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When drone flights go bad...

Dan AISCF

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Over the past few years of owning drones, I had one client shoot where I crashed one of our P4P+'s, and then while getting footage for a product review on a Gulf Coast beach here in Florida, I had a bird strike that took out and drowned one of our drones last week.

Aside from owning a small media company in Orlando, I'm getting ready to work on an article that highlights some of the worst-case scenarios some of us in the drone community might have encountered with our drones- whether bird strikes, weather phenomenon, hardware/software failure, angry bystanders (Karens and Kevins), etc.

I am wondering if anyone would care to share their stories/experiences in this regard, for me to include in the article. Full credit will of course go to anyone whose experience is used. If you'd rather not do it here, feel free to PM me :)

I also plan to outline the hazardous attitudes the FAA has identified in the Part 107 course, as well as a discussion on how to file warranty claims with Autel and DJI.

I appreciate any and all insights and fully appreciate the communities of Mavic, Phantom, Autel, Inspire, and Commercialpilots.com (those so far I have been privileged to be a part of). THANKS ALL!
 
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Over the past few years of owning drones, I had one client shoot where I crashed one of our P4P+'s, and then while getting footage for a product review on a Gulf Coast beach here in Florida, I had a bird strike that took out and drowned one of our drones last week.

Aside from owning a small media company in Orlando, I'm also a writer at Dronblog.com and I'm getting ready to work on an article that highlights some of the worst-case scenarios some of us in the drone community might have encountered with our drones- whether bird strikes, weather phenomenon, hardware/software failure, angry bystanders (Karens and Kevins), etc.

I am wondering if anyone would care to share their stories/experiences in this regard, for me to include in the article. Full credit will of course go to anyone whose experience is used. If you'd rather not do it here, feel free to PM me :)

I also plan to outline the hazardous attitudes the FAA has identified in the Part 107 course, as well as a discussion on how to file warranty claims with Autel and DJI.

I appreciate any and all insights and fully appreciate the communities of Mavic, Phantom, Autel, Inspire, and Commercialpilots.com (those so far I have been privileged to be a part of). THANKS ALL!

I have been flying drones professionally since 2014 and only ever lost one drone ; a DJI Mavic Pro......I was flying about 0.5 miles from a geofencing zone filming a yacht party when suddenly the Mavic said that I was in a no fly zone and force descended right into the ocean.

I never had that problem before, and hadn't updated my iPad mini or the app or the FW in the Mavic Pro since 2016, until a week prior when I had to get a new DJI app to fly the Mavic Mini....the very next flight with the Mavic Pro is when this happened. I am convinced that DJI added the zone to the Mavic apps database when I installed the second app for the Mini and screwed it up.

The next week I had the Autel EVO II Pro and have never bought another DJI drone product.
 
I have been flying drones professionally since 2014 and only ever lost one drone ; a DJI Mavic Pro......I was flying about 0.5 miles from a geofencing zone filming a yacht party when suddenly the Mavic said that I was in a no fly zone and force descended right into the ocean.

I never had that problem before, and hadn't updated my iPad mini or the app or the FW in the Mavic Pro since 2016, until a week prior when I had to get a new DJI app to fly the Mavic Mini....the very next flight with the Mavic Pro is when this happened. I am convinced that DJI added the zone to the Mavic apps database when I installed the second app for the Mini and screwed it up.

The next week I had the Autel EVO II Pro and have never bought another DJI drone product.
Thank you for this account. Another example of hand-holding going wrong. I've written quite a few articles (and another coming) about geofencing. I purchased our first Evo because of geofencing issues. Went to film a million-dollar property, had LAANC, and had the DJI unlocks all sorted prior from home, so I had thought. Got onsite, but couldn't launch. Lost the client and IMMEDIATELY upon leaving the shoot went to Best Buy and bought an Evo. I STILL have it in my fleet today. although the Lite+ I've been flying the past couple of weeks has been a LOT better. Still, I do have a DJI in the group at home and do most shoots with it...
 
Here's 2 sad stories:
1. Yuneec Typhoon H with full battery. It had been cold that night and the drone stayed in the car overnight. Morning launched from boat. Flew out a ways, got low battery warning, then critical, auto landed after just a few moments of flight. Hit the water and sank before we could get to it in the boat. Moral: don't fly with cold battery, especially over water!
2. Autel EVO II Pro with full battery. Flew up through chilly fog layer. After a few minutes, reached top of fog. "Overheating battery" warning. "Critical battery, landing now" warning. Drone came down in tall grass; no damage. Ice on rotors. Moral: don't fly through freezing fog.
 
