Watch This Poor Guy Lose $1430 Worth of Camera and Drone

Edit: I just think there are smart ways to take risks, and not all risks are equal or worthy of celebration. It's not like he's doing anything new here and uncovering hidden potential. People have been flying remote cameras on quads for years, and people know exactly what happens when you try to use wifi on a remote camera with control band on the same frequency. There are plenty of ways to innovate or break the mold without reinventing the wheel--he's just repeating the catastrophic mistakes others have already made and documented, without changing any variables that might make for a different outcome. It just doesn't sit well with me that there's an attitude among some that lack of understanding and basic research should be celebrated in the same way as real innovators and pioneers.

The only really smart thing he's doing here is doing all of these day-zero tests in an isolated environment away from other people, the only real risk was what happened - loss of equipment.
 
Peter Patricelli said:
let's see:
Chubad.....4 posts.....message: famous productive dude....you have got to take risks.

Arejay222......4 posts....message: famous productive dude....you have got to take risks.

COULD be a coincidence!

Hmmm..good point.... Maybe it's Jase Charvis or whatever it's name is going through fission! That's what amoebas do after all !
 
Even a bad example serves a purpose. Maybe some new Phantom owner will learn from this and not have a flyaway.
Glad the video was posted.
Good decisions come from experience. Experience often comes from bad decisions.
 
ElGuano said:
Edit: I just think there are smart ways to take risks, and not all risks are equal or worthy of celebration. It's not like he's doing anything new here and uncovering hidden potential. People have been flying remote cameras on quads for years, and people know exactly what happens when you try to use wifi on a remote camera with control band on the same frequency. There are plenty of ways to innovate or break the mold without reinventing the wheel--he's just repeating the catastrophic mistakes others have already made and documented, without changing any variables that might make for a different outcome. It just doesn't sit well with me that there's an attitude among some that lack of understanding and basic research should be celebrated in the same way as real innovators and pioneers.

The only really smart thing he's doing here is doing all of these day-zero tests in an isolated environment away from other people, the only real risk was what happened - loss of equipment.

PERFECT! After such a cogent assessment of the issue, nothing further needs to be written on the topic. Well said, sir!

PF
 
The thing is the guy is a great photographer but a lousy multi pilot lol, a little research and he could have succeeded with the shot or simply practicing in a safer location first. The good thing is he took risks which only effected him and his wallet or next insurance policy. Some people have more dollars then sense :lol: but it does work as a great example for others. I'm sure some will see that and try to understand why not to do so and maybe save them some gear or causing an issue with someone else.

Though the guy could simply have read a manual and understood the issues he would have especially going into a hostile environment and making his flight a worst case scenario in every way possible. I take risks but make sure I know the risks I am taking and do all I can to put the odds in my favor going into something completely with your eyes closed is rather stupid especially if he was trying to do something around people or in a built up area.
 
I must be confused. Why does everyone care what this guy did? He is allowed to do what he wants with his money and time. I could see if you are mad that he is throwing trash into the ocean but who cares about the crash. He tried to use something without the knowledge or understanding of the product and he ended up with bad results. He could have read the manual or this forum or watched youtube videos but he doesn't have to do any of that. He can do what he likes with his phantom, its HIS. What is the deal with everyone talking about being "pilots" and all this. We are flying little toy quadcopters, not 757s. The guy driving that little honda civic with all the plastic add on parts is not a race car driver, we are not pilots. We are a bunch of people who fly small toys (which we call drones or UAVs because toys are for kids and we are adults). The fact is the phantom is not that dangerous. Could it kill someone? Possibly if you dropped it off a sky scrapper and let if fall straight down. Otherwise if it crashes (even in a crowd) you might hurt one or two people tops. I have yet to see anyone on here post a link of footage they got while flying their phantom that has been in a movie or tv show (a commercial for DJI doesn't count) so technically all these "professionals" are people most of us have not and will not ever hear about. Perhaps we should all take a step back and not be so offended or up in arms when you see a "pilot" doing something bad and ruining your "industry". My nephew plays with legos, he is not an architect and when his lego castles topple over because he built them like an idiot, do you think a whole group of lego architects starts ranting and raving that he is a fool? No because no one cares. You purchased the product, its yours to do as you please. You put stupid stuff on the internet like crashing into the ocean or chasing cats or flying off a balcony in NYC, thats your choice and you can do what you want. The internet is filled with videos of people misusing products and doing dumb things. WHO CARES.

