The first flight of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter was on April 19th, 2021, and it inspired me to buy my first drone. I wanted something with a camera, but other than that, I really had no idea what drone to get. I settled on $75 as not quite bottom-of-the-barrel, but cheap enough that I wouldn’t be devastated if I dinged it up. It was a Snaptain S5C, and a great little starter drone.
I named my new little drone Ingy after his Martian inspiration, and he first flew on April 30th, 2021. He was fine inside the house, but he had no wind resistance at all, and I had very few good flying days without wind. But he was indestructible! I banged him into trees and bushes and the garage, and I’d just pick him up and launch him again. Still, it was frustrating. Even though he had trim, which I consider essential in a non-GPS drone, he was essentially uncontrollable in anything more than a steady light breeze. Living in a canyon, that’s not the usual condition here…
I’ve flown a couple of dozen types of fixed wing aircraft over the years, and there’s a strong correlation between aircraft weight, and turbulence resistance. So my first thought was that I needed to get a heavier drone to deal with the wind better. After a bit more research, I learned that wind resistance in drones is more a function of power than weight. I had been flying Ingy at the lowest power setting, and I finally decided to ramp him up to max power to see if that helped.
It didn’t. On May 28th, 2021 he got caught by a wind gust, and thrown over my head and back behind me over the garage. Gone With The Wind. Many searches, both on foot and with the Mini-2 that I got to replace him, turned up nothing. I gave up hope.
Then one morning last week, when I opened up the blinds to my back deck, there he was, sitting on my flying chair. Intact!
22-03-22-01 Ingy Returned!.jpg
As you can see from the second picture, he’s encrusted with dirt.
drive.google.com
I had no idea where he was found, since he was returned anonymously. My best guess, and that’s all it was at this point, was that he ended up getting washed down into the creek, and someone found him a bit downstream. They either knew I was the neighborhood Drone Guy, or they gave it to someone who did know. A mystery!
His SD card was still inserted in the camera. Would the card still work after being baked in the sun, rained on, frozen, and buried in the snow for 10 months?
Yes! I plugged into my card reader, and all the vids were there…including the final Ghost Flight.
21-05-28 Ghost Flight.mp4
At 00:35, he’s caught by a big wind gust and carried off backwards over my head and over the garage, never to be seen again. From that point on it’s a Ghost Flight, all systems running, but no one at the controls…
At the very end you can see the view from Ingy, at the crash site. He kept recording for an hour and a half! A normal max flight with a full battery was only about 9 minutes, but when the engines stop running, the battery can keep the camera recording for a long, long time.
The next step was to get the battery out. It was sort of cemented into the battery compartment with caked dirt and dust, but I was able to get it out and unplugged without too much trouble. I found the old batteries and charged them up, so they should be ready to go. I bought some canned air so that I can blow off at least some of the dust and dirt.
For comparison, here’s Ingy next to one of my Mini-2s.
22-03-23 Ingy and Defiant.jpg
The next step for today: plug in a freshly charged battery, and see if I can get the system to power up. I sort of expected that the SD card might work. Powering the system back up…not so much…
But we’ll see!
TCS
I named my new little drone Ingy after his Martian inspiration, and he first flew on April 30th, 2021. He was fine inside the house, but he had no wind resistance at all, and I had very few good flying days without wind. But he was indestructible! I banged him into trees and bushes and the garage, and I’d just pick him up and launch him again. Still, it was frustrating. Even though he had trim, which I consider essential in a non-GPS drone, he was essentially uncontrollable in anything more than a steady light breeze. Living in a canyon, that’s not the usual condition here…
I’ve flown a couple of dozen types of fixed wing aircraft over the years, and there’s a strong correlation between aircraft weight, and turbulence resistance. So my first thought was that I needed to get a heavier drone to deal with the wind better. After a bit more research, I learned that wind resistance in drones is more a function of power than weight. I had been flying Ingy at the lowest power setting, and I finally decided to ramp him up to max power to see if that helped.
It didn’t. On May 28th, 2021 he got caught by a wind gust, and thrown over my head and back behind me over the garage. Gone With The Wind. Many searches, both on foot and with the Mini-2 that I got to replace him, turned up nothing. I gave up hope.
Then one morning last week, when I opened up the blinds to my back deck, there he was, sitting on my flying chair. Intact!
22-03-22-01 Ingy Returned!.jpg
As you can see from the second picture, he’s encrusted with dirt.
22-03-22-2 Dirt Covered Ingy.jpg
drive.google.com
I had no idea where he was found, since he was returned anonymously. My best guess, and that’s all it was at this point, was that he ended up getting washed down into the creek, and someone found him a bit downstream. They either knew I was the neighborhood Drone Guy, or they gave it to someone who did know. A mystery!
His SD card was still inserted in the camera. Would the card still work after being baked in the sun, rained on, frozen, and buried in the snow for 10 months?
Yes! I plugged into my card reader, and all the vids were there…including the final Ghost Flight.
21-05-28 Ghost Flight.mp4
At 00:35, he’s caught by a big wind gust and carried off backwards over my head and over the garage, never to be seen again. From that point on it’s a Ghost Flight, all systems running, but no one at the controls…
At the very end you can see the view from Ingy, at the crash site. He kept recording for an hour and a half! A normal max flight with a full battery was only about 9 minutes, but when the engines stop running, the battery can keep the camera recording for a long, long time.
The next step was to get the battery out. It was sort of cemented into the battery compartment with caked dirt and dust, but I was able to get it out and unplugged without too much trouble. I found the old batteries and charged them up, so they should be ready to go. I bought some canned air so that I can blow off at least some of the dust and dirt.
For comparison, here’s Ingy next to one of my Mini-2s.
22-03-23 Ingy and Defiant.jpg
The next step for today: plug in a freshly charged battery, and see if I can get the system to power up. I sort of expected that the SD card might work. Powering the system back up…not so much…
But we’ll see!
TCS
