Man Dives Into Lake, Catches Drone Just Before It Crashes Into Water

Watching your very expensive flying camera slowly drift toward a watery death is probably not the most enjoyable experience. Luckily for this man, he managed to make a last-minute catch that's definitely worth of a top ten reel.

This video comes from Dave Svorking and shows a pretty impressive drone save. DJI drones are programmed to land automatically when they reach critically low battery levels, and unfortunately for the pilot, if it's over water at the time, that's where it's landing. Luckily, the drone doesn't just drop out of the sky (that's the entire point of auto-landing while there's still a little juice in the battery), but rather, it starts an agonizingly slow descent toward the ground (or water, in this case). If you're on dry land or in a position to snatch it out of the sky, it seems like a great feature that saves your expensive investment and your wallet. If you're out of reach and you're watching it slowly meander its way down to a watery grave, you'll swear it's mocking you. In this case, it seems to almost be some combination of the two. Props to the drone pilot for quite the save (and for getting it on video)!

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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18 Comments

Amazing that drones on critically low battery will still keep the camera rolling rather than shutting it off and using that power to try to get back to the origin point.

The power used by the camera and the gimbal is nothing compared to the 4motors that are used for flying. It would probably gain a few seconds. And when landing, the power consumption isn’t that big either. It’s only needed to hold the drone that it won’t crash on the ground.

Pretty sweet save for real.

props! nice save

He could even sell that clip as stock footage! LOL

That's awesome! This needs a soundtrack

That was an impressive save. I would have been willing to do the same thing to save my own drone but my swimming skills would have left me about 10 feet away as the drone hit the water.

Fake

Maybe this should become an Olympic sport!

Crazy. I thought my speakers were not working. Wished there was some good music/ sound for the same. :)

That was extremely funny. I had to laugh really hard. Nice save.

Epic save with sound..
https://youtu.be/VsHMjWORFvI

dude, so clutch!

This is gold.

He should save this video for when all the drones become sentient: I bet they’ll offer him a mercifully quick death.

Anyone else see the dead fish he swam by (10 to 16 second mark)? Lol

haha! floating dead fish and all, nice. not sure if real or not, but we can only hope... :)