G.K. Wilson

So I’ve had a beginner drone (DJI Phantom 3 Standard) for many years and have only had a few minor crashes, mainly when flying it without GPS, but nothing major, i.e. no fly-a-ways that I had heard of happening, especially when these drones first hit the market, so I considered myself lucky.  But on 6-25-20 I had a partial fly-away that ended up getting stuck in a tree about 60 feet off the ground in a dense forest canopy.

I’m not sure what happened, but I had been flying it with an additional 360 degree GoPro Fusion camera to get some 360 degree drone videos and photos https://flic.kr/p/2jfqegR , and I think that that might have had something to do with it,  I flew the drone up going higher until it was telling me I had a weak signal, and finally it gave me a signal lost warning, usually it can reconnect, but this time it didn’t and appeared to try and return to home, but I think the GoPro Fusion camera had come partially unattached so instead of returning to home the drone just crash landed in this forest I was trying to take photos of:

Man I was in a bit of a panic and ran out my front door and into the forest hoping to find where the drone ended up.  I figured I didn’t have much of a chance finding it, because this is a pretty dense forest, but I couldn’t give up because the drone although pretty old is still selling for $499 on Ebay, plus I had an extra battery I had purchased and the GoPro Fusion had cost me another $400, so it was too big of an investment for me to write off, plus I kind of liked my drone and Fusion camera.

So I basically headed in the direction I thought the drone was heading for and bushwhacked  through this forest, that was mainly ivy, ferns, maples (I think) and fir trees, it was pretty steep and there are springs in there also, which I didn’t realize before but was now discovering are mosquito breeding grounds, and I was getting swarmed, but still I pushed onward.  At one point I stopped and figured I was never going to find it, but once I stopped I heard a faint whirring noise, it was my drone’s propellers still spinning, so I was psyched and followed the propeller noise but to my dismay I soon found my drone stuck 65 feet up an ivy covered tree, in a dense forest canopy.

I was like there was no way I was going to be able to get this drone down.  I thought I could call the tree people and maybe they could climb up and get it, but the tree was covered in ivy that was as thick as my arms and seemed kind of sickly:

So I didn’t want a tree climber to risk their life just for a drone, plus I figured that might cost me more than the drone was worth.  On a positive note as I was standing under the drone trying to figure out how to get it out, I noticed a red flashing light in the Ivy on the forest floor, and I bent down and low and behold there was my GoPro Fusion camera, I guess it had broken off the drone during the crash and it appeared that nothing had happened to it falling into the ivy, they make those GoPros to take quite a beating, so I was happy not all was lost.

After deciding that a tree climber was probably not the best idea I decided on my next best option: go back and Google; “How to get a drone stuck in a tree out?”, and the first video that popped up was from these model rocket guys: USWaterRockets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOY0dvRI7oI  that showed how to build a type of drone rescue spear gun, with some PVC pipe, a fishing reel, latex tubing, some wooden dowels for projectiles along with a rope.  The only things I didn’t have was the latex tubing and a long enough rope, so I ordered the tubing on Amazon Prime and prayed that it would get here before the rain did.  I actually went back and tried the technique learned in the YouTube Video with a wrist rocket and my fishing pole (casting a weight over the branch) instead of the PVC spear gun but neither of these options worked that well, mainly because the weight wouldn’t drop out of the canopy, and if I added more weight it wouldn’t go high enough or was too hard to control/cast in the thick forest, so although I came close I figured I would have to wait for the latex tubing to build the spear gun.  Well the latex tubing arrived the next day and I had already built the main part of the drone rescue spear gun and got some dowels and rope at Fred Meyer’s (my local grocery store), so I put everything together and headed back to the drone stuck in the tree for a second attempt at a rescue.

This time the dowels with the weight on the end were easier to aim and were dropping out of the canopy better than just the weight I was trying before, most shots were  getting close, but just a foot or so short of the mark.  Plus I was getting eaten by mosquitoes and was running out of fishing line, you use up the fishing line when you tie the rope on and try and pull the rope up, the fishing line then becomes a tangled mess at your feet.  So it dawned on me that my dowel projectiles needed to be longer so that I could pull the latex tubing back farther getting more lift.  So I went home and made some longer dowel projectiles and added some more fishing line to my reel, figuring I would try one more time the next morning and if I couldn’t get it then I would just leave my drone in the forest canopy.

The next morning I did some yoga stretches, visualized my game plan, ate a good breakfast, put on a mechanics jump suit and sprayed it with mosquito repellent and coated my head, neck, arms with mosquito repellent and headed out for one last drone rescue attempt, and on my second shot I got the dowel projectile right over the branch and yanked my drone down!  It did come crashing down through the tree branches and landed pretty hard in the ivy, but I was so psyched to have at least gotten it down, and once I looked at it it didn’t look too damaged, the propeller guards were broken, but no other major damage looked to have happened, like the GoPro, DJI makes these drones to take a bit of a beating, and after I cleaned it up and charged the batteries I took it out and it worked as it always has, I was psyched,  Google, YouTube and USWaterRockets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOY0dvRI7oI rock!  Thank you.
-Gordon