Bye Bye Birdie – Bye Bye!
by Jack and Jude 18 Feb 2018 08:02 PST
Banyandah at Farm Cove © jackandjude.com
Very remote location salt water inlet – no communications – no humans nor infrastructure.
Planned Litchi waypoint mission one third completed when "System Error" reported and mission aborted. Bird stationary. Reloaded mission and bird began to return to first waypoint – not what I wanted so I paused mission and took control. All okay for first moments until I saw that it was going backward to controls, or so I believed. Plenty of power – 85%.
Tried to complete part of my planned flight best I could, but maybe it was my frizzled nerves 15 metres above saltwater, because it did not seem to be responding to my stick movements, so initiated RTH. Big mistake I think although I have done this once before when over water, and cancel out when the bird got nearly back to home.
The home location (boat) had shifted so Mavic flew past. I cancelled RTH or so I thought and began to fly back to boat where I descended to about seven or eight metres using controls then started getting into position to hand catch. While moving across the deck, heard "Landing" and looked to see the craft a metre or two above the water. Pushed sticks in panic. But she splashed.
Sank in seven metres of dark tannin stained water, viz nearly zero.
Spent the rest of day dragging a grapple across last known position.
Zeus smiled down on last cast when nearly dark, a sodden slightly muddy bird came up dripping saltwater.
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