Rookie Mistake

[GFields]

It is very important to slow down and look for obstacles. Today was very hot and the project required a lot of stills and video. As I was nearly finished with the shoot, I made a huge "rookie" mistake. Fortunately, my Air 3 was fine after rebooting it.

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[Yorkshire_Pud]

did it climb into cables or something?

 

[GFields]

did it climb into cables or something?

Yes. I flew straight up into a power line.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Whoops.

 

[GFields]

Whoops.

Exactly! I was afraid that the drone was fried. I got a message to check props and the gimbal was going crazy. But after restarting the drone everything worked perfectly.

I did go ahead and replace the props

 

[AeroJ]

How did you get it down ?! Looks like it remained up there from the footage !

 

[AlanL]

How did you get it down ?! Looks like it remained up there from the footage !

Gravity never sleeps.....

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

I was afraid that the drone was fried

That comment prompts the thought ........ Just as a matter of interest are those cables covered in insulation ?
It looks like it got hung up, which probably meant trying to recover it with a pole etc. If the cables are uninsulated and the pole was a conductor then you might literally have been frying.

 

[AeroJ]

Lols - yeah - power cables come with their own set of rescue requirements, hey ? At least trees can't kill you in the rescue attempt ! Unless you try and climb them and fall of course...

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Soon as I saw the cables in the thumbnail I knew what happened but drones have 9 Lives everyone knows that.
Glad you made it, sadly even a Wet Suit would not have helped you out on this life taker.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water but offer no help with Ghost Cables in the Sky.

 

[GFields]

How did you get it down ?! Looks like it remained up there from the footage !

The drone hit the wire and "bounced" downward but kept flying. I landed it immediately to examine it.

That comment prompts the thought ........ Just as a matter of interest are those cables covered in insulation ?

It must have been or at the very least nothing metallic from the drone came in contact with it.

 

[TonyPHX]

Sorry to hear, but always a good reminder. The heat can sometimes feel oppressive and it can result in some serious distractions. Glad you got out of it with no damage!

 

[sarahb]

Wow! I'm sorry that happened to you. Thank you for sharing your experience. This will serve us all as a reminder.

 

[AeroJ]

Only yesterday I stayed up all night to be awake for the dawn when I planned to go and drone an epic hill, but by the time I got there I was tired enough to consider my reduced concentration the 3rd factor in why I got back in my car and drove home again without taking off ! Never thought I would ever feel tired enough to not consider myself safe to fly ! At least us rec guys have a choice, and don't have to stay and get jobs done regardless of how horrible the conditions..

 

[Cafguy]

Yes. I flew straight up into a power line.

Man well thank goodness it didn't come back upside down!

 

[old man mavic]

@GFields thanks for sharing ,glad the drone survived the ordeal
no matter how many flights we have under our belts ,mistakes can and will happen
and extreem weather conditions affecting us as pilots ,does play a big part in such an event

 

[careless]

It is very important to slow down and look for obstacles. Today was very hot and the project required a lot of stills and video. As I was nearly finished with the shoot, I made a huge "rookie" mistake. Fortunately, my Air 3 was fine after rebooting it.

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I did the same thing with a Phantom 3 and it fried the GPS antenna causing the drone to fly away over 1000 ft and crashing in a cemetery.

 

[rjwmorrell]

Sorry to hear, but always a good reminder. The heat can sometimes feel oppressive and it can result in some serious distractions. Glad you got out of it with no damage!

Even when there's no heat. I put my Air 2S into low wires when I was being harassed by early morning mosquitoes one foggy day. Similar type of result, it got hung up, but eventually flew clear of them.

 

[tstr14]

Hitting a power line is not necessarily an invitation to instant death as many here seem to think. If it were, you would never see birds sitting on them or squirrels running on them, which is a sight seen all the time. Becoming a conduit for the power to reach ground or neutral is where the danger lies. For being infinitely small, those pesky little electrons can certainly pack a wallop!

To the OP, everyone makes mistakes! I'm glad yours turned out to be of the painless variety.

 

[Photo Beaty]

I did the same thing with a Pro 2. The problem was that the drone was over a fast moving river and I never saw it again.