I got a little micro-drone for the kids for Christmas. Of course, I need to know how to fly it so I can teach them so I had a few sessions over at the neighborhood field. Thought I was getting pretty good. Thought "I don't need to drive over to that feild as long as I don't get too radical.

WRONG!

If you don't know how to fly a drone, don't even think about it in a residential area until you are sure your a pro. It's very easy to forget what you're doing with the two toggles and those suckers go at least 50mph. I lost sight of it about two blocks away and maybe a few hundred feet up. It has LEDS so I hoped to find it on someone's roof or in their back yard after sundown. I was extremely lucky to find it undamaged on street side yard.....and I didn't even have to go sneaking through the neighbors yards after sundown.

DON'T fly drones at high altitude and don't fly them on anything smaller than a football field. They move very quick and the wind will blow them away easily or turn them so you don't know which way is forward.

I grew up flying remote control aircraft and helicoptes though I am no longer involved.
Some of them were bloody expensive pieces of kit.

I have more stories of losing aircraft through crashes and radio failure/in flight battery packs going dead than i care to remember.

But a new world now with these drones with stabilising gyros, GPS's, camera goggles, etc.

Rook, I understood from discussions with a work colleague who flys drones (albeit at a pretty high level) that if contact is lost them they come back to point of origin within a few feet?

Rook, I understood from discussions with a work colleague who flys drones (albeit at a pretty high level) that if contact is lost them they come back to point of origin within a few feet?

It got about 200 feet up and drifted about 500-600 feet Southeast of me and at that distance, pretty hard to tell WTH the thing is doing when you steer the stick. If it got turned around so the front is now facing the back, everything is reversed as far as steering. You steer the wrong way when the thing is turned backward and it will go farther away from you when you try to pull it back. Then I guess it gets out of range and IDK what it does then. I lost sight of it. Thought it best to cut throttle so it didn't drift ever farther away. It prolly dropped at least a hundred feet. Tough lil bugger! I've crashed in mud puddles twice and now this. As long as you cut throttle before it crashes, no damage to rotors or anything else. Of course, grass is a lot more friendly than pavement.

http://www.miliamperios.com/foro/multicopteros-iniciacion-rtf-f90/extreme-fliers-micro-drone-review-t240339.html

LOL!!!!

http://mashable.com/2015/07/18/underwater-plane-graveyard-wwii/
To put this in perspective