Long gone…

I have now owned a drone for a year and within this year I have hardly improved my flying skills. My DJI spark is a tiny little thing and confuses the heck out of me. Before flying you must calibrate but that doesn’t guarantee that your flight will be easy going. Hundreds of feet in the sky, it is impossible to see, and all you can rely on is your wifi connection.

Every summer my family goes to Crested Butte, Colorado to see my grandparents. It is the perfect place for some killer drone shots… if i can manage.

This time I kept waiting and waiting for the perfect time to shoot. Our last night there, the light was perfect, the sky was clear, shooting conditions were prime. So I send her up. She’s gliding blissfully through the sky, shots are perfect, best footage yet.

I go higher and higher. I am looking at Meridian Lake panning through the valley. Then I get the notification, “low battery return to home”.

Are you kidding me??! Why does the battery only last like ten minutes!!? I avoid the notification, I want more shots. It appears again. Fine, I’ll return to home.

I can’t see the drone anywhere. The tiny little thing has disappeared. I look down at my remote.

Navigation error

Crap, what now?? I try to fly it back to me but I don’t see it anywhere. “Landing, Landing, Landing” my remote beeps at me. All I see is my camera monitor on the remote. I see the house, I see the creek. Oh god please don’t land in the creek. Gone.

451 ft away from home the screen says. My camera is pointed at the sky. It crashed.

My tiny little drone has crash landed on the side of the mountain somewhere around the marsh of a creek. It could be anywhere.

I run out looking for it. I scan the grass and the land around the creek. This isn’t easy, I am knee to hip deep in plants and the sun is setting. I don’t know how far 451 feet is. I’m by the neighbors house and it changes, 490 ft away. Okay so its somewhere in this area. The battery dies, the screen goes blank.

An hour has gone by. I’m hopeless. How the heck could I ever find it. But I can’t just give up.

It is our last night here, dad calls me inside for dinner.

Afterwards we go back out with flashlights. He helps me for another thirty minutes still no luck. I look longer. Up and down the side of the mountain, on the banks of the creek, in all the bushes. No where. Gone.

I give up for the night. The next day we were leaving at 6 am, I am out of luck.

I get in bed but I can’t sleep. ( I know this story is ridiculous. It’s just a drone, but i take care of my things and i didn’t want to buy another) I decide to get on good ole google… “how to find drone”. After aimless searching I found an article that said check your flight path. I wondered if, even though my drone was dead, maybe the app kept my last flight path. And guess what… IT DID!! I can now see on a map where my drone is but I can’t go look at 1 am there are bears and such things out there.

I wait until the morning. 5 am i’m up and at em. I tell my dad my discovery and head back into the marsh. I have my flight path lined up with my gps and I wander on.

I FIND IT!! It is upside down on the hillside. I would have never seen it. I look up and see my family cheering me on from the house. I never thought I would find it. How lucky.

There is no damage except a tiny scratch on the lens. I cannot believe I found it.

Moral of the story: listen to notifications from your drone