Friendly reminder for safety the lifespan of your drone & aerial equipment: check your props, or propellers! I narrowly avoided a disaster yesterday while filming for a client.
I landed my drone on a hillside with a bit of a steep grade (arrogant move) and although the landing was fairly harmless, the drone tipped a bit at the end. I gave it a quick glance over and quickly judged that everything was fine and in working order. I set the drone back up right, gave the props a quick test whirl and sent it back in to the air. Immediately it fired off to the left at about 5-6 feet in altitude, luckily no one or any structures were in its path. Quickly I sent the drone strait up in to the air to avoid some oncoming trees and foliage.
At this point the drone was up in the air but behaving erratically and not responding properly to specific directions. Luckily I was able to calculate how it was responding and guided it back down to landing. Upon further inspection, I found about 2/3 of an inch of the tip on one of the props was chipped off. I was amazed that the flight wasn’t even more precarious!
In this case, disaster was avoided, but it could have been pretty foul.
Drone Lesson: always check your props before every flight, even if nothing seems to have gone array.