I had another occurrence where I was flying from a pontoon boat, crashed in a wooded area, realized I'd run out of video cache during the flight, so I didn't have the proxy footage on my tablet. There was no cell service in the area, so no satellite imagery to pinpoint location. I had to return the pontoon boat to the rental place, so no time for search and rescue and I had to check out of the rental house shortly after returning the boat and pack up for the 3 hour drive home. The ONE thing I did have was a photo I was able to take with the drone when it landed upside down in the underbrush... still running. The only visual clue in the photo as to location was a dead branch at an angle. So, we return the boat, pack up the luggage and consider whether to return to the general area for recovery. In the photo, there appeared to be a faint line that looked like a guardrail, so I drove to the area and there was a 100 yd section of guardrail, which gave me a densely wooded area about the size of 2 football fields to search. Of course I get to the area and there's a lot of dead branches around and an entire tree downed in the search area. See if you can spot the guardrail in this photo. Anyway, after and hour searching with my son, we found it. I subsequently bought ArcLight XL strobes w/ audible and AirTags to put on my drones. As I alluded, the way I fly (creatively), crashes are always a possibility. The key is recovery. You have to consider a variety of factors when flying, i.e; distance from home; time of day; mountainous terrain and woods; cell service; hiking/bushwacking required, etc. Typically, I'm more concerned with losing footage, so I remove/replace SD card after every flight. I also have State Farm insurance on all of my drones. Learn from failure and take measures.
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