Rant: That site survey drone that crashed on my dig last Thursday

Honestly, I'm still mad about it. We were mapping out that old Roman villa site near Bath when the drone just lost signal and smacked into a tree. It was a $1,200 model we'd only used three times before. Spent the rest of the afternoon digging pieces of plastic out of the brush instead of actual artifacts. Field director just shrugged and said 'that's why we budget for this stuff.' Has anyone else had equipment fail right in the middle of a critical survey?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_kevin1d ago

Man that sucks, I feel you. After my drone took a dive into a pond during a field survey I started keeping a spare battery in my pocket and always flying with a visual observer now. It's not perfect but at least someone can yell if they see me heading for a tree.

davis.mia1d ago

Hmm actually the visual observer is more about maintaining VLOS than avoiding trees specifically, but yeah having someone to yell at you definitely helps.