If you’re looking for something to perk you up after a long weekend (you took the Monday off, be honest), and you’re the kind of person that revels in others’ misfortunes (again, be honest), drone crash videos could do the trick.

These are especially prevalent around Christmas, when inexperienced pilots get their new toys and take to the air, leading to what has been dubbed #DroneCrashmas.

You’ll have to go looking for your own crash videos, but it is pretty interesting to note how prevalent the dreaded ‘first flight crash’ is in South Africa.

Business Insider SA crunched the numbers:

About one in ten rookie drone pilots are destroying their craft on the very first flight, numbers from a repair specialist suggest – and many are doing so in stupid and preventable ways, while not being covered by insurance.

By current best estimates there are now between 40,000 and 50,000 drones in South Africa, as entry-level prices continue to drop. Almost all those drones are flown by amateurs; there are just 663 Remote Piloted Aircraft Systems in the country, according to the 2018 State of the Drone Report.

One in 10 people wrecking their drone on the first flight is pretty bonkers. Imagine if 10% of new car owners drove off the showroom and crashed before they had made it home?

It’s not hard to see why many insurance companies here in South Africa, including some big names, refuse to insure drones.

Drone repair company Fixology has its hands full, and pilot error is by far the leading cause of a visit to the repair shop:

In the first eight months of 2019, Fixology booked in around 1,200 damaged drones.

The company’s Nathan Appel says as many as 75% of the accidents they see are due to pilot error.

This includes owners testing out their drones indoors without a stable GPS signal, and not doing a proper preflight check before take off.

“It’s not uncommon for hobbyists to forget to ensure propellers and batteries are properly fitted before flying off,” says Appel.

Even the seemingly failsafe technology of a ‘return to home’ functionality, which is now standard in most drones, can’t prevent people from wrecking their new toys.

Some drone pilots set the return GPS location to a moving object, such as a boat – which means that when the drone returns to home, the pilot has moved on.

“Many accidents happen because pilots don’t wait for a full satellite signal on the drone before takeoff, resulting in no return to home location being logged on the device,” says Appel.

I know there’s a lot to consider, and flying a drone is no walk in the park, but humans never cease to amaze me.

Another common cause of crashes is battery issues, when one fails to consider how much power is needed to bring the drone back home and down to earth.

To be fair, not every crash is the fault of the pilot:

“Manufacturing faults, electronic parts malfunctioning, and faulty batteries can cause the props to stop in mid-air,” says Appel. “And using a non-recommended smart device to fly the drone, and getting a bad feed, can also result in blank screens and crashing”.

Survive your maiden drone flight and you could be one of those that doesn’t end up at a repair shop, although something is bound to go wrong somewhere along the line.

It’s three months to the day until South Africans around the country unwrap their new toy from under the Christmas tree, so don’t be one of those who become a #DroneCrashmas statistic.

Good luck, budding pilots.

[source:businessinsidersa]