Good Morning guys and gals,

i'll get straight to the point.

I was foolishly having a peek down Eldon Hole with my drone... you can probably guess the rest of the story. Yes, it ended in disaster and the drone is now at the bottom 

I'm sure some of you will possibly be thinking it's the best place for a drone to end up. I appreciate they can be divisive but we all have our own little passions and escapes in life

I don't know what i was thinking and the drone itself is a goner. However, i would really like to be able to recover the memory card if possible. It's very upsetting to potentially have lost some great memories with that card.

I know its a long shot but by any chance is anyone planning a trip to Eldon Hole in the near future? If so, i would love to be present if possible or at the very least whilst you're down there could you please keep an eye out for the drone? I would be so very grateful  :hug:

Please get in touch if you can possibly help

Thank you

Not the first drone to go down Eldon Hole It must attract them!

I'd contact the DCA.

https://www.thedca.org.uk/home/contacts

Specifically the Projects Officer Pete Knight

Ian B.

Tbh suss are most likely going to be taking loads of Freshers down in the next few weeks I'm sure they'll pick it out if someone doesn't get to it before then

Perhaps this is a lesson in why you don't fly drones on private land without permission and outside of the line of sight. Your lucky one was down there at the time. Having had to "educate" several drone "pilots" on why not flying out of LOS or near people (in one case was leading a VS with ground fall potential)l is a bad idea, leave the bloody thing down there is my opinion.

Could grab it for you this evening if it?s still down there.

Tseralo said:

Perhaps this is a lesson in why you don't fly drones on private land without permission and outside of the line of sight. Your lucky one was down there at the time. Having had to "educate" several drone "pilots" on why not flying out of LOS or near people (in one case was leading a VS with ground fall potential)l is a bad idea, leave the bloody thing down there is my opinion.

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Bloody Drone Police.

I'll let you know when I'm next flying my drone down Eldon Hole so you can try educating me.

Mark

[warning]Let's keep things civil please.[/warning]

Was it an African or European drone?  Was it laden or unladen? This will help those who are wise in the ways of science to understand further.

Was it an African or European drone?

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It was probably a Chinese drone, so the swallow formula would not apply in this case.

And here was I thinking this was thread about lost bees.

If it was, and he was visiting with one of his drones... that'd make him the Queen?

[warning]... And on topic![/warning]

I?m not likely to be out for two weeks unless I go for a sneaky midweek trip, though eldon was one of the handful of trips me and Neil have done midweek this year. But I?ll be around the weekend of the SUSS Halloween weekend (30th-31st Oct), between us, SUSS and other Derbyshire cavers someone should be able to collect.

If anyone wants the code for the (TSG) hut as a central location to drop the drone let me know.

Hayesmr are you interested in going caving, do you want an easy trip to see if you like it? Anywhere from ?1-?5 if your interested?

Drone has been retrieved. Surprisingly I found it intact on a muddy ledge next to the second rebelay on the West Wall. Battery had sailed all the way down the the bottom and wasn?t in a very good way. Will be interested to see if the drone still works after the owner has cleaned it up and dried it out.

Was the memory card OK?  Any good shots to post on the photo thread?

west wall?!? That must have been some narrow ledge!

It was an incredible stroke of luck that it didn?t go all the way down. The ledge wasn?t very big at all and it was the thick layer of mud that arrested the fall. Memory card was still inside and seemed to be un-damaged so maybe the thread author will post the footage once he?s gotten it. Even if it doesn?t work again, the fact that I didn?t have to sift through thousands of tiny pieces to find the card was a blessing.

I did tell him to lose a white drone next time as it wasn?t easy trying to spot a black one down there 

Though in all seriousness I think the impact of potentially losing ~?1000 of drone is enough to deter the pilot from making the same mistake again.

The majority of drone enthusiasts that I?ve met are sensible people who try to cause as little nuisance to anyone else as they can, like with every hobby a small number of outliers have soured public opinion in recent years. There are a lot of concerns around safety/privacy which are merited, but I?d like the think these are respected the vast majority of the time. I also think although drones were dangerously  unregulated for a good period of time, after the Gatwick airport incident a couple of years back, the restrictions imposed by people up high with very little knowledge of what they?re talking about were a bit heavy handed and rushed out just to please the  public.

Mark, yours was about a fifth of that price wasn?t it? Have you any footage from the haul day that we can compare with the op?

alastairgott said:

Mark, yours was about a fifth of that price wasn?t it? Have you any footage from the haul day that we can compare with the op?

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My DJI Mavic Mini was under ?400 including 3 x batteries and I have some excellent footage of the Eldon Hole haul day on the memory stick.

How I get it from the memory stick to on here is another question which I will get round to sorting one of these days.

Mark