(Posted by Kevin)
The quadcopter (the one built with my own loving hands in August last year) had a very bad day at Fury Cove.
It was flying along like usual, about a quarter-mile from the boat, probably capturing some beautiful video – when it suddenly plummeted to the ground – flipping over and over – and crashed hard on the rocks below.
The crash site was on the other side of the island, so we had to take the kayak to look for it. We grabbed the tiny DVR that records the video feed from the ground and watched the last few seconds of the video. It showed us approximately where to look for the debris field.
Did we mention that the crash site was in a place where other boaters had sighted a grizzly with two cubs that same day? Well, yeah. That.
We knew he crash site was either in the water or on the rocks right by the water. The tide was coming in rapidly, so we knew we had to find it quickly or it would be covered by the incoming tide (if it wasn’t already). We grabbed bear spray, waterproof boots, life jackets, and set out in the kayak. Once ashore we started making plenty of loud noises. We hiked up and over the rocks and pretty quickly found the carnage – lots of small, broken drone bits scattered among the rocks. The ONLY piece that had landed in a tide pool was the GoPro camera (which can’t be flown in its waterproof case, unfortunately). It was a total loss.
Other boaters told us they had seen an eagle flying right in the same area at the time of the crash. There were many eagles around, so that theory made sense. Examining the wreckage, nothing looked wrong with the copter – motors and connections were as they should have been (except crash damage).
It’s hard to get the parts to re-build – especially while we’re exploring in the boat. We are looking at options to replace it so we can capture more video on this trip. We shall see. There are SO many things we still wanted to capture with aerial video…
So need to go