I lost line of sight (bad), the WIFI stream froze (badder)* and then an updraft picked up my drone and carried it over houses (bladder) and I couldn’t see it, so I brought it down (oh shit storm, the ill wind blows). I put up flyers in the neighborhood, put copies in the hands of the best scuttlebutts I could muster, and it was located within an hour.
* Phone shattered the night before. I flew the quad with a phone screen spiderwebbed and taped with clear packing tape, making this already “badder” incident incredibly badder. On the flipside, the phone wouldn’t be able to process streaming video on my new drone, so an upgrade was imminent anyways.
I was glad I was able to recover the footage and see what happens to a quad that’s been cut from its controller midflight. I was amazed that it remained stable and level in its rapid descent.
Things I learned:
Updrafts from ridges are unpredictable. WIFI is difficult to capture on a sketchy phone. The tree in my front yard is gigantic and blocks out most of the sky if you stand anywhere in the front yard.
The battery is swollen. I ordered a new lipo. Hopefully it flies again.Tomorrow I start working with the 4K pro stuff.
I hate the Video Editor on Youtube. Lame as shit. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to convert .FPV files to .WMV yet. I have been browsing for a decent video editor, one with a cloud so I can store big files. The soundtrack is eye-gougingly bad. Youtube doesn’t let me hear any of the songs before I choose them, so, welcome to the tone-deaf nightmare that is Youtube post-production.
A year ago I would have had time to do all sorts of things to make this video better, but time is no longer an ally.
Fifty State Banana 