Hi all,

I Had a close call today.  And what's worse... I never even knew until I got home!


I was flying over an abandoned oil refinery.  (No people. No restrictions.)  I made my turn to return home a bit too late and lost the video feed.  Suddenly I had no visual feedback.  I could no loger see my drone.  I had lost visual contact.  (100% MY fault.)  I no longer had direct control.


I remembered I had programmed the RTH at 100 feet.  I decidded this was my best option under the circumstances...  I pressed the RTH button.  The drone flew home with no issues.  I thhought all was fine.  UNTILL I played back the video...   This is the resulting video:





I consider myself extremely LUCKY.  
"To Err is Human!"

Holy crackers that was crazy close.

Please go to the lottery center and buy a ticket.

Wow! l'm glad you got it home safe. That was crazy close.
l had a fairly close encounter myself today, but not as close as yours. Thankfully my spotter was on the ball because l was oblivious.

I just cleaned MY shorts.   The power line tower was a bit close, but my butt cheeks didn't pucker until you went OVER the lines.....holy crap!

I alway measure the highest object in my sight and set my RTH altitude 50 feet higher than that, while you escaped this time just remember next time and put it on your check list.

Ted,  My belief is that the power lines were responsible for your loss of signal more so than the hill. Power lines generate RF signals which reduce the dB from both your transmitter and the one in the Phantom for the video signal back.

DJI lists the transmitter as putting out 20dB, but doesn't mention what the Phantom transmits at. That would be nice to know.

You surely had a horse shoe inserted somewhere.

CapitAn Posted at 2015-8-24 08:06
Wow! l'm glad you got it home safe. That was crazy close.
l had a fairly close encounter myself toda ...

CaptiAn oblivious,

   I thought I saw you in a commercial today? Hotels.com??

gregg1r Posted at 2015-8-24 08:53
CaptiAn oblivious,

   I thought I saw you in a commercial today? Hotels.com??

Haha! Yep, that was me today (minus the beard).

Well after watching the video, you were very very lucky as you had the hill too to account for, you would have had a destroyed phantom if it was a tiny bit lower.

what editing program do you use?  

If the control signal was actually lost, wouldnt the bird go onto RTH automatically? No need for operator input. If you lost the video signal and were out of LOS, you may have had control. Possibly could have gained altitude until you could see it.

No Matter that video made my sphincter tighten for sure.  very lucky.

As a poweline technician all i can say is WOW haha  if you caused a phase to phase or shattered the insulators the utility would have shit a brick. Love the video but remember you can set you failsafe altitude on the fly , so if you loose your phantom in a bad area dont always be so quick to hit that magic button,consult the area, your settings and act according, we all enjoy our drones and we all must work together to ensure we dont get it taken away due to the growing amount of mishaps.

Nice! I am always scared of this so I have the RTH set to 120m... sometimes that is way too much though

Holy Moly that was close..

Personnaly for me i would have not consider to fly in that area - to many powerlines. I have prevouisly flown close to powerlins with ease but discovered at one stage that there was also a signal lost. I suspect that it was a bad connectoin on the powerline and almost lost my bird.
I am happy for you my friend - close shave.

The video is great but the soundtrack takes it to another level

Really well done Man - Thank you for sharing

greetings Mike

Damn that was so close!!!!!

Damn...  That's close.  Thanks for sharing!!

I've hit the 11kv power lines on our rural property once with a hand-launch glider and I can saw for sure that models come of 2nd best when hitting high tension lines...  The model is not heavy enough to cause them to swing & touch, but they're kinda solid, and just hang around in space.

Pjames Posted at 2015-8-24 10:02
what editing program do you use?

Final Cut X

ArmoredRevenge Posted at 2015-8-24 11:13
As a poweline technician all i can say is WOW haha  if you caused a phase to phase or shattered the  ...

Wel...  It's fairly unlikely that a 2lb plastic drone would break an insulator or cause a phase to phase short.  I have seen a 10 pound vulture with a 5 foot wingspan sit on those wires.    But I suppose anything is possible.

I was lucky.

I think this sort of incident reinforces the importance of establishing a flight plan - a key part of which is a site survey ensuring avoidance of hazards (and not flying behind obstacles!) and a clear RTH path.

Rigworker Posted at 2015-8-24 10:49
If the control signal was actually lost, wouldnt the bird go onto RTH automatically? No need for ope ...

I think it was still getting an intermittent signal.  Just enough to prevent the automatic RTH from happening.  

Since I could not see the drone I had no idea where it was.  For all I knew it had already crashed into the hill.

In retrospect... I probably should have just tried to climb higher instead of pressing RTH.  Altitude is your friend in that situation.

aaron.ferguson@ Posted at 2015-8-25 00:22
I think this sort of incident reinforces the importance of establishing a flight plan - a key part o ...

Agreed.

My intention was to fly out. turn 180 and fly back over clear area.  My turn was to slow.  I ended up drifting behind the hill and loosing control.  It was bad planning.

Not going to happen again.

That was awesome. You are the luckiest sucker I have ever seen. Talk about threading the needle.

Very lucky indeed.  Nice video.

Fulgerite Posted at 2015-8-25 00:21
Wel...  It's fairly unlikely that a 2lb plastic drone would break an insulator or cause a phase to ...

Sorry i should clarify i didn't mean break the insulator as in apart causing the conductor to fall. i meant the glass which is the most important part and makes the whole insulated from ground  thing work, a nut dropped from as little as a foot can spell disaster for a bell.

As for a 40kV short, the  safe working limits of approach  is around 1350mm. So with that new knowledge please know that had your drone got in between phases its a high possibility there would have been a flash over....but hey I cant say i am 100 percent certain, if you would like to prove me wrong please send video....just kidding.

Video removed....booooooo!!

Fulgerite Posted at 2015-8-24 09:32
Agreed.

My intention was to fly out. turn 180 and fly back over clear area.  My turn was to slow. ...

Yea, Why was it removed?

@Fulgerite,

Could you please give us the Video back again ?

it´s a perfect Example to show others what could happen and how to prevent from such Events.

please give us access to your Video again.

Mike

Hmm...video removed

QECadmin Posted at 2015-9-1 22:27
Hmm...video removed

Yeah interesting !?!?!  OP what happened, why did you remove the video ?

Not very interested in having LADWP come after me...  Break my door down and arrest me... For?  A near miss.

Fulgerite Posted at 2015-9-1 22:39
Not very interested in having LADWP come after me...  Break my door down and arrest me... For?  A ne ...

Good call, i guess we all need to go underground and share our videos in the darknet, here i come TOR.

Interesting

Video is not available ;(