This forum is becoming a ***** fest and everyone sounds like a bunch of old grumpy women. I don't know Adam but I highly doubt his intentions were to make a forum for guys to gossip and nag. Lets do away with the "that guys is an idiot" posts/topics and focus more on the helping and the DIY part of the forum. Let's talk about how to fix our toys and how to improve our toys.
 
I must be confused. Why do you care what people are saying about this guy did? They are allowed to do what they want with their time. I could see if you are mad that .....

:)

-- Roger
 
Ksc,
I suppose I might be one of the curmudgeons....but....
Do I care about him losing his money? No....but then HE DIDN'T LOSE HIS MONEY!
Do I care that he lost his equipment? No.....But...see above.
Do I care that he is an idiot for not testing over land FIRST......Not really....BUT.....
Do I care that he left a complex piece of electronic trash and source of heavy metal pollution at the bottom of a pristine Icelandic fjord or river....yeah....somewhat.....and I think the Icelanders might care about that too.
Do I care that he then publicly CELEBRATED and PROMOTED this feat as some noble "pushing the limits for the greater good of mankind".....and coincidentally creating insurance issues AND leaving trash where it does not need to be......ABSOLUTELY!!!

Had he flown over land (or retrieved his bird), smashed it into a thousand pieces, and then lamented his stupidity instead of celebrating and promoting it, had his "noble risk-taking" not been defended by two (maybe one) person...I doubt much would have been said. I might have thought to ask DJI to make the video required tutorial for all Phantom buyers....as an example of how NOT to mentally approach this complex bird.

Responsible and accountable flying decisions and risk-taking should be on all of our minds. I don't know how many copter-drones are being sold daily but seems to me this field is EXPLODING. Isolated and rare incidents of irresponsible flying...and the inevitable negative consequences....will become more common. I happened to have a conversation with my accountant yesterday who has an 800 size quad and his statement was, "I am just waiting for someone's drone to come down into a freeway or in front of a car and someone will swerve and there will be a crash and the legal reverberations will begin". There will inevitably be legal rules and regulations that will effect ALL of us. How restrictive they are will to some extent depend on how responsible and accountable WE are.
 
And the problem I see is that potentially laws will be written to prevent resposable pilots from flying there because of what he did.
 
You are forgetting that RC helicopters and cars have been around for years and years. Both of those experienced a huge boom. They did not make any laws against those.

As far as him losing someone else's money, still not any of our business. Him promoting his stupidity is also not out business. The idiots on the show jackass promoted and got rich off their stupidity. That's their choice. We are the one making this guy important. If people watched the video and said "he's dumb" and moved on, he wouldn't have any publicity. Just like jackass, we the people who watched it made them famous. We are promoting bad behavior by talking about it. You have people posting topics like "I should be arrested" or "how bad is what I just did" with videos of them being dumb and we are encouraging them by talking about it. They are looking for attention and we are giving it to them. It's the same way as "justsomeguy". His thread was one of the most active threads and he loved every second of it. We made his day. Let's not make this guys day too.
 
Smokers Purgatory said:
Normally I feel pain when I watch people crash their quads but this guy had me laughing my arse off. You can see it coming when the first attempts at takeoff failed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U8iHn_2l0U

This will be one of the videos that the FAA will use to justify very strict rules if/when it comes to it. Remember, those are sidewalks at the base of every one of those building. A 2 pound quad falling onto somebody's head was a real possibility if one of his props broke.
 
After spending the past 20 minutes or so reading through this thread, a few things have really stood out for me. Sometimes, I think we give FAR too much credit to those engaging in less than ideal behaviour...or in this case perhaps I should say engaging in behaviour that many here don't approve of for a variety of reasons....we give far too much credit to these individuals for single handedly swaying a legislative entity...in this case the FAA...to crush our collective hobby into the dust under the weight of restrictive legislation.

