Your very first Uh-Oh Moment

[Rchawks]

I haven’t made enough flights to have that rush of fear yet, although I know at some point I will. What was yours?

**Thread title edited by ADMIN**

 

[dirkclod]

It's not a rush really more like panic and happens fast normally.
The first was 5 years ago watching my FC40 autoland cause the app crashed and i had it set to hover(was a noob then) and couldn't find it in a cut over. Looked everyday several hours for about 1 month and never found it but wife did 3 months later when our pond got low and there it was. She came in with it all green and slimy.
I had got a P2V though after a week of searching to help look for it (what i told her ) and had crashed that thing several times already. Not bad but still.
Now since then i have crashed about all i have had for different reasons but all were UE.
My second MP and this M2P i still fly a lot like i stole em but haven't crashed them .
Yet
Oh and that 40 i striped it and cleaned it all up and sold all the parts including the shell and almost got in parts what i paid for it on e bay.

 

[Lastrexking]

Waaaaaay back in the day - my original DJI Phantom FC40
I was filming some paper kites at a stately home here in England and one of them broke free from its tether. This was a big kite, about twenty meters long and shaped like a Chinese dragon. I couldn’t get my phantom out of the way in time and it got swept up in the kite. Four miles that kite went. Four flipping miles. Luckily, no damage to the Phantom, just my pants.

 

[Lastrexking]

It's not a rush really more like panic and happens fast normally.
The first was 5 years ago watching my FC40 autoland cause the app crashed and i had it set to hover(was a noob then) and couldn't find it in a cut over. Looked everyday several hours four about 1 month and never found it but wife did 3 months later when our pond got low and there it was. She came in with it all green and slimy.
I had got a P2V though after a week of searching to help look for it (what i told her ) and had crashed that thing several times already. Not bad but still.
Now since then i have crashed about all i have had for different reasons but all were UE.
My second MP and this M2P i still fly a lot like i stole em but haven't crashed them .
Yet
Oh and that 40 i striped it and cleaned it all up and sold all the parts including the shell and almost got in parts what i paid for it on e bay.

I still have my FC40. I stuck a cheap Chinese gimbal on it years ago. Haven’t flown it in ages. But, I might have to give her a whirl.

 

[dirkclod]

Well the first one did get me addicted and here I am now and it was sicking watching it go down.
Funny though as I had walked by it everyday looking for it but that pond water was muddy,
@Rchawks lots say it's not if it's going to happen but when but thats not true. Many never have any issues and don't think you will as you are here and know . See I didn't join till it was to late..Like many.

 

[old man mavic]

my ooooooh moment was probably when i tried my first waypoint mission with my MPP my first expensive drone,i flew the course came back above myself and then pressed start its quite troubling when it suddenly sets off by itself, goes to the first waypoint, and then sets off into the distance with no input from me,i only set 6 waypoints and had set the speed low and it was the longest 10 mins of my life, i just stood transfixed hoping it would not fly off to who knows where

 

[Phantomrain.org]

My very first drone flight I hovered about 50 ft at my friends house and a hawk carrying a snake came and whacked the drone. It went into atti mode and being brand new I lost the drone to a fly away. DJI replaced the Phantom 4 drone with a new one for me. ?


Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Mavic into and out of the storm.
Coal

 

[Rchawks]

My very first drone flight I hovered about 50 ft at my friends house and a hawk carrying a snake came and whacked the drone. It went into atti mode and being brand new I lost the drone to a fly away. DJI replaced the Phantom 4 drone with a new one for me. ?

Wow

 

[naiku]

First one was letting my son have a turn at flying my Mavic Air (I had owned it about 3 days), Had it in beginner mode, but he somehow still managed to fly straight into a tree, that sound of clattering branches and plastic is never fun. Thankfully no damage.

First one with me actually flying, controller disconnected for some reason, slight panic set in as I was not sure what to expect. All I knew was my drone was about 50' above me and I could not control it. Thankfully RTH worked perfectly and it came back and landed. Lost signal one other time and had to use RTH, same panic sets in both times even though RTH works as expected, there is still that uh oh moment of have I lost the drone.

 

[Mossiback]

A tree hit my MP. I was running a Litchi mission around a house being built. It was a new mission with trees close by so I was following from below ready to stop it. Saw it slipping too close to a tree, hit the pause button, and it just barely stopped in time. Then a gust of wind blew up and moved a branch into my hovering MP, bringing it down. So, yeah, a tree hit my MP.

 

[DanMan32]

My very first was my P3A hitting telephone wires as I was ascending from my driveway. I thought I had passed the wires. It was the day after Christmas after having receiving it from my dad for Christmas. I was able to fly it a bit before and on Christmas. Gimbal was trashed. DJI was good to me though, charging for a repair, but the gimbal and body was completely replaced.

Another was flying over the bay with the P3. Winds were high but didn't seem to be too high for the P3 to handle. Got a "prop loose/prop obstruction" alert. Thought that was it for the P3. However FPV was stable so I knew the P3 was still OK. Probably hit an updraft.

 

[johnbirt]

I was flying my Parrot Anafi which is a great drone but has a IMO very poor design of controller. The problem is it doesn't take much to dislodge your phone from its wedged position between the antennae lump and the controller body. Next thing I knew was the bottom of the phone slipped out and became tightly wedged against both sticks. The effect was left stick forced down was bringing the craft down and right stick down bringing it back home at speed . Took several seconds to appraise the situation and extricate the phone and of course sticks all over the place.

