Dropped $700 on a fancy drone for site surveys and it crashed into a lake on day 2

2 comments

2 Comments

Maybe you should have looked up the weather forecast first. Lakes don't just appear out of nowhere, right? idk, seems like a learning experience about checking conditions before flying expensive gear.

emeryn832d ago

Actually the weather thing is OVERBLOWN in this case. Most modern drones like the DJI Mini or Autel have pretty good wind resistance and can handle light rain. The real issue here is that lake probably showed up on the map in the drone's GPS system, but OP might have ignored the altitude warnings or didn't set the return-to-home height high enough. Lakes are basically giant mirrors for radar altimeters too, so the drone could have gotten confused about how high it actually was and just dropped. Weather is important, but basic flight planning like checking the area for water bodies and setting your RTH altitude to at least 30-50 feet above the tallest obstacle nearby is way more critical. It sucks to lose that much money, but this is a pretty standard lesson for anyone who flies expensive drones near water.