Got ATTACKED!! (stalked and attacked!)

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Great story!

As the old pilots say, "Everything that flies has an expiration date." Looks like today wasn't it for your drone.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Perfectly natural, Hawks are a bird of prey after all.

Have you seen what they are doing in the Netherlands and Holland?

Cops Training Eagles to Take Down Drones





Holland Training EAGLES to Take Out Drones



Shouldn't be too long and the cops and some businesses will be doing this in the U.S. if they aren't already.

a reply to: RedmoonMWC

Seems pretty mean to the birds, those drones BITE and they bite HARD. I wouldn't want to grab one of these things in the air, not even my pro 3. Man, that' thing would put a fella in the hurt-locker quick!!

Hell, some of those Mavics and bigger, well, you might as well take on an airborne chainsaw!

edit...some of the 'kid' ones maybe, but some of these big drones aren't something to mess with, for real!!

I crashed my Phantom one night just being stupid. I actually landed it and then didn't shut it down properly. It jumped up, flipped over and started digging a hole in hard packed sand at full throttle!!

This thing will climb more than 500 fpm. You throttle up, and it SHOOTS skyward. I've had it up in 30mph winds (which is 7mph over recommended), in hail and rain...it'll still come back from 2 miles out. Can't even see it until it gets within 1-200 yards (just have to watch the GPS map).........at NIGHT!!

This thing is all-weather, all-the-time!!

P.S. Batteries do get hot though after flights like that...gotta' let 'em cool down before re-charging.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
Hi Discman,

Exciting, can you post any video. Be great to see your property and the attack mate!

Kind regards,

bally

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I cant even count how many times ive had to land due to birds attacking one of my drones.

Last week I was doing a stock pile survey at the mine.
I could hear the ravens going bonkers. I looked up and sure enough a black mass of birds were swooping down at my uav.
One of the little buggers made contact and sent my craft in a spin. I was only 150 meters AGL, but plenty high enough for me to recover.
As i came in for a my landing the birds followed. I could see white droppings almost like rain, coming down in a wave towards me. I thought for sure I was going to get covered.
I hit the RTH button so the drone would autoland, while I made a break for the truck.
Thankfully made it out of there with out a single dropping or any damage to the craft.

I usually have a spotter with me to keep an eye on the sky while I do my surveys.
This time I was solo and almost had a filthy outcome!

a reply to: Bigburgh

Tell him to set his RTH height to 100 ft.
No matter the height hes currently flying at, the drone will ascend to 100 ft AGL and RTH point at that height until its directly above the take off location.
The Inspire 2 is NOT a bird you want to gamble with. The parts cost an arm and a leg, not to mention the initial cost of the craft to begin with.

Even monkey's hate drones. Just look at the expression on it's face, lol

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Shouldn't be mesing about in a Hawks territory.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Silver lining, you got to see a beautiful bird in action.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: HappyFisherman

that 2nd video is very interesting, because the eagle carried the drone all the way to the ground. it was too heavy, but it never let go. I saw something similar to that today; the drone stabilized one time (sideways) and stayed there for a moment. I couldn't figure out why. The I saw the shadow of the wing in this video...the bird was holding it.

I still had two motors running at the time, so I gunned it (and the video went nuts). The drone must have flipped over and hit the bird, probably scared it...and it let go. Then I got all (4) motors back (after cancelling about (20) critical alarms). I knew the drone was falling, so I just let go. No sense trying to control an upside down, backwards, drone (it's impossible). I centered the controls and just waited for the crash. Fortunately, it didn't happen, but the bird wasn't done yet.

P.S. when I watched that 3rd video, my 1st thought was "what an amateur, with a crappy K-mart copter"...then I continued watching. The flips, the free falls...that guy was GOOD!!

I guess hawks just hate these things! Mine is big and slow. It takes great video, but it also gets bird of prey attention. And they're clever birds...they don't attack when you can see them, they attack when you can't.

This was great, in the second video "2 hawks kidnapp...", after the scene when you see the bird Kinda up close, Before the attack, in flight, you see a bird shape outline soaring over the trees down below...

The pilot angles the camera downward to follow the flight path of this bird...

Aaaaand WHAM!!

Turns out the "bird" down below he was tracking with his camera swivel feature, was just the shadow... the actual bird was Above him, and the shadow he was seeing, was actually the shadow of the bird as it's coming right at him. So, in a way, he filmed his own attack, just, from a different angle... where he could see the silhouette of his pursuer n)l(

If you could also see the shadow of the drone, I would've said it was some strange form of 3rd person perspective, done from the perspective of the 1st person. But since the 1st person could not see itself, it remains a 1st person perspective, within a 1st person perspective...

Good for the hawk. Drones are annoying AF. No offense, I'm sure your drone was special and exceptional.

