Something I need to learn about flying

[mjbok]

Not an Evo story, but...

I've had one bad drone crash ever. It was my fault and the worst part was it was the FIRST time I ever flew that drone. I have kids, but they don't show much interest in flying, but on this occasion my oldest son was out with me. I flew. He flew. Then when we were done for the day I took over to bring it in, brought it down next to a chain link fence, and while showing off promptly flew right into the fence, shattering an arm and the camera. Stupid, and totally my fault.

Any way, fast forward a year and multiple drones later and I am down at the in-laws for Turkey day. I try to look for things that are interesting subjects to take pictures/video of. Classic architecture, water towers, forests, stadiums, etc. As I was gathering my drone, landing pad, etc. my youngest said he wanted to go with. Didn't say he wanted to fly, just he wanted to go with. That's great. It's useful to have someone else that can carry stuff, be a spotter, look for shots, etc.

Flew two batteries then went inside to warm up for a bit. At this point my wife says, "You know he wants to fly, right?" All he has to do is ask, so I said he could fly on my last battery after I got the one shot I wanted. There is a school there that is old, has a classic entry way and I wanted to get a nice set of pictures of the front. I take off and am framing the picture. I'm explaining to my son what I'm doing, what the controls do, etc. As I'm telling him "you have to be aware of your surroundings" while backing the drone up to get a perfect picture he says, "Do you know what you just did?"

Apparently I had backed the drone through a set of power lines. There are three running there and I had flown (completely unaware) between the lowest and the middle power line. As I'm trying to tell him that he has to be aware of his surroundings I wasn't paying attention to mine. Fortunately it had gone between the lines, but I either have to stop flying with my kids or do what I normally do, pay attention to everything. I asked why he didn't say anything as I was going towards the power lines and he said he thought I knew.

On the Evo side of things, this was with my Air, and it made me happy with my Evo purchase. I was getting about 12-13 minutes per battery, which is terrible.

 

[mjbok]

For reference attached is the school in question, plus one other.

 

[mixchief]

It's funny, but not hard to loose track when talking, how many people take their eyes off the road when talking to a passenger? It's just our nature and a terrible habit no matter what we are doing. I guess talking takes a lot of brain power and makes us easily distracted.

 

[alekaras]

Similar story. Was at the beach flying my Spark and some idiot comes over and tells me I cannot fly my drone, because people are complaining about privacy (as if you cannot invade their privacy with a simple telephoto lens, or even a cell phone). The drone, meanwhile, was literally 20 ft from me and about 10 ft high. So as I'm leaving the drone to hover to tell this numpty to go take a hike, the next thing I realize is that I have lost connectivity to the drone and it has initiated its landing sequence. Above water. In my panic, rather than cancelling, I run to hand catch it and miss it by a less than a foot as it plops into the sea. Moral of the story? Same as @mjbok : when you're flying, don't do anything else but keep your eyes glued on the screen and the bird.