Death of a awsome drone

[large_ghostman]

I have a video of this, still not sure if it will go on you tube yet though...

A friend on mine with the little brother i have been helping, made a tiny drone, really really lite and small. He finished it Thursday and rushed over today to show me. It was made from thin Balsa,tissue paper and a little resin. No idea what it weighed but it was extremely light and around 7 inches across, keep in mind he is very young and was rightly extremely proud of it.

It had 4 small brushed motors, my guess is they are the kind from mobile phones. A basic flight board and it was powered with 2 x pp9 9V batteries and a very basic RC unit. Its taken him months to build from scratch, and he has saved and saved to get parts. I think he was 12 or 13 a couple of weeks ago.

So he comes running up our drive and calls me, i look over the drone and tell him its great and would he like to test fly it in our field (big mistake). He says yes and can i borrow my mums camera and video it in 4K with the big zoom lens, i said sure and got the camera.

In the big field by the house its bordered down one side by our wood, i should have factored that in. Its roughly 15 acres though so i figured if we stood in the middle we would have loads of room. It took off great and i was busy filming away, nice tight shots on it flying, its was a bit wonky but was flying well overall.

He flew it about 40 meters from the edge of the wood, and as he got near i pull out with the lens. Out the corner of my eye i saw something move, before i could do or say a thing the drone had gone!!

This time of year we have no end of raptors nesting, they sit on the tree tops a few tree lines in from the edge of the wood, being 80-100 feet up you dont see them until they move, they love that line as they can launch and be down on rabbits etc in the field in a flash. Well today he peed one off and down it came straight at the drone, as i say i filmed it all but he was really upset.

The bird landed in the field with the mangled drone then flew off with it, only a few feet down the field but probably 200 feet up before dropping the wreck. So by the time we got to it........... Amazing how much mess the first strike did and then the drop! He grabbed the bits up an ran off, he hasnt answered my text messages yet.

I will go over tomorrow with one my drones he can have and a half decent RC unit, i might also offer to help him make another one. Worse part is, without engaging my brain first, i turned to him as it was struck and said........... FOOF ME, did you see that strike! dont worry i got it all on film , then it got taken back into the air and dropped.

You got to feel sorry for him, i know he put so much work into it. And couldnt wait to show me, had i thought for a couple of seconds, its the last place i would have chosen to fly it at this time of year!

 

[MikeMl]

Around here, the ravens rule. They tease the hell out of our 100lb dog...

 

[gophert]

I have a video of this, still not sure if it will go on you tube yet though...

A friend on mine with the little brother i have been helping, made a tiny drone, really really lite and small. He finished it Thursday and rushed over today to show me. It was made from thin Balsa,tissue paper and a little resin. No idea what it weighed but it was extremely light and around 7 inches across, keep in mind he is very young and was rightly extremely proud of it.

It had 4 small brushed motors, my guess is they are the kind from mobile phones. A basic flight board and it was powered with 2 x pp9 9V batteries and a very basic RC unit. Its taken him months to build from scratch, and he has saved and saved to get parts. I think he was 12 or 13 a couple of weeks ago.

So he comes running up our drive and calls me, i look over the drone and tell him its great and would he like to test fly it in our field (big mistake). He says yes and can i borrow my mums camera and video it in 4K with the big zoom lens, i said sure and got the camera.

In the big field by the house its bordered down one side by our wood, i should have factored that in. Its roughly 15 acres though so i figured if we stood in the middle we would have loads of room. It took off great and i was busy filming away, nice tight shots on it flying, its was a bit wonky but was flying well overall.

He flew it about 40 meters from the edge of the wood, and as he got near i pull out with the lens. Out the corner of my eye i saw something move, before i could do or say a thing the drone had gone!!

This time of year we have no end of raptors nesting, they sit on the tree tops a few tree lines in from the edge of the wood, being 80-100 feet up you dont see them until they move, they love that line as they can launch and be down on rabbits etc in the field in a flash. Well today he peed one off and down it came straight at the drone, as i say i filmed it all but he was really upset.

The bird landed in the field with the mangled drone then flew off with it, only a few feet down the field but probably 200 feet up before dropping the wreck. So by the time we got to it........... Amazing how much mess the first strike did and then the drop! He grabbed the bits up an ran off, he hasnt answered my text messages yet.

I will go over tomorrow with one my drones he can have and a half decent RC unit, i might also offer to help him make another one. Worse part is, without engaging my brain first, i turned to him as it was struck and said........... FOOF ME, did you see that strike! dont worry i got it all on film , then it got taken back into the air and dropped.

You got to feel sorry for him, i know he put so much work into it. And couldnt wait to show me, had i thought for a couple of seconds, its the last place i would have chosen to fly it at this time of year!

You may do better offering him parts an encouragement to build himself another one instead offering to build it for him.
Let him mourn his loss -the biggest value and source of happiness was not owning a drone, it was showing off a project that HE made.

 

[large_ghostman]

You may do better offering him parts an encouragement to build himself another one instead offering to build it for him.
Let him mourn his loss -the biggest value and source of happiness was not owning a drone, it was showing off a project that HE made.

Yes your correct, which is why this morning i felt bad, i remembered all the encouragement i got from here at his age. So with that in mind i went on a rummage in my electronics lab, i have got him some sil lab dev boards and a new RC transciever and a decent control board and a pile of other parts that might help.

