Mini close call

[kamviclance]

Hi all.

Went flying with my buddy today He was flying his mini 2 and I was following in my mini 1.

Well, here is a short clip showing three different speeds of the close call.

Even though my props on the forward right side were damaged (tips bent down), there was absolutely no warnings or flight character effects on the drone.

I went over top of him, but somehow my props received the damage. I think that after I saw the initial flyby, I let go of the sticks with maybe a bit of

down applied. while he must have caught up and was now in a higher position of me. Further video about half a minute later shows him in the upper right corner of the frame.

I had yelled stop to see what had just happened.

well, luck on my side today ( or was that the mini 1 collision avoidance...lol).

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Since you were flying over top , Not sure how your props got effected or damaged, maybe it was there before hand and did not realize it.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Mini 2 in the Rain.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

What speed were you doing? Or was it him in reverse?
I think you were going forward but the ground speed appears deceptive.
If you look in the logs and work out where the incident took place you should be able to see the drone's ptich.

 

[kamviclance]

What speed were you doing? Or was it him in reverse?
I think you were going forward but the ground speed appears deceptive.
If you look in the logs and work out where the incident took place you should be able to see the drone's ptich.

I was going forward towards the two of us near the truck which you can see in the background. I was in P mode, and he was in C mode.
unfortunately he was not recording, because we would have a different perspective as I overtook him.
We really didn't have a clue what actually happened till we landed and reviewed the footage.
I know it was a near miss, because I saw a quick (and I mean quick) flash of his drone, but no idea
how close this was. I will check my logs later. The video shows no glitch though. It goes on for another few minutes before we land.
Even with the two blades bent down at the tips, there was no indication what-so-ever about a flight problem.

 

[kamviclance]

Since you were flying over top , Not sure how your props got effected or damaged, maybe it was there before hand and did not realize it.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Mini 2 in the Rain.

No, no damage before. I always make it a habit of running each blade lightly through my fingers before each flight. As I mentioned before, as soon as I saw the flash of his drone in my view, I let go of the sticks. I think, by looking at the speed as I passed him, that I had got in front of him quit a bit before I stopped. He not realizing what had just happened (other then my holy SH**t shout moment), he had passed probably just above me and clipped my prop, Too bad he wasn't recording as we would have seen another perspective of this. When reviewing the video we saw his drone in the upper right hand corner of the video frame just above me. I could post the entire moment from near miss to landing if wanted.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Two bent tips shouldn't cause problems, the following shows what a Mini SE flew with after an encounter with a roof. Mini SE is one tough cookie !
Depending on which FLY App version you are using, the DAT flight log might be readable, if so a look at the motor speeds in a windless hover before and after the incident might show up the 'damage' done to the blades.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

incidentally, the txt flight log records when the drone was recording video. If you still have the unedited version of that video you can probably match the incident's video time stamp to the data in the flight log. I have never checked the accuracy of the log's indicated recording length against the played back video length but I guess they'd be similar.

 

[wardtom084]

My rule is fly 50 feed difference in elevation.

 

[kamviclance]

That is a good rule of thumb. In fact, we sort of had a rule of about 100' just for different calibrated errors in our drones. Of course though I didn't adhere to that. Lesson learned...lucky once! We were calling out distance and elevation, but on returning to home, I was descending without notifying my altitude adjustments.
Actually though, these agreed upon distances between two drone pilots is not really valid
according to the flight rules we have to know for our licensing. The actual legal limit is
1000' above the highest obstacle located within a horizontal distance of 2000' from an
aircraft.
WOW.... just learned that! Good thing that was not on my test! Could have been.
I agree with you though, common sense and communication with your flying buddy
is essential.

 

[Deleted member 84685]

Makes a good clip though , very lucky

 

[MAVE (Little bird)]

Makes a good clip though , very lucky

I'm so glad that damage was kept to a minimum. But think you would agree that was cool awesome video. Did your buddy roll video ?
Also I don't think I would try that fly by again. Thanks for sharing.

 

[kamviclance]

Thanks for the like.
No, my buddy was not filming. Too bad.
As for the flyby, I wish I could take credit for actually TRYING it the first time..... lol