I've seen his work before. Some of it is shockingly good. None of it has EVER influenced ANY decision by a legislative entity one way or another. To that end, I would challenge anyone here to concoct the single DUMBEST thing you can come up with to do with a multi-rotor aircraft...say, launch it off of a balcony in midtown Manhattan, crash it into a building and drop it on the head of a businessman below, and see how much that DOESN"T influence a dang thing.

I remember a number of years ago when a tragic accident happened involving an R/C helicopter. The pilot was, IIRC, practising nose in hovering quite close to where he was standing, when he lost control of his aircraft. I believe that he was a student, flying off a buddy box. When he lost control of the heli, it struck the qualified pilot in the throat, nearly decapitating him.

For MONTHS there was extensive debate and dire warnings from anyone with an opinion (meaning everyone) that the sport was doomed; sell off your gear before it was legislated to a point where it was impossible to use. Many did. Sell that is. Some of us picked up some awfully good deals too. The end result of that was nothing. Nada. Zip, zero. Nothing happened, no legislation was drafted, nor even considered. The same thing will NOT happen here.

Many, many things will trigger a legislative response from the FAA. This isn't one of them, nor will it be. They have a mandate to ensure the safety of the travelling public is maintained, to be sure. If they can make a few bucks out of that, even better. The FAA will bring down some level of legislation to cover the commercial use of UAV's...it will without a doubt involve some form of licence, that will, without a doubt, involve a fee to acquire. THAT will be the driver, not isolated instances of foolish behaviour.

if you took every single UAV owner in North America, the total number would be an infinitesimally small, fraction of a percent of the total population. If every single one of us were to be out flying and doing something incredibly foolish with our multis at the same time, the chances of you or a loved one being negatively impacted by that behaviour would almost certainly be unmeasurable, the odds would be so small. We simply don't matter that much...there isn't enough of us TO matter that much.

Maybe that will change. There will be more UAV operators in future; it's fun...why not? But c'mon...really? FOUR pages of debate over a fool and his money being parted?
I think I'd rather be doing something else..flying, perhaps?
 
We have an honest difference of opinion.
I agree that "isolated instances of foolish behavior" will not draw a legal response (unless it brings down a commercial airliner full of people). Such behavior is already legally covered by general "reckless endangerment" and other non-specific laws about being a public nuisance or danger.

You are guessing that the size drone world and incidences of publicly annoying to dangerous and accident causing behavior will never rise to the level that the public/legal sector reacts with SPECIFIC limitations. I would point out that there is ALREADY a significant instance in which there HAS been a law passed.

The state of Texas just this year passed a law making it illegal for UAV to fly over or photograph private property WITHOUT specific permission. And that includes NON-commercial flying. LOTS of people would start getting upset and be very sensitive about drones carrying cameras flying over their homes and property, for good reason. One good case of thieves using a drone in a suburb to case out property and backyards would push the button hard.

It all depends on the FREQUENCY and egregiousness of the "isolated instances of foolish behavior". There is a threshold for both frequency and egregiousness (such as bringing down a commercial airliner) which would trigger specific laws and no-fly zones. You are suggesting that we not worry about where that threshold is. I am suggesting that we don't know where that threshold is and it is better to not push the issue...and find out. It IS on the public and lawmakers minds and the Texas law is a real, specific, and chilling example of that.
 
Agreed. It doesn't take much complaining by constituents to get some ignorant local *******-politician to write an overly broad, ill-conceived, knee-jerk-reaction ordinance which will effectively ground sport quad fliers. It has happened in so many other instances it's hard to count just how many freedoms have been lost, with hardly any public knowledge or debate.

Finding out the hard way - when some cop legitimately arrests you over a law you didn't know (nor could imagine) would exist that made what you are doing illegal is not a fun way to start your day. :oops:

PF
 
I think the whole FAA discussion is a bit of a red herring--isn't this whole thing taking place at the other end of the globe? This is so fascinating/hilarious/infuriating because this guy is extremely skilled and accomplished in his craft, and is doing something simply moronic on a near universally-recognized level. I'm sure his whole cavalier attitude towards the entire episode is for the benefit of his Youtube audience, but it probably comes to no surprise (and a lot of amusement) to him that it raises hackles in some circles.
 
