The Subtle Art of Explaining Drone Crashes Without Sounding Like an Idiot… Except to Our Technician

Hello fellow drone pilots! It’s so nice to be read again by you guys. I almost feel like we’re relatives now. Can I use your drone? Please?

Do you remember one of my last articles where I was telling you about my first crash? How many times have you been in a situation where you are speaking about your drones, your flights, about that time when you flew over that gorgeous mountain ridge and captured breathtaking footage… and there is always that person that asks you: “And have you ever crashed one of your drones?”

And you know that after telling this part of the story, they will never look at you with the same eyes… nor the same respect.

Crap. They’re not drone pilots. They don’t know how easy it is to crash a drone. They don’t know what target fixation is. We can make a great story about crashing a $1000 drone against a wall. Or a tree. Or the face of an innocent bystander. We can (and will) lie to the fullest extent of our imagination just to not sound like an idiot.

But at the same time, we indeed are idiots when we decide to fly at night in a place when we’re not sure if there are power lines near the buildings… or if there’s a solar storm and the KP index is making the GPS go crazy, or if we’re flying in a zone well known for the presence of aggressive birds and we still insist that we need to take that drone off…

In one moment or another, we’ve all started acting like idiots.

Remember the first rule of drone club?

“You use common sense to be in the drone club.”

You have to remember that everything is about storytelling. If you tell your audience that you were flying at 10 mph and that the tree just made a left without turning its signal on, who should they believe? A non-talking tree or you? It’s not about the tree, nor the crash, it’s about how you entertain the people listening to you.

We all know that you didn’t check about wind gusts that day, or about your Mavic that went full ballistic against the 8th floor of a building because you were too distracted checking your phone instead of maintaining visual line of sight.

Do you know when we pilots walk the walk of shame? Going to the drone repair shop.

Because there, a person who knows about flying and about drones will look us in the eyes and ask: “What stupid thing did you do now to the drone?”

And we can’t lie to our drone technician.

Even if it’s a drone technician that we can’t see or hear, or offer a donut to… because it’s becoming more common to send your drone to the technician rather than bringing the lifeless body of your bird in person, just to avoid that look of disappointment… with their eyes crying “What did you do to my baby?”… and then, after a week or two, giving us a hefty bill for granting us the opportunity, one more time, to have the choice to be idiots or good pilots.

Again.

So next time someone asks if you’ve ever crashed a drone, just smile knowingly and say, “Let me tell you about the time this tree came out of nowhere…”

The Classic Crash Scenarios We All Know and Deny

Let’s be honest, there are a few crash scenarios that every drone pilot has experienced but will never fully admit to:

1. The Battery Lie: “I still had 15% battery left!” No, you didn’t. You saw that flashing red warning for the last five minutes and thought, “Just one more shot…”
2. The Weather Expert: “The forecast said only 5mph winds!” Meanwhile, your drone was being tossed around like a leaf in a hurricane because you didn’t check the actual conditions at altitude.
3. The Obstacle Denier: “That branch wasn’t there when I started flying!” Yes, it was. You just forgot that trees exist in three dimensions, not two.
4. The Range Gambler: “I thought I still had signal!” As your drone was disappearing into the horizon, well beyond visual line of sight, you were secretly hoping physics would make an exception just for you and praying for the RTH system to work this time.

The Drone Hospital Survival Guide

The relationship between a pilot and their drone technician is sacred. It’s like going to a doctor who knows all your bad habits but fixes you up anyway. Here are some tips for surviving the drone repair experience:

• Bring donuts. In Ecuador they bring Humitas. Or in my case, as we are both Venezuelans, empanadas. Always. Food softens the blow of any ridiculous story you’re about to tell.
• Practice your “don’t hit me face.” The one that says, “I have no idea why the gimbal is completely bent backward. It came like that when I took the drone out of the box!”
• Accept the lecture. The drone tech has seen it all, and their dissertation on “Why We Don’t Fly Near Waterfalls at night” is actually for your own good.
• Build a relationship. Eventually, they’ll stop asking what happened and just start with, “Same as last time?”

Remember, the drone community is stronger when we share our mishaps (eventually). Those crash stories become badges of honor over time—evidence of lessons learned and experiences gained. The best pilots aren’t the ones who’ve never crashed; they’re the ones who’ve crashed, learned, and kept going until they developed the skills to avoid making the same mistake twice.

So hold your head high when entering that repair shop.

What was your worst experience acting like an idiot while you flew a drone? Tell me in the comments.