One year ago tomorrow, I learned a hard lesson about drones, photography, and the unpredictable nature of flying a drone when the wind is having trouble making up its mind. It’s a story I can laugh about now (mostly), but at the time, I was super annoyed that the wind chose to gust exactly when it did.

I had been flying a drone for a few years at this point, and I knew when it was safe to fly and when it wasn’t. When I launched there was no wind at all and the flying apps all said it was safe to fly.  The skies were clear, the mountain glowed in the soft light of late afternoon.  It was getting on to sunset and the mountain was taking on the purple pink hue that Sandia Mountain takes on at that time of day.  Sandia means watermelon in Spanish and the mountains look like a giant slice of watermelon. 

I took few photos of the mountain and I was waiting for the sun to set a bit more when a GIANT gust of wind blew the drone into the tree (it was no were near the tree to start with) and it landed it on the roof. 

Panic set in immediately. Getting up on the roof is not in my bag of tricks and the drone was too far in to grab or even lasso as I stood on the ladder and stared at it. I had to call my son to come over and grab it when he could – which was the next day on his way home from work. 

The drone did not lose power once it landed on the roof or should I say crashed into the roof  so I took a few photos from its “landing pad” until the battery finally died.  When I finally got it down I did have to change a broken propeller but that is not that big a thing as long as you have extras on hand – which I did. Â