And, for anyone wondering what’s happening at times, I’ve had a “plan” for a drone recovery from a tree for a few years, and when I thought I might be putting it into action a few years ago I even bought the necessary kit.
Anyway - the “plan” was simple ..
- tie a length or nylon cord to my Mavic Pro with doubled-up sewing cotton. This becomes a weak link that, whilst strong enough to lift the cord, even if the cord became snagged, flying upward fast would be enough to snap the cotton (not that I’d ever actually tried this - it was just theory.
- A heavy 12mm x 15cm bolt and nut were then the next items .. the nut was tied to the cord about 1m beneath the drone to keep the cord away from the props. The bolt was tied the the end of the cord.
- The “plan” .. to carefully drop the bolt through the tree next to the drone .. the bolt bringing it down low enough to get hold of
- Whilst the drone hovered, the bolt was removed and replaced with another length or cord .. and the drone used to raise it up through the tree.
- once the “knot” was at the level of the stricken drone, I used my MP to carefully “drape” the cord over the offending brach, and flew the drone back to within reach
- a swift “tug” proved the cotton being the weak link.
- I now had 40m of cord looped over the offending branch, and the two ends in my hands - heft shaking of the branch then took place, and the Mini fell to the ground.
I did initially wonder if I needed to do all that, and with the bolt through the offending branch I hoped it might have snagged enough to use just that and tugging on the cord .. but the bolt came free almost immediately, so back to the original plan.
Being able to get the cord next to the offending branch is really easily, the flying to get the cord draped over it was a little bit more tricky .. but all done on one battery.
Certainly beats chucking things multiple times (to 17m!!) and hoping that eventually get the right branch.