Saga of guy who lost his drone and went looking for it

[Rabber]

Decided to film some fireworks at a nearby Casino resort near me.
Got to my spot (resort’s golf course) before sundown and took some practice flights.
The golf course backs up to mountainous wilderness.
The lights go down and the fireworks start. A few minutes into filming…CRASH!! I hit some trees in the wilderness.
No problem..I had the gps location and would get it the next day.

I pulled up the map and gps coordinates and saw my drone location approximately 400 feet from the resorts water tower.

I asked the resorts permission to go on their property to retrieve it. No problem. They even gave me a ride up to the water tower and an escort to help me.

Looking on a map and seeing in real life are VERY different. Impenetrable dense brush and steep uphill terrain. I had to crawl on my hands and knees pushing dead brush aside in 90+ heat.

I keep pulling out my gps to see how close I am getting to it. 200 ft, 150 ft, 100 ft. Popping up now and then to look. 50 ft..I am completely exhausted. 60 minutes in and 50 feet away I stop. My range of vision in this stuff is 3 feet at best.

My escort is yelling at me to return. Do I ignore him and push on? Yes. I go a few more feet and stop again. Nobody told me about the rattle snakes!

I staggered out of the brush. My face, arms, legs and hands are profoundly scratched up. Dirt and leaf debris down my pants and on my face. I can barely walk. No joy.

Made it home. Went to my PC and filed my care refresh claim…(Mod Removed Language) I was attached to that drone. I will miss it

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Wow, so close but yet so far !

Sorry for your loss, but the pain is somewhat relieved by the Care Refresh Plus option you have.
The consolation is to think the drone was likely destroyed in the crash, hopefully take just a little more pain out of the loss.

Rattlesnakes, yeah, a bit of a worry.
Very myotoxic venom from memory.

What were you flying ?

 

[Rchawks]

MAN, very good description. Sorry for your loss. I'm glad you had refresh though. any pics or vid on you device? Yeah, rattlesnakes, quite scary!!

 

[GFields]

Sorry for your loss.

 

[Photo Booth]

It's cool the folks at Pechanga were so willing to be helpful.

As for rattlesnakes... It was the first thing in my mind when you started telling the story. There are hundreds of rattlesnakes in that area.

Mark

 

[careless]

What was you flying ??

 

[dave canada]

Decided to film some fireworks at a nearby Casino resort near me.
Got to my spot (resort’s golf course) before sundown and took some practice flights.
The golf course backs up to mountainous wilderness.
The lights go down and the fireworks start. A few minutes into filming…CRASH!! I hit some trees in the wilderness.
No problem..I had the gps location and would get it the next day.

I pulled up the map and gps coordinates and saw my drone location approximately 400 feet from the resorts water tower.

I asked the resorts permission to go on their property to retrieve it. No problem. They even gave me a ride up to the water tower and an escort to help me.

Looking on a map and seeing in real life are VERY different. Impenetrable dense brush and steep uphill terrain. I had to crawl on my hands and knees pushing dead brush aside in 90+ heat.

I keep pulling out my gps to see how close I am getting to it. 200 ft, 150 ft, 100 ft. Popping up now and then to look. 50 ft..I am completely exhausted. 60 minutes in and 50 feet away I stop. My range of vision in this stuff is 3 feet at best.

My escort is yelling at me to return. Do I ignore him and push on? Yes. I go a few more feet and stop again. Nobody told me about the rattle snakes!

I staggered out of the brush. My face, arms, legs and hands are profoundly scratched up. Dirt and leaf debris down my pants and on my face. I can barely walk. No joy.

Made it home. Went to my PC and filed my care refresh claim…(Mod Removed Language) I was attached to that drone. I will miss it

getting attached to a tool is all to easy I have done it alot still do good tools are hard to come by and usually expensive

 

[Karksta]

Decided to film some fireworks at a nearby Casino resort near me.
Got to my spot (resort’s golf course) before sundown and took some practice flights.
The golf course backs up to mountainous wilderness.
The lights go down and the fireworks start. A few minutes into filming…CRASH!! I hit some trees in the wilderness.
No problem..I had the gps location and would get it the next day.

I pulled up the map and gps coordinates and saw my drone location approximately 400 feet from the resorts water tower.

I asked the resorts permission to go on their property to retrieve it. No problem. They even gave me a ride up to the water tower and an escort to help me.

Looking on a map and seeing in real life are VERY different. Impenetrable dense brush and steep uphill terrain. I had to crawl on my hands and knees pushing dead brush aside in 90+ heat.

I keep pulling out my gps to see how close I am getting to it. 200 ft, 150 ft, 100 ft. Popping up now and then to look. 50 ft..I am completely exhausted. 60 minutes in and 50 feet away I stop. My range of vision in this stuff is 3 feet at best.

My escort is yelling at me to return. Do I ignore him and push on? Yes. I go a few more feet and stop again. Nobody told me about the rattle snakes!

I staggered out of the brush. My face, arms, legs and hands are profoundly scratched up. Dirt and leaf debris down my pants and on my face. I can barely walk. No joy.

Made it home. Went to my PC and filed my care refresh claim…(Mod Removed Language) I was attached to that drone. I will miss it

Sorry to hear about your lost drone. I lost my drone in downtown Los Angeles when I lost connection, the battery was dying, and the drone (I later found out) tried to return to home, but caught in wind drafts and loss of battery power. Initially, I tried finding the drone using the GPS location. service on my smart controller. The location of the drone when it went down was an amazing two major city blocks away from where the RTH point should have been. After a timely search that proved fruitless, I kept searching for how to retrieve the flight record. Duh. I have the DJI Smart Controller and there's an interface where the Flight Record key is so obvious, I was slightly embarrassed I hadn't seen it before. The flight record showed that the drone landed at zero altitude very near the RTH. It was inside a construction site. I had some very valuable footage on the drone at that point and it was imperative I find it. I climbed the fence, finally found the drone, 100 yards from the launch site, and happy ending. That's just to say my GPS tracking was extremely wonky and in this instance, with the value of the footage on the drone, the extra $$$ for the smart controller that finally made finding the drone more accurate than the GPS -- it paid off. This was for a Mavic 2 Pro, fyi. I guess I'm asking did you track this using your flight records?

 

[Daytona500]

I thought you had to recover the drone to get refresh?Hmm just went and read the terms , this must be new policy as I know when I first started flying you had to return the drone to get coverage.

 

[Heavydpj]

I asked the resorts permission to go on their property to retrieve it. No problem. They even gave me a ride up to the water tower and an escort to help me.

Looking on a map and seeing in real life are VERY different. Impenetrable dense brush and steep uphill terrain. I had to crawl on my hands and knees pushing dead brush aside in 90+ heat.

They probably knew that when you asked, and spent the time laughing their ***** off.