Losing drone

Dear pilots, as always, Orqa is listening to the community.


We would love to hear about your experience with losing drones.
How many times did that happened to you? And in which cases?
Which solution are you using for preventing that? If so, how would you do it better?
What does the FPV hobby miss in this very case?

What do you think could help in this case?
How many of you would like to have something that would prevent that?

Looking forward to getting feedback from you guys!


2 people like this

could this by any chance be related to the pic in this thread? :D

I run buzzers with their own little lipo on my freestyle rigs, so even if the battery gets ejected I will at least have it buzzing. I also log GPS coordinates to my Radio as a last resort.

On my racers I just rely on Dshot beeping.

So far I have been able to retrieve every quad. But I fear the day when this will not be possible.

I, very fortunately, haven't lost a quad yet due to being physically unable to find it. I have only crashed quads and broken them. 

I do run buzzers on as many quads as I can and esc beepers on those that I can't.

Never lost a drone, but almost. Used my VTX signal with patch antenna to localise the direction. Finally I found it back as the esc dshot were beeping. Since then I have hellgate buzzers (with internal lipo) and on some quads a GPS. 


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So my first quad was lost due to me loosing all output on an old pair of googles im horrific at flying line of sight and was blinded by the sun when i first pulled my googles off also as a novice i had not set up a failsafe... still to this day never found the bugger RIP probs the most expensive drone i bought aswel lol now i use a buzzer and often dont fly to far away due to fear of not being able to retrieve my quad i dont have gps etc but would love to be able to find my drone with the orqa app! Im not sure if its possible for the rapid fire to translate signal strength to a location like the tbs hardwear or even better but a visual representation would be next level for me.. in an ideal world a pin drop for stuff over x amount of distance and then move to a radar style display where a dot would ping when ur phones pointing in the right direction.. and wirhout wanting the world haha able to understand if my drone is above me stuck in a tree so u could figure out its general vicinity within said tree.. i want a tracker lol a fully fledged paranoid wheres my daughter style tracker goverment grade thanks orqa x

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Hallo Habe öfter schon gesucht und fiel finden können mit denn DVR ! Es müsse immer ein Backup mit laufen, auch wenn man vergessen hat das dvr zu starten!

i lost my drone in the middle of the peshtigo river in feb of last year, while the water surface was as smooth as glass.  as i was on my return route and low on battery, not realizing how low i was, i just skimmed the surface enough to tumble.  water was about 50F.  got a boat and did a few dives about 10-11ft down to no avail.  a month later, i swam out and, during a downpour, and found it on the 7th dive.  the battery was the only casualty.  reviewed the go pro footage, i could hear the paddling of the boat and me diving into the water from the month before.  the drone stopped no_rx beeping just as i rowed overhead, apparently I took to long getting the boat in the water and already being low on bat (about 12 minutes of esc beeping and vtx finished it off).  i bet i would have heard the beeping if i had gotten down there faster (it was loud on the gopro)!  truly epic feeling to find my rooster after going through a month of agony!  that said, i would love to not have to go through that again, if possible.  lesson here:  waterproof your drones and don't be afraid to go for a swim.  i salvaged $300 from the drink!


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one time i stuck in a tree, beeing that bad at tree climbing, an injured man (broken arm!) climbed up in a jiffy and rescued my "flamewheel f450", it was a LOS player. Another day with another quad, my gps/sonar/bluetooth(EZ-GUI)/got-it-all-but-fpv stuffed LOS kwad, was a spektrum - PPM powered TBS ALIEN 500 frame (DIY naze made of stm32 bluepill board) and on it's maiden with a brand new 4.000mAh 3S LiPo the bluetooth module was still connected to my phone which propably had the PPM-signal get corrupted...it was a fly-away. Powered of my DX6i tx and the kwads failsafe kicked in => slowly sinkin and i had to recover the kwad, but i had to pack all my other stuff to get there but never found it in the tall grown field (about 2m high wheat or something). I searched 3h that day and the weekend 2x 4h on sat & sun (16h about 1h with my gopro facing down and watching my 3,5" LCD). I wish i had a beeper connected or something like that.
Never lost a drone, but don't fly long range..lol

Flew my Tinyhawk-S over the chalet and the video went to snow as I was 25m high, only to reappear filming leafs somewhere in the area... the beeper on that thing is close to useless.

A friend of mine ended up finding it in the neighbour's backyard after 40 minutes of looking around in the forest trying to aim the antenna with a goggle and an FPV watch, not a fun time :P

Didn't lost a quad yet but of you usually fly with friends, with the FPV.connect, somthing could be useful.
Can we dowload the last DVR with the ORQA App and be able to select 15s of the DVR ?
We could send this lite file to friends via MMS/whatsapp/messenger (becvause the all DVR is around 300Mo)
So everyone can see the DVR from their phone ?

Funny to see this article because I just lost a drone yesterday. A new Geprc phoenix. My Orca Goggles blacked out. Its partly my fault to be honest. My goggles were always blacking out on the third pack (about ten minutes of flying). Upon advice of Luka from Orca, I updated all firmware, goggles and rapidfire. i was supposed to be just testing the goggles (after the firmware upgrade). Usually when it blacks out I just disarm and let the quad fall. However this time when it blacked out I was in a steep fast dive (I got abit excited), I tried to level the quad, switch to angle mode (while blind), to lessen the crash. So all in all, i flew blind for about three seconds. However the battery must have ejected, and I could not use beeper. Searched for over an hour but its gone. Anyway just submitted a second ticket for this problem. Lets hope Orca gets this problem fixed ASAP. Also definately considering a second pair of goggles for  back up. 

#1 is not having DVR. So having DVR auto/continuous ala fatshark would be great!


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+1 for auto/continuous DVR ala fatshark one. Many times helped me finding my drones.

I have a GPS chip thingy on my drone, and longs/lats being fed to my OSD, which should be recorded to my DVR no problem. My GPS only worked for one day. No idea why. Have to trouble shoot it and maybe get a new one. 
I only lost my drone once so far. The bell of the motor decided to go on it's own little trip, and my quad vanished into a leafy treed area. I have motor beeping on a switch, so I used that to find the quad. It was an eagle-eyed groundskeeper who spotted the motor bell and it's attached prop. Motor bell has since been returned unharmed to it's place on the motor, and quad still works fine. I will be getting self powered buzzer for my next build though, as well as a GPS module. I can only break one at a time, right? 

I mostly fly my mobula though. That thing is doomed. I am way too reckless with it, and it is too small and quiet. It will get lost eventually. 

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