The drone I crashed into a crane last month saved my job anyway

Last month I was flying our site drone near downtown Austin to get some progress photos of a 12 story frame we were pouring. Wind picked up out of nowhere and I lost control for a second, and BAM straight into the boom of a tower crane. I thought I was done for, my boss would kill me. But when I pulled the footage off the SD card, the camera kept recording right up to impact and even got a clear shot of a hairline crack in a weld on that crane boom that our structural guys totally missed during inspection. The drone was a total write off, cost us $1,400 to replace. But the foreman said that footage probably saved