I have also put a load of Balsa wood in the box and will deliver it tomorrow. I couldnt find any BDLC motors suitable, i am actually after some myself. But i am trying to track down some cheap ones and some of those tiny motors he used. Oh and i put two tubes of two part resin glue stuff in. I did honestly feel bad for him this morning, so i didnt contact him.

To be fair i was impressed with what he had built, despite the gaudy paint job! But you need that with tiny drones or you cant see the b uggers

 

[Reloadron]

Then here in the US we had a drone in Kentucky which got too close to a neighbors house. Good ol' boy figured it ws spying on his daughter sunbathing, He did what any protective father would do and shot it down. You can **broken link removed**, and Here and Here. Then here in Ohio a company was marketing drones to the Ohio Department of Transportation for bridge inspections. That story is here. That one went into the river, The $35,000 **broken link removed** drone could not be retrieved from the water, Sader said. Oh well I guess. One expensive drone gone.

Ron

 

[gophert]

Then here in the US we had a drone in Kentucky which got too close to a neighbors house. Good ol' boy figured it ws spying on his daughter sunbathing, He did what any protective father would do and shot it down. You can **broken link removed**, and Here and Here. Then here in Ohio a company was marketing drones to the Ohio Department of Transportation for bridge inspections. That story is here. That one went into the river, The $35,000 **broken link removed** drone could not be retrieved from the water, Sader said. Oh well I guess. One expensive drone gone.

Ron

Hey, local DOT often pays several thousand dollars in labor to set up road closures, assemble a line of paving equipment, police to control lane courses then have the asphalt supplier tell them they are out of material and need to reschedule. Oh well, I guess.

 

[large_ghostman]

Maybe the raptor had young chicks in the nest, had it bothered to look first however, it would of seen the drone didnt have a camera, so it did kind of over react

 

[Cicero]

RIP drone, we've all been there (maybe not with drones, but personal projects anyway).

I remember my first (and last) drone I built, was too eager to fly it and didn't make any blade protection guards etc. Flew it for a few seconds before I turned too hard without enough power and it simply crashed into pieces...I would've much preferred a raptor had taken it out!! What a backstory.

 

[large_ghostman]

RIP drone, we've all been there (maybe not with drones, but personal projects anyway).

I remember my first (and last) drone I built, was too eager to fly it and didn't make any blade protection guards etc. Flew it for a few seconds before I turned too hard without enough power and it simply crashed into pieces...I would've much preferred a raptor had taken it out!! What a backstory.

The first i built sounds like yours, back when they were not cheap and common. You had to make your own flight boards with accelerometer etc. Thats where i had the most issues, now you buy pre made flight boards really cheap, GPS everything on them for around £50 for a very good one.

They fly very accurately and are pretty difficult to crash unless you fly into something or run out of juice, but not the same as building your own flight board and programming it. It took me weeks to stop mine oscillating from side to side. Its got alot like circuit boards now, its barely worth making one when you can buy them so cheap.

Shame in some ways, but technology moves so fast now.
Yeas was pretty spectacular seeing it taken out the air!! But then again i didnt spend hours making it.

 

[cowboybob]

I can relate.

Back in the late 50's I got a Cox two string controlled model airplane for Christmas from my Grandparents. It had a .049 engine (some sort of "Bee" brand). I was thrilled!!

Took it into an open field (save for a power pole) to try it out.

Misjudged the line length and as I turned around and around flying the thing, having a ball. I then managed to fly the sucker straight into the power pole... .

Shoved the crankshaft out the back of the motor. I was impressed! My Grandparents were not.

I have not successfully flown a model airplane for more than a few minutes since (I have had many) .

 

[large_ghostman]

LOL in the park 5 mile down he road is a old guy every Sunday, he flies various rc planes, he has a cox with a frog diesel engine on, no muffler!! Sounds like really large (6') bees in a rage, after a while i cant take the high pitched whine in it, he like most adults cant hear the high pitch bit. EVERYONE can hear the rest of the racket from it .

He also has a real model Jet plane, its huge. I have only seen it once when there was something that looked like a RC club meeting going on. It was massive and was something special to see it fly, I asked him about it afterwards. Apparently it took 7 years to build and was a exact scale replica of one of the 727 (i think its 727???), it cost him £45,000 to build!!!

Anyway it flew 4 times then on the fifth flight the RC receiver lost power for the throttles, he had to try and land it with the jet engines going full tilt!! Didnt end well apparently. He was saying it was at a show in England, some place called Dunstable airfield, because everyone else was watching from a hill side, he tried to land it. He said had it been like normal shows then rather than try and land, he would of put it in a safe area and gone into a dive straight into the ground! Apparently the shows get packed, so if it goes wrong with something that big, they have to dump it for safety reasons.

All that money though!

 

[cowboybob]

That's just plain sad... .

Here's an RC model C-17 video.

On the first pass, they accelerate and climb like a real one can on takeoff (fully loaded, no less)!

 

[Reloadron]

That's just plain sad... .

Here's an RC model C-17 video.

On the first pass, they accelerate and climb like a real one can on takeoff (fully loaded, no less)!

That sucker was absolutely cool.

Ron

 

[large_ghostman]

It wasnt as big as that, but not far off. Scary things to have in the air!! They dont half burn through some fuel!!