Having a drone flying or hovering very close to you usually is not pleasant (if you do not know the pilot). You do not know what pilots intentions are. You don’t know what pilots capabilities are. If this happens in your very private space, such as your garden or a pool, it is a serious invasion of privacy.
Rightfully so, you have many reasons to be angry. And, especially in countries with high crime rate, like South Africa, it raises the question – have criminals caught up with the technology and are planning to rob my house?
A while ago I wrote post about what can legally be done to, or with a drone invading your space. Few of my readers didn’t take to well to it, apparently forgetting the key word there – which is LEGALLY. Today’s post is not about what you can or cannot do, but about possible reasons why the pilot might be doing the things they are doing.
It still does not make it right. In no way I am justifying such flying (and I do not fly like this). I’m just some providing some logic for the behaviour.
Responsibility (or… lack thereof)
I have to admit, I met some very irresponsible pilots. Usually the begginers, that didn’t know rules and capabilities of their drones. But even those types usually do not mean any harm or invasion, even when (apparently) they are trying to land in your garden. Typically, they will use your garden as a safe “recovery place” if they do have to land somewhere they did not expect. It is safer to land in someones’ garden than on the road after all, isn’t it?
But why do they have to land at all?
There is one predominant reason why this happens – typically it is that they are running out of battery life, and the piece of a nerve wreck on the other side of the remote is trying to find a safe place to land. Having a choice between street and someones garden, this really is a no brainer… Landing on streets means higher probablility of theft or damage to the drone, if it gets hit by a car. If someone takes the drone, there really is no way recovering it as only the last position before complete loss of battery life will be stored and transmitted to the owners app. After than, it’s gone, baby, gone! If it lands in someone’s garden, there is chance of recovering it by being very, very nice to the owner of the garden…
How will I know that the drone is really not spying?
Yes, there are some spying pervs as well. Those ones make the bad name to the rest of us. But you can easily see, if the drone is legitimately in trouble looking at it’s lights. When a drone is low on battery, the back lights will be flashing red (typically those lights alternate between green in GPS mode and yellow in non GPS mode, while front lights are red). If the drone is already landing, the battery is depleted so much, that pilot’s control is literally limited to some very small movements only to adjust landing position. In such state the RTH button does not work anymore, so pilot has no choice.
What led to this situation?
In most cases pilot’s error. Most of the „emergency landings” are caused overestimation of ones capabilities or drone performance, especially in windy conditions. Some are caused by small hardware or software glitches (such as dropping the RC connection or the fly app crashing). The fact that the drone is landing in controlled manner and not crashing, is a good indicator that there is nothing wrong with the drone itself (despite of what the pilot might think…). I have had emergency landing once. Luclily it was not in someones garden. It was on uninhabited island. I was flying off the boat and lost map, RC connection and video fed. While RC connection and video feed came back, map did not and I was lost in the middle of the lake with battery depleting fast. I only had one choice – it was to head for the land as fast as I could.
What can or should you do?
Best is to let the drone land safely. Bring the drone in (in case it rains) and wait for the pilot to come to see you. If the pilot knows how to trace the drone ( if they have not lost the full control) it will happen relatively soon, within couple of hours at most. If the pilot lost control, it will take longer as they will have to analyse logs from the app. Some pilots do not know how to do that and will surely ask for help on forums.
If the pilot does not contact you in few days, they probably lost the track of the drone. This may happen if drone lost GPS signal or experienced compass error. If you would like to return the drone, check the drone itself – there may be contact info on the actual drone. You may also check the SD card for images – depending on the drone, they may be geotagged with location. If there is none – you can check the local drone groups or local lost and found (or police).
Can you keep the drone?
I guess this depends on how much effort you put into finding the owner and what sort of person you are. I don’t think (I may be wrong) there is anything preventing you from keeping and using the drone (if you can pair it with RC or phone). Whether this is right or wrong it is another story… I would attempt to find the owner and only if that failed, I would probably fly the drone.
I don’t think I would ever think about such drone as “mine” though and would be ready to return it any time. With the drone remote ID laws caming soon, I don’t think this problem will exist for much longer though!