At the last auto-x I attended, there was a couple there running a drone with a high-end Canon shooting video of the runs. It was outside the track shooting back into it. The guy ran the drone, and the wife ran the camera. It was big, 4-5' in diameter with 6 or 8 props. I was told he used it often for shooting video of water skiers, and he was 'practicing' with the cars.
Unfortunately during my session of working the course, it crashed. It was hovering about 100' from my station, and I heard a strange sound and turned just in time to see it hit the ground. Completely shattered the drone, and destroyed the Canon that was attached as well. One of my coworkers was also into them, and he said that may have been a $10k crash given the carbon fiber makeup of the drone plus the camera.
The culprit ended up being that he forgot to replace a batter pack with a freshly charged one. He had several there and was switching between runs. Apparently he replaced one and not the other. Upon inspection, when the one battery died, the other was running the whole unit. That appeared to draw too much current and melted a wire or connector. When that happened, instant power loss due to a short, and down it came.
I was certainly glad it wasn't near anyone. And I felt for him, that was a pricey mistake.
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