First major anxiety attack flying the drone yesterday. We hiked down to the river in a deep gorge, and I took the drone in the backpack with me.
Clear skies, and the sun was beaming down directly over head, no shade and the glare was really bad ... plus sunglasses and plus a fly net added to the vision impairment
I flew the drone quiet low along the dry'ish river, around a couple of bends and out of eye contact (for me anyway), all in all only about 500mtrs. I stopped over a pool in the otherwise dry river, but was briefly struggling to see the screen to work out the orientation of the drone and distance from the trees before flying back. There was a huge leaning boulder creating a small shady lean-to, which was ideal to duck my head into rip the fly net off and get a quick look at the screen. No biggy
Big biggy, there Crusty, huge biggy. Apparently drone controller signals cant penetrate the huge boulder I managed to hide directly behind. The loss of connection alarms started sounding instantly and the pleasant controller lady who occasionally chats to me, was calmly telling me about the catastrophe now unfolding. Her pleasant calming voice only served to convince me she was perversely enjoying this. The pleasant controller lady shortly after that, also informed that the fail safe auto return to home had been activated; and I recall thinking she sounds disappointed. I was maybe reading too much into that
I quickly realised what I had done, but the immediate issue was what fail safe altitude I had set, and whether that height was enough to absorb the bends in the gorge enroute home via a straight line, point to point. I distinctly recalled setting a 35 metre fail safe height .... I think I recall that, pretty almost sure .. ish.
Shortly after the drama unfolded, my first reaction was to leave my shaddy spot to see if I could get a visual on the drone, and try to see where it crashes. Within what seemed like a in eternity we were all reunited in Wireless Lightbridge connection bliss. I regained control, deactivated the fail safe and continued with the gorge flight and video footage. There's no indication on the resulting video of the catastrophe, only the wonderful video where the drone rises up high into the gorge for a different perspective on the return flight; just like it was planned that way.
The other thing I discovered, drones are really loud in a gorge
(Photo's courtesy of Perth Now.)
