It must have really sucked at the time. You let your buddy have a go on your quadcopter and he goes and crashes it on a neighbor’s roof. For whatever reason, you’re unable to get onto the roof to retrieve it, leaving you to wonder if you’ll ever see your flying machine again.
This is apparently what happened to Oregon resident Harrisen Howes. In a story recounted online, Howes says that a couple of months after his Syma X5C drone hit the roof, he bought a new remotely controlled quadcopter – a DJI Phantom 3 Professional. It was then that he had the idea to attempt a daring rescue of his stranded drone.
Howes doesn’t say why the roof was inaccessible. It may simply be that he doesn’t get on well with his neighbors and didn’t want to alert them to the drone’s presence for fear of never seeing it again. But truth be told, trying to rescue a drone with another drone has to be a whole lot more fun than knocking on a door and asking for it back.
Howes this week posted a video of his rescue effort, which he manages to pull off without damage to either flying machine, the house, or himself. Brilliant.
As you can see in the footage above, using little more than a coat hanger hook tied to a piece of string, Howes carefully maneuvers his camera-equipped DJI Phantom close to the crashed drone, all the while monitoring his progress on a display. A slight breeze and general movement makes it difficult for the hook to take, but after some serious dangling and a little bit of patience, the the two drones connect, allowing the rescue copter to take the smaller machine back to its owner. Mission accomplished.
Howes works as a freelance camera operator, though he might want to add “drone rescuer” to his list of skills following his recent triumph.