Seems nature doesn't like drones......I don't care much for drones either .....no offense to you personally flyingclaydisc ,....you have your own property with land and space, ...so I can see owning a drone there........but where I live and have lived it's really annoying when someone is buzzing their drone around your house and in your windows....I hate it. .....On a separate note, maybe the bird has a nest nearby and you buzzed it. Maybe some babies somewhere ?

a reply to: kosmicjack

I didn't care much for them either...until I saw what the new evolutions were capable of. When it's calving season, I can cover 1,000 times the real estate in less than 1/100th of the time. Now, we've already calved this year (all but one), but still when you see something strange like a lone little one missing from the rest, etc., I can go out and find it in short order (usually outside the fence somewhere). I can fly miles of fence in just minutes, whereas riding that same fence would take better than an hour on the ATV with all the terrain. Don't have to worry about the terrain with the drone, or the mud, or the snow drifts, or anything really...well, except for Mr. / Mrs. Hawk I guess.

Sometimes I think Murphy's Law was written by a rancher. The propensity for some screwball thing to happen is directly proportional to the ugliness of the weather, the distance from the house and the lack of time to react (because there's someplace else important to get to or something to do). During calving season (Mar/Apr) we used to go by the calving tables to determine when they'd be born, and now we get close using those, but the real determining factor is the weather. When the bad weather rolls in that's when they're going to throw a calf...in the furthest, most inaccessible place you can find. Seriously. In all the years we've had cattle, I can remember exactly "two" calves which were born in daylight on a normal, sun shiny day, in a pasture which could be seen from the house. The rest of the time it's down at the bottom of some steep draw, as far away as possible, when it's snowing and sleeting sideways, at 3:00am on a Tuesday...when I've got some kind of a meeting at 8:00am that I just can't miss. Now, we can use the drone(s) to keep track of the momma's before they calve and know where to find them when they don't show up. Even at night.

Plus, once the cows calve we can keep an eye on the little ones to see when they get out of the fence (which is always). For the first few weeks Momma will lay down with calf to nap, putting calf between her and the fence. Calf will inevitably roll over and when it wakes up it has rolled under the bottom wire, and gets up outside the fence. That, or their natural curiosity will cause the mischievous ones to escape. They usually don't go far, but they can't figure out how to get back in either. We can spot these guys from miles off with the drone whereas before it would take hours on an ATV. To coin a term from a TV commercial...it's "priceless!"

So, at the end of the day, it's Mr./Mrs. Hawk who might need to be careful. They're not interrupting some kid's joyride with a drone, but an actual legitimate business operation. Fortunately though, attacks like this are pretty rare, and this was the first time I've ever experienced one. Probably more just coincidence both 'birds' happened to be in the same area at the same time. We'll see I guess.

a reply to: Macenroe82

This is a great idea actually! I usually use the map to RTH when I've lost sight of the drone, but one of these days I just know that's not going to work. Having the RTH set to someplace well above the ground would get the drone back to where you can see it and still land avoiding obstacles.

You know, I don't think I've ever even used my RTH feature just because of all the obstructions. Plus I usually take off and land from one of our flatbed trailers. I don't think the GPS is accurate enough to land on that mark. Getting it in the right general area, above the landing zone, would make it easy to land from there.

Only question I have is, how do you turn off the RTH feature after you invoke it, so you can land?

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

If your controller starts to blink yellow, that means there has been a lost link between the controller and drone.
In the DJI Go app, you can set the drone to RTH once a lost link has taken place and 3 seconds have gone by.
The drone will ascend to the RTH height you set in the app, and start to fly home.

IF a connection is not established once the drone is above the home point ( say your controller battery dies or something)
The drone will enter hover mode for 5 seconds before descending to the set home point.

The home point accuracy has improved 100x since it was first introduced.
My P3 will almost always land at the exact point it took off.

If you have reestablished a connection between the controller and drone, you can take over the controls at anytime by hitting the slider to cancel RTH.

To be safe, set your home point in an open area at least 10 meters x 10 meters. Then no matter what, you will be good for RTH landing.

BUT say you send your drone up, fly out 25 meters or something, then notice an error on screen.
If you hit the RTH button, the drone will not return to its take off point. It will actually start descending right where it is.

For some reason DJI has like a 30 meter RTH buffer. If your within that 30 meter circle from take off, the drone will just descend straight down upon RTH.
But if your outside that buffer, the drone will RTH and land at the same point of take off.

I hardly ever land on the ground anymore. I use a different app for my flights - Pix4d Capture App ( its for photogrammetry)
So when the drone is finished its flight mission it starts to RTH, but i take over the controls, descend to about 4 ft off the ground and let it hover.
Then i walk over and grab it out of the air with one hand and use my other hand to thumb the control down to shut off the props.

If you ever have any other questions drone related, dont be afraid to ask me!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

If you want to do some night flying or night photography check these out:

Lume Cube 1500 lumen

I have 2 of them. The come with brackets that mount right on the phantom landing gear.
You can control the brightness of them from the app while they are in the air or set it while on the ground.

I got them for lighting on one of my underground drone prototypes.
These bad boys throw light!!!

a reply to: Macenroe82

I get all that, and thanks, but that wasn't my question.

My question was, when you get to the 100 AGL RTH spot...how do you land AFTER that? In other words, how do you turn RTH off, and land manually from there?

Thanks

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

There's a button on your screen that will display "cancel RTH"
You will swipe that button to the right and it will cancel it out. The drone will stop where it is and hover.
Then you can take over again.

(4th paragraph in my post above.)

Made ass of self assuming drones couldn't go a mile.

Don't want to litter thread.