MY NEIGHBOR GAVE UP

[360 Guy]

I have a neighbor that has seen me fly my drone several times, and at one point stated that she has to get her husband one.
Jumping forward about a year, she bought herself a drone, not for the hubby, but for herself, not a DJI.

One day, she is stomping around in my back yard searching, looking low all around.
My bride & I go out to help her as she said she lost her drone.
She had the controller or cell phone in her hand and it was beeping as she got closer to the bird.
I heard her say, "it's right here somewhere".
Now my next-door neighbor comes out to join the search party, now we are 4 strong.
Everyone is searching in bushes, looking in branches of low trees, looking on the ground.
Learning from my past loss, I look up higher and spot it on the neighbor's roof.
The female pilot (neighbor) calls her husband to bring over a ladder and retrieves her bird.
Now we are 5 stong....LOL.

I guess through humiliation, the neighbor returned the drone, got her money back and never flew again.

She never came to me asking for pointers or help.
As it goes, sorrowful, another pilot bites the dust.

360

 

[Donald Hill]

"Not a dji" So any idea what brand it was. The cheap drones, drift, fly away, and don't return to home. Maybe that was the problem.

 

[FLDave]

"Not a dji" So any idea what brand it was. The cheap drones, drift, fly away, and don't return to home. Maybe that was the problem.

Do you have data to support your claim that cheap drones fly away, drift, and don't return to home?

 

[Donald Hill]

Do you have data to support your claim that cheap drones fly away, drift, and don't return to home?

All I have is personal experience. I have several non gps drones. Without gps, there is no "home point" to return to. I have also found that on my drones that have "trim" buttons for right/left, forwarded/reverse, and yaw and power it is because the drone does not have software to do this calibration in real-time. There are inexpensive drones that have there features but the majority of the cheap toy drones get people off on the wrong foot, requiring them to be constantly on the sticke to prevent drifting or a fly away.I commented to find out what brand of drone the person had a bad experience with. Sometimes it's the choice of drone, and not the pilots experience, that leads to an unrewarding experience.

 

[FLDave]

All I have is personal experience. I have several non gps drones. Without gps, there is no "home point" to return to. I have also found that on my drones that have "trim" buttons for right/left, forwarded/reverse, and yaw and power it is because the drone does not have software to do this calibration in real-time. There are inexpensive drones that have there features but the majority of the cheap toy drones get people off on the wrong foot, requiring them to be constantly on the sticke to prevent drifting or a fly away.I commented to find out what brand of drone the person had a bad experience with. Sometimes it's the choice of drone, and not the pilots experience, that leads to an unrewarding experience.

It doesn't take a lot of research on this forum to find expensive GPS drones with flyaway, drifting, and not returning to home, and these are expensive drones. So I see not direct cause of those issues being related to being cheap drones.

 

[Gagey52]

I’ve assisted a few people to get over their disappointment with drones using a mini DJI. Most off them parked up their $100 drones and bought a DJI drone of some sort.
Regards
Gagey

 

[GadgetGuy]

It doesn't take a lot of research on this forum to find expensive GPS drones with flyaway, drifting, and not returning to home, and these are expensive drones. So I see not direct cause of those issues being related to being cheap drones.

It's 100% related to cheap drones without GPS or any form of positioning hold.

 

[FLDave]

It's 100% related to cheap drones without GPS or any form of positioning hold.

Drones without GPS will make a difference. It's not the cheapness itself which is the issue. It's about features and capabilities drone and pilot, not about price.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Do you have data to support your claim that cheap drones fly away, drift, and don't return to home?

This is like asking if someone has evidence after stating that snow is cold

 

[Droning on and on...]

It doesn't take a lot of research on this forum to find expensive GPS drones with flyaway, drifting, and not returning to home, and these are expensive drones. So I see not direct cause of those issues being related to being cheap drones.

Pretty clear you don't see it.

A few minutes on YT will cure that.

I own a dozen or so of the cheapies. In anything other than dead still air, they are quite a challenge to fly. Especially the ones lacking all positioning sensing AND altitude hold.

 

[Rchawks]

I have a couple of toy drones that are real work to fly. Kind of fun though.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Drones without GPS will make a difference. It's not the cheapness itself which is the issue. It's about features and capabilities drone and pilot, not about price.

It is 100% about price.
Cheapness means no GPS.
You won't find a single DJI drone without GPS, which is why they are not in the cheap category.

 

[FLDave]

It is 100% about price.
Cheapness means no GPS.
You won't find a single DJI drone without GPS, which is why they are not in the cheap category.

I never stated that it was not about cheapness, only that cheapness was not cause. One can safely fly in ATTI mode even indoors without GPS. Safety required a well-trained pilot. Those flying the really low price drones are likely not well trained and lack good flying skills; that has a big impact on crashes.

 

[hank970]

I never stated that it was not about cheapness, only that cheapness was not cause. One can safely fly in ATTI mode even indoors without GPS. Safety required a well-trained pilot. Those flying the really low- price drones are likely not well trained and lack good flying skills; that has a big impact on crashes.

It helps beginners and non-beginners alike to have drones with forgiving, built-in fail-safe features like obstacle avoidance, inertial awareness mechanisms, and RTH that's automatically prompted by signal loss or battery depletion, etc. Such features add to the purchase price of a drone.

Beyond that, pilots need only have decent eyesight, a modicum of hand-eye (thumb-eye) coordination, some familiarity with their drone's performance capabilities, an awareness of their surroundings, a sense of spatial apperception, perhaps, and a tendency, at least initially, to err on the side of caution.

Hmm... If a drone pilot is "well trained" (passive voice), doesn't that imply that he or she was trained by someone? Where can a prospective student expect to find such a trainer? What standards do trainers adhere to? Who decides whether they're qualified to teach?

I'd wager that the vast majority of us have had no competent formal flight instruction, if indeed such training is even available. We buy a drone, we charge the battery and read the instruction manual (even DJI's manuals are incomplete and poorly written), we send the drone aloft, and we learn by observing and by trial and error. A drone equipped with GPS helps by harmlessly hovering in place when the control sticks are in a neutral position.

In essence, we train ourselves, with varying degrees of success. As always, experience is the best teacher.

 

[BossBob]

Read the manual! You’ve got to be joking! Most people can’t even be bothered to read the little quick start leaflets or watch the presentations in DJI fly. Download a manual or lookup the local regulations, nah, can’t be bothered with that and anyway, the rules won’t apply to me, it’s just an expensive toy to have a laugh with.

 

[hank970]

Read the manual! You’ve got to be joking! Most people can’t even be bothered to read the little quick start leaflets or watch the presentations in DJI fly. Download a manual or lookup the local regulations, nah, can’t be bothered with that and anyway, the rules won’t apply to me, it’s just an expensive toy to have a laugh with.

I suspect you're right in the case of someone who might make an impulse purchase of an el-cheapo drone from someone selling stuff out of a holiday kiosk at a shopping mall. Such buyers are probably driven by novelty when they watch the in-store demonstration. "I could do that," they say. And they're in a hurry to prove it to themselves.

On the other hand, folks who've spent serious money for a drone may be more apt to have a creative or commercial intent in mind and approach the use of it more deliberately. In which category do you fit? Do you treat your drone like a casual toy or something you value as a useful tool? I'm in the latter camp.

 

[BossBob]

I wasn’t referring to myself in my previous post, that’s the attitude I see in all walks of life and flying drones is just the same. Myself, I see my drone (I fly 5 currently, not at the same time) as being another camera and lens that I can use to see or take images of things that are out of reach to a terrestrial photographer. None of my flights are ‘for a laugh’ though they are all purely for my pleasure.