5 min read
I’ve never trusted drones. I don’t understand them, and they can be unpredictable and dangerous. So before what I’m about to tell you happened, I was already fearful.
It was 2015, a week before a major event for the company I was working for. Those of you who know me personally will know which company. The rest of you will have to use your imagination. That you’re reading my blog must mean you have one, rather than doomscrolling your life away somewhere else.
I get a call from the self-styled CEO.
Ben, I want a drone to be part of the video coverage for the event.
But I know nothing about them. You need a licence and probably a load of other things, and the event’s in 5 days.
Make it happen! He harrumphed and hung up.
Fuck’s sake. Okay. Looking back, I spent my life in a continual state of anxiety and stress, and without it I didn’t know how to function. Having my back against the wall helped me focus. In a kinky way, I enjoyed it. But actually it’s very unhealthy.
I called my brother-in-law.
Matt, do you know about drones?
Yes mate, I love ‘em!
Great, I need one for an event at the end of this week and someone to fly it. Budget is about a grand for the drone.
Wicked. Yeah, mate, I can do it.
Legend.
Within the hour I’d picked a DJI Phantom II off Matt’s list and dusted off the company credit card. On Friday it arrived at work. I opened it.
Fuck. It was a self-assembly job.
I called Matt and he reassured me saying he knew that and was arriving soon to put it all together. What a guy. Later that day Matt arrived as promised. He was thrilled to see all the kit and enthusiastically went about opening all the boxes. Great, I thought. I can just leave him to it and start filming establishing shots at the venue.
A little while later I popped back to my office and came face to face with the drone floating in the middle of the room.
Holy shit Matt, that’s amazing, thank you so much!
We decided to take it outside on the track so he could practise filming with it. At this venue, strictly speaking, legally there was a very narrow window where this thing could be flown. On one side of the track was a train track, the other a busy dual carriageway. From memory the drone must be at least 20 metres from either of them. This left a narrow 20-metre-wide corridor in the middle of the track where it could be flown, plus no higher than 400ft.
I notified my colleagues who were running practice for customers ahead of the event start the next day. Matt followed the somewhat ritualistic start procedure for the drone that triangulated its location with satellites. Once he was happy with the combination of flashing lights on the drone going from red, to amber and then green, he pulled the controller’s toggles down to initiate the blades. The drone burst into action and Matt deftly manoeuvred the drone into the air. Amazing.
This was all going very well indeed; boss will be happy. I watched the drone go this way and that and I gently reminded Matt of the area where we were allowed to safely fly.
Then suddenly the drone shot upwards.
It went at quite a rate.
Matt?! I shouted.
He ignored me.
Matt?! I called again. Matt just shook his head, frantically toggling the controls. Nothing. My eyes must have been like saucers, much like the ones the drone would meet on its ascension into outer space.
I’m not doing that! He exclaimed.
Oh fuck. You must always have line of sight on a drone. I couldn’t see it. Matt said he could. My mind went straight to the length of the jail sentences I’d get, the self-styled CEO would get and my manager would get when:
The drone gets sucked into the engine of a commercial jet, killing the pilots, the passengers and the inhabitants of a quaint Northamptonshire village.
Or
The drone hits the train line’s power lines, causing a train crash and deaths.
Or
The drone crashes onto the A5, causing a pile-up with many deaths and injuries.
A mezze board selection of tragedy.
As I started to call my manager to warn him, Matt said,
It’s stopped!
I squinted and saw it high up, a dot just hovering. Then it began a steady descent, multicoloured lights flashing like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and landed itself right by Matt’s feet. Phew.
Turns out it had lost connection with the controller and, as a built-in safety measure, flown up to triangulate with satellites again and auto-land where Matt had set its home.
The rest of the weekend went without a hitch. Matt’s footage was great. Matt then provided drone coverage for many rounds of a certain karting championship for a couple of years. I never really practised. The few times I tried, it just sort of hovered and skimmed the ground a bit. My manager could fly it relatively well, although he did crash it once.
Then came the day of reckoning. A few years later, at a charity racing event at Brooklands, my manager was getting the drone shots while I filmed the event. Then the self-styled CEO found me. Why was my manager flying the drone and not me? He had other duties.
I tried explaining I wasn’t too good with it. No good.
Ben, I want that drone in the air in the next 10 minutes! He demanded.
Shit, okay Mr Bossman. I walked a safe distance from the circuit, put my headphones in and called Matt, who sadly couldn’t be there.
Matt, I’ve been told to fly the drone. Can you talk me through it?
No problem, listen carefully.
Green lights. All systems check. Toggles down, blades whizzing and… lift. Airborne. I thanked Matt and he hung up. A couple of minutes in, I was getting the hang of it, even getting creative with the shots. This drone flying thing isn’t as hard as I imagined.
Then it started to drift away. Oh god no. Away from the circuit, towards the corner of the big hotel at Brooklands. I tried every which way, but it wouldn’t respond. Not again, I can’t take it. Then I noticed it was heading for a balcony, and on that balcony appeared to be some topless women. So not only was I about to invade their privacy, I was about to inadvertently film their breasts before chopping them off with the drone blades!
And just like last time, I panicked. I forgot where I was and marched towards the drone shouting my head off, straight past the barriers towards a live racetrack. That would have triggered a red flag, except I caught myself just in time. Then the drone stopped short of the balcony and started to come back. Nothing to do with me. And then, magically, it was back under my control.
I flew it back, out of sight. It was then I realised I had no idea how to land the thing. I got it as low as I could and sort of crash-landed it. It bounced and fitted on the floor before the blades sort of puttered out, by which point it was upside down anyway. I turned the GoPro off, probably wouldn’t use the footage of breasts or crash landing in the edit I thought.
I walked back to race control. My manager asked,
All okay?
Oh yes, got some great shots, but the batteries are done now and I have all I need. I lied as my hidden sweat patches started to dry.
Never again, I promised myself.
But that was just the beginning of my problems with that drone! More soon.
Thanks for reading.
— B
If you enjoyed this, buy me a coffee.
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