was over the water at this point and beginning to worry so I decided to bring it back in to land. As I flew in it was behaving erratically and about 1/4 of the way up the beach it wouldn’t come any closer. I lowered it into a hover just above head hight then as I began to run down the beach towards where it was hovering I could see something dangling from it. It turns out it had been hooked by a young lad fishing! He had cast his line just as I was nearing the beach and the spin to the left I had seen was the initial impact.
I was annoyed by the kids dad though as he ran towards where my drone was hovering and got there just before I did and he ignored my shouts to leave it alone and not touch it (I wanted to hand catch it rather than risk a landing with loose fishing line wrapped around it) and instead he chose to try to extract the fishing line in the hover. As it was looped around a motor he managed to stall a prop and send it crashing down on its back on the pebbles.
Miraculously no harm was done - not even a mark! After untangling it and giving it a good check over and testing the systems as best I could from the app, I was able to take off again and follow the speedboat as it sped away from the shore again! Needless to say when I approached the shore again I did so at a much higher altitude before descending vertically to my landing site. The young lad who had hooked it came over and we chatted about it for a couple of minutes and I shared with him the footage of him hooking it.
It could have been much worse - I’m amazed and very lucky that the fishing line didn’t stall a prop over the sea and if the dad had cut himself on the props from his own stupidity and ignoring my shouts not to touch it I could have been in trouble. A number of lessons were learned that day...
