So your buddy accidentally crashes his quadcopter onto the roof of a tall building. He could probably go and ask the building owner for permission to grab it, but the thought of a rescue attempt using your own bird is a wee bit more exciting.
This is the situation recently faced by a couple of drone enthusiasts in Detroit. YouTuber “Random Axe” filmed the daring rescue effort, though it didn’t quite go according to plan.
With cops and security personnel looking on, Random Axe begins his mission by flying his copter over the building to check whether his friend’s crashed Phantom 3 machine is in a position from which it can realistically be rescued.
Having spotted it stranded in a retrievable location, he sets about attaching a rope and homemade grappling hook to his machine before sending it back to the accident scene.
After several attempts to grab the stranded Phantom 3, he eventually manages to hook it up off the ground. But it’s not quite mission accomplished.
As the two drones gain some altitude to move clear of the building, the winds really pick up and the situation starts to look a little tricky. And then, as the drones begin to descend together, the Phantom 3 hits the side of the building.
What happens next will not have pleased the the Phantom 3’s owner one bit. Why? Because the drone detaches from the hook, an unfortunate occurrence that sends it crashing to the ground … again.
Despite the heavy fall, the damage to the drone “wasn’t that bad,” according to the video maker. Even better, no one on the ground had the Phantom 3 land on their head.
Anyway, it seems like a happy ending was in store for the drone owner. According to his account, he took it back to the store, explained what’d happened and was offered a brand new replacement.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen a drone come to the rescue of another that’s crash-landed on a roof. Watch how this dude uses a Phantom 3 to rescue a Syma X5C drone that came a cropper a while earlier.
