Quadcopter Crash Landing


This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Quadcopter
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The chosen landing site

For a while, I’ve had my quadcopter up-and-running. I am not the best pilot in the world, but getting better. We are staying at a place where people are sparse (I think people feel a little uncomfortable about drones) so I decided to duct tape my GoPro Hero 5 Black on the underside of the quad and practice a little more.

Duct Tape

I do have an FPV analogue camera on the drone, but its viewpoint is across and up a little from the horizon.

All was going well until I decided to reach for the skies and see how high I could go (carefully abiding by my CAA requirements: <400ft or ~120m). I lost radio-contact and the thing free-fell (aka grave-yard spiral) some distance into the watery cushion of a bromeliad perched 7m up in the bough of a rotten tree. The quad’s battery had disconnected in the crash, but luckily the GoPro was still on and connected to my phone so I could sound its alarm:

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