- Joined
- Oct 18, 2015
- Messages
- 1,617
- Reaction score
- 747
- Age
- 71
Back in November 2017 I, for some reason, decided to try to get some pictures of a snowstorm. I launched from my house and flew back several hundred feet into the forest composed of 150 foot conifers. It was snowing pretty hard with limited visibility but I figured at several hundred feet with a windsurfer I could keep in contact with the bird.
Sometimes things don't happen that way and I lost the video then the telemetry. Not to worry, I had set RTH at 250 feet and, in fact, return to home was a straight shot without hills or trees (the slope goes steeply uphill from my house). After a few minutes I began to worry and after 30 minutes I got pretty annoyed. It was my oldest P3P, two years old and hundreds of flight hours.
The dog and I headed into the woods and looked until nightfall but I didn't have much hope - typically the drones end up high in the trees, nestled in the branches and impervious to anything but crows. (Ask me how I know.) Didn't have the Marco Polo on it because I was just fooling around at home.
Come spring I looked around again, no go.
About a month ago I get a call asking me if I had lost a drone. The finder was a teenager out deer hunting on a ridge 2 miles from the house. It was in an area that I fly in on a regular basis but the landing point was not one that I had used to take off (in the middle of some dense trees). I do check the home point each time I fly. I'm pretty sure I checked it the day of the fly off (but ....).d
The P3 was on the ground next to some trees. He apparently found it in a snow bank.
The rotors were beat up, consistent with attempting to cusinart a large tree. There were rust stains and dirt all over the body. I removed the battery and put it in a nice dry room and left it alone - too busy with other things to mess with it. I recently pulled it out and looked it over. The clockwise rotors were frozen solid, the CCW spun freely. The gimbal was rusted but seemed to move. I pulled the top off - actually pretty clean with just some bits of rust on some screws. Replaced the motors and fired it up. Started up just fine.
Updated the firmware and took off. Surprisingly, everything works. Even the camera / gimbal which I presumed to be toast. I pulled the camera apart because there where bits of rust sticking out and it looks pretty ragged - but it still works.
I'll probably replace the camera although I've a mind to just run it as is to see how long it lasts. But I'm impressed. Four months in an Alaska winter with minimal damage. Unfortunately, the .dat files don't seem to exist for that flight (????) so I can't say what happened. I am guessing it lost radio contact, decided that the home point was somewhere else and took off towards it until it crashed into a tree. I'm still puzzled as to where it thought it was going - although I do fly off the ridge it was heading towards, none of my landing zones would have been in a straight line.
Sometimes things don't happen that way and I lost the video then the telemetry. Not to worry, I had set RTH at 250 feet and, in fact, return to home was a straight shot without hills or trees (the slope goes steeply uphill from my house). After a few minutes I began to worry and after 30 minutes I got pretty annoyed. It was my oldest P3P, two years old and hundreds of flight hours.
The dog and I headed into the woods and looked until nightfall but I didn't have much hope - typically the drones end up high in the trees, nestled in the branches and impervious to anything but crows. (Ask me how I know.) Didn't have the Marco Polo on it because I was just fooling around at home.
Come spring I looked around again, no go.
About a month ago I get a call asking me if I had lost a drone. The finder was a teenager out deer hunting on a ridge 2 miles from the house. It was in an area that I fly in on a regular basis but the landing point was not one that I had used to take off (in the middle of some dense trees). I do check the home point each time I fly. I'm pretty sure I checked it the day of the fly off (but ....).d
The P3 was on the ground next to some trees. He apparently found it in a snow bank.
The rotors were beat up, consistent with attempting to cusinart a large tree. There were rust stains and dirt all over the body. I removed the battery and put it in a nice dry room and left it alone - too busy with other things to mess with it. I recently pulled it out and looked it over. The clockwise rotors were frozen solid, the CCW spun freely. The gimbal was rusted but seemed to move. I pulled the top off - actually pretty clean with just some bits of rust on some screws. Replaced the motors and fired it up. Started up just fine.
Updated the firmware and took off. Surprisingly, everything works. Even the camera / gimbal which I presumed to be toast. I pulled the camera apart because there where bits of rust sticking out and it looks pretty ragged - but it still works.
I'll probably replace the camera although I've a mind to just run it as is to see how long it lasts. But I'm impressed. Four months in an Alaska winter with minimal damage. Unfortunately, the .dat files don't seem to exist for that flight (????) so I can't say what happened. I am guessing it lost radio contact, decided that the home point was somewhere else and took off towards it until it crashed into a tree. I'm still puzzled as to where it thought it was going - although I do fly off the ridge it was heading towards, none of my landing zones would have been in a straight line.