The overall effect was the Anafi sped low and left relative to me quite quickly. Fortunately I was not far up or far away as had only just taken off and was just hovering to set RTH and check all was well which ironically was about not to be!. It slowed moving very low just above the scrub grass in front of me and hit some plastic netting some 30/40 m to my left. Very lucky that there was no damage as such, just 2 very slight nicks in a couple of props. Good reason for having no people about as that could have been nasty if it had hit anyone. Lesson learned stand well back!

I really don't trust the Anafi controller to keep the phone I was using safely in position so now I don't use use that phone at all. I use a iPad mini with a 3D printed mount which is ultra secure, enables a lanyard to be fitted easily and also has a plastic wedge to insert in the controller which enables the controller battery to be switched off without closing the controller. Another silly design fault of the Anafi is that there is no on/off button. Opening it is on, closing it is off. So if you have a a tablet connected you have to remove it and the mount to switch the thing off and conserve battery whilst say swapping a battery in the drone or taking a break from flying. Silly design IMO. Is that the case for the Skydio version I wonder? never seen one but heard they use a Parrot controller.

 

[Dedal]

My first (and hopefully, only) loss was combination of panic, disbelief, hope and fear, all at once. Lost the drone anyway. I was flying it low over the water (MJX Bugs 2), following shoreline flanked with trees, watching the whole flight on my cellphone. I then stopped few hundred meters away, turned, and then, suddenly, had sporadic loss of video transmission... Of course, I panicked, brought it up 5 - 6 meters, shortly regained video (obviously, I had control all the time, just didn't realized at that point), but I wasn't sure which direction it was facing, pressed left instead right, the drone clipped few branches and... That was the and of it. Disconnected from the controller, didn't see it anymore. Never found it, probably dived into the drink. Inexperience, weak signal and too far away without LOS. Well, lesson learned (I hope).

 

[Dbez1]

My moment was when I misjudged the height of a powerline and barely missed it. Since then, I am very cautious about being anywhere near electric or phone lines as it’s easy for them to sneak up and bite you. I’d rather deal with trees as it’s easier to see them coming?.

 

[Gindra]

In the early days after getting my M2 Zoom I spent a lot of time practicing, squares, circles, figure eights and such. I was getting pretty confident and took the drone into a grove of trees, walking behind it as I navigated around tree trunks. The OA sensors kept kicking in, keeping the drone from progressing and the beeping was not helping my frame of mind much either.

So, I flipped the switch to Sport Mode. No more beeping. No more stopping. I controlled the drone just fine, weaving in and out of the trees and then brought it back out of the grove.

So there we were, me standing there pretty pleased with myself for my 'expert' handling of this machine while the drone was hovering about 5 feet off the ground, about 10 feet in front of me. I wanted to move it a little further from me so pushed the right stick forward.

The drone was *facing me* when I did this!! And it was still in Sport Mode.

I don't remember dropping the controller and raising my arms in a defensive posture to protect my face. I don't know how I even did that. But had I not done it, it would have been my face that was shredded rather than the back of my forearms and hands. I was a bloody mess. But the good news was that, apart from a broken prop, my M2 was undamaged. And that's what counts .

 

[japharl]

Hearing blades stop spinning then thud. First crash. Hopefully won't be a second.

 

[Martysticks]

Well, when I first started flying these little birds, I remember having a little bit of a panic the first time I lost the video feed. That was on my Mavic Air and I was facing west and the little guy was flying south. But my first real panic attack happened just a few days ago with my Mavic Pro Platinum; I was doing great; about 3000' in front of me when I started to get high wind warnings. I still had 80% power but when I turned to come back home (I was also about 250' up) my speed went down to 4-5 mph and I was actually losing ground because the wind was pushing it. Full throttle and watching it get farther and farther away made me sit up and take notice! The wind did come up all of a sudden, so I just brought it back down to about 175' and she came back; struggling, but she came back. Landed her with 55% battery and packed it in for the day. Went inside and saw we were getting 25mph wind gusts.

 

[Dedal]

Well, when I first started flying these little birds, I remember having a little bit of a panic the first time I lost the video feed. That was on my Mavic Air and I was facing west and the little guy was flying south. But my first real panic attack happened just a few days ago with my Mavic Pro Platinum; I was doing great; about 3000' in front of me when I started to get high wind warnings. I still had 80% power but when I turned to come back home (I was also about 250' up) my speed went down to 4-5 mph and I was actually losing ground because the wind was pushing it. Full throttle and watching it get farther and farther away made me sit up and take notice! The wind did come up all of a sudden, so I just brought it back down to about 175' and she came back; struggling, but she came back. Landed her with 55% battery and packed it in for the day. Went inside and saw we were getting 25mph wind gusts.

Makes me uneasy just reading about it... Btw, when RTH (and espetially when RTH and fighting wind), "Sport" mode is your friend...

 

[hiflyer201]

been there done that...well all except for the hawk and the snake..
a really big LIKE to all the comments!

 

[Rchawks]

I

been there done that...well all except for the hawk and the snake..
a really big LIKE to all the comments!

I agree, thank you for the knowledge gentlemen ?