I’d been doing so well with my newly refreshed Mini. Several outings without any contact with anything whatsoever. But I brought it in way too fast to land it yesterday, it overshot me, and lodged itself in a tree.
Had five minutes of this footage before I remembered to turn off the video:
It is good that the Mini does not record audio, because some very unfortunate words would have been captured.
The “Find my drone” feature worked beautifully well, and I was able to locate the exact tree and spot it was in instantly.
The advanced aircraft-recovery device I had on hand worked, though it took awhile:
...long enough to wear some skin off my finger:
The idea is not to knock the aircraft out of the tree, it’s to get a piece of the branch it’s on and give it a shake. Tips learned are (1) to gather up all the rope each time and throw ball + rope on the air to avoid drag, and (2) to tie the other end of the rope to a belt loop so the device itself doesn’t all get all pulled up and stuck in the tree, which happened once.
The Mini broke a leg and the battery compartment and who knows what else. I decided that any recovery of the device should be considered a total win. Repair beats replacement every time. It’s heading back to the mothership via UPS today.
Had five minutes of this footage before I remembered to turn off the video:
It is good that the Mini does not record audio, because some very unfortunate words would have been captured.
The “Find my drone” feature worked beautifully well, and I was able to locate the exact tree and spot it was in instantly.
The advanced aircraft-recovery device I had on hand worked, though it took awhile:
...long enough to wear some skin off my finger:
The idea is not to knock the aircraft out of the tree, it’s to get a piece of the branch it’s on and give it a shake. Tips learned are (1) to gather up all the rope each time and throw ball + rope on the air to avoid drag, and (2) to tie the other end of the rope to a belt loop so the device itself doesn’t all get all pulled up and stuck in the tree, which happened once.
The Mini broke a leg and the battery compartment and who knows what else. I decided that any recovery of the device should be considered a total win. Repair beats replacement every time. It’s heading back to the mothership via UPS today.