Thank you for this account. Another example of hand-holding going wrong. I've written quite a few articles (and another coming) about geofencing. I purchased our first Evo because of geofencing issues. Went to film a million-dollar property, had LAANC, and had the DJI unlocks all sorted prior from home, so I had thought. Got onsite, but couldn't launch. Lost the client and IMMEDIATELY upon leaving the shoot went to Best Buy and bought an Evo. I STILL have it in my fleet today. although the Lite+ I've been flying the past couple of weeks has been a LOT better. Still, I do have a DJI in the group at home and do most shoots with it...

I still have a P4P and have only flown it for one job since then. The one job needed more flight time than I had with 4 EVO batteries so I brought it strictly for the extra flight time. The whole time it was in the air it kept warning about a restricted area (even though I had LAANC approval). The only reason I used it at all was because it was over an empty construction lot. Needless to say, I haven't flow it since either. I lost all trust in DJI's products after that first incident and I am very lucky it was not into a crowd of people or oncoming traffic. I also predicted that what happened to you could happen to me....get to a client's site and can't take off.

I live in FL too and just don't trust the Lite+, it gets really windy here and I have had wind problems in the past even with larger drones so I currently have no plans to get anything smaller than the EVO II for outdoors use.

Here's 2 sad stories:
1. Yuneec Typhoon H with full battery. It had been cold that night and the drone stayed in the car overnight. Morning launched from boat. Flew out a ways, got low battery warning, then critical, auto landed after just a few moments of flight. Hit the water and sank before we could get to it in the boat. Moral: don't fly with cold battery, especially over water!
2. Autel EVO II Pro with full battery. Flew up through chilly fog layer. After a few minutes, reached top of fog. "Overheating battery" warning. "Critical battery, landing now" warning. Drone came down in tall grass; no damage. Ice on rotors. Moral: don't fly through freezing fog.

In FL heat is my main problem; not so much the cold. But before the pandemic I travelled quite a bit with drones and did have a few close calls with it being too cold in states where it gets cold. The DJI P4P would not let you take off if it was below a certain temperature, it doesn't sound like the EVO has that restriction.
 
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Live in the south and never had any issues taking off other than cold fingers. Keep my batterys in my pockets to stay warm
and know others that live in Alaska that have no issues
And we fly DJI drones so I will have to disagree with you.
As far as heat you ever tryed flying in MS ,
So we will have to agree not to agree 😉
 
Here's 2 sad stories:
1. Yuneec Typhoon H with full battery. It had been cold that night and the drone stayed in the car overnight. Morning launched from boat. Flew out a ways, got low battery warning, then critical, auto landed after just a few moments of flight. Hit the water and sank before we could get to it in the boat. Moral: don't fly with cold battery, especially over water!
2. Autel EVO II Pro with full battery. Flew up through chilly fog layer. After a few minutes, reached top of fog. "Overheating battery" warning. "Critical battery, landing now" warning. Drone came down in tall grass; no damage. Ice on rotors. Moral: don't fly through freezing fog.
Thank you for both of these accounts. Great information to keep in mind.
 
...
I live in FL too and just don't trust the Lite+, it gets really windy here and I have had wind problems in the past even with larger drones so I currently have no plans to get anything smaller than the EVO II for outdoors use.
I fly a lot on the Gulf Coast where it's pretty breezy at times. Our Lite+ handles the wind just ok, whereas our Air 2S is a champ. I don't really have a problem with our Evo I, moves a lot less than the Lite+. We have a Mini 3Pro coming in next week, and I'm interested to see how that holds up to the wind...
 
It seems that you can purchase an autel care at the time of purchase and before registration, and autel will settle a new one for you
 
Thank you for this account. Another example of hand-holding going wrong. I've written quite a few articles (and another coming) about geofencing. I purchased our first Evo because of geofencing issues. Went to film a million-dollar property, had LAANC, and had the DJI unlocks all sorted prior from home, so I had thought. Got onsite, but couldn't launch. Lost the client and IMMEDIATELY upon leaving the shoot went to Best Buy and bought an Evo. I STILL have it in my fleet today. although the Lite+ I've been flying the past couple of weeks has been a LOT better. Still, I do have a DJI in the group at home and do most shoots with it...
Wow, what a ridiculous situation caused by DJI.
First of all the government has no authority to restrict drone flying to the extent that it does. The actual restrictions needed for safety are IMO far less than what we have now.
For manufacturers to put geofencing software in their products, is doubly problematic. First of all corporations should never become an arm of government in this way. But beyond that, when the government itself is doing unlawful things, and then strongarming corporations to help it in enforcement of these, we have a bigger problem.
I am new to Autel drones, having just flown DJI drones thus far. Note I have only flown drones for a little less than a year so I'm still a newbie.
 
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My dji s900 was giving me a super hard time getting calibrated one day. No idea why but I finally got it to calibrate. Thought all was good until I launched and watched my baby fly sideways into a high tensile wire fence at a mach eleventy-five. That was two days after I rebuilt it after crashing into a tree because I screwed up and hit the mode switch so the gps was off and the wind got the better of my amateur skills. That was an expensive week.
 
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