I'm not talking about the FAA. I'm talking about the damage that your state and local, jack-off, ******* legislators can do passing regional ordinances, not FEDERAL ones. The laws passed by those pin-heads count too, ya know.

PF
 
Peter Patricelli said:
We have an honest difference of opinion.
I agree that "isolated instances of foolish behavior" will not draw a legal response (unless it brings down a commercial airliner full of people). Such behavior is already legally covered by general "reckless endangerment" and other non-specific laws about being a public nuisance or danger.

You are guessing that the size drone world and incidences of publicly annoying to dangerous and accident causing behavior will never rise to the level that the public/legal sector reacts with SPECIFIC limitations. I would point out that there is ALREADY a significant instance in which there HAS been a law passed.

The state of Texas just this year passed a law making it illegal for UAV to fly over or photograph private property WITHOUT specific permission. And that includes NON-commercial flying. LOTS of people would start getting upset and be very sensitive about drones carrying cameras flying over their homes and property, for good reason. One good case of thieves using a drone in a suburb to case out property and backyards would push the button hard.

It all depends on the FREQUENCY and egregiousness of the "isolated instances of foolish behavior". There is a threshold for both frequency and egregiousness (such as bringing down a commercial airliner) which would trigger specific laws and no-fly zones. You are suggesting that we not worry about where that threshold is. I am suggesting that we don't know where that threshold is and it is better to not push the issue...and find out. It IS on the public and lawmakers minds and the Texas law is a real, specific, and chilling example of that.

That may be; we may have a difference of opinion but I don't think it's THAT different. A couple of things I should point out...firstly, I am not in the U.S., I am in Canada. Our "sensitivities"to these sorts of things are MUCH mellower, generally speaking than those in the U.S.

Second: I spent almost four decades in the aviation industry. The possibility of interaction between any of the aircraft we operate in class G airspace and any type of full size aircraft can only occur within a couple of miles of an airport. Beyond that, it simply won't happen unless the full size aircraft is operating at an illegal altitude.

Even the largest quad is highly unlikely to be anywhere near a commercial jet. Even if it were possible, a commercial jet vs. a multi will not result in the full size aircraft being brought down. Will Not happen. Not even with the multi being directly ingested into an engine. There are lots of video online from the FAA and other agencies around the world where a variety of things have been thrown, dropped or fired into a jet engine...it's quite enlightening; they're much tougher than you may think.

there are a million "what if's" that we can say "what if___________________happened with someone flying a multi?" R/C? helicopters have been around for many years, with the same flight capabilities as multi's, yet they have not initiated a similar respsone that is so often described by the "gloom and doom" brigade. I'm not suggesting for a second that as a group we should go out with the intent of active civil disobedience and force the hand of legislators. What I am saying is paranoia is insidious, and it seems to creep into this "debate" with increasing frequency.

If we aren't careful, there will be no need for any regulating by the FAA or other entities; we'll self regulate our hobby into farm fields in the middle of nowhere...in the dark. After all, this video showing someone rather foolishly overloading a Phantom and dropping it into the water off the coast of Iceland has resulted in pages of debate over why this bit of nonsense will turn into another nail in the coffin of sport flying UAV's.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it seems to me that lately there seems to be far more posted in almost all the forums about how much longer we're going to be allowed to fly instead of active discussion of all aspects of the hobby, and it wears thin for me after a time
 
PhantomFan said:
I'm not talking about the FAA. I'm talking about the damage that your state and local, jack-off, ******* legislators can do passing regional ordinances, not FEDERAL ones. The laws passed by those pin-heads count too, ya know.

PF

Same thing--I think the entire legislation discussion is a bit of a tangent. Yes, it matters. But what this dude did is far from dangerous or a legislation-magnet. Stupid? Probably. Ill-conceived and unresearched? Surely. But there are way more reckless "Jackass' copycats going on every day that are way more egregious taking up the attention of our legislators. The NYC guy bouncing his Phantom off buildings and crashing into a busy sidewalk, that I worry about. Chase Jarvis dunking his off an Iceberg? I just mourn for the health of the fjords and the brain cells lost watching that stunt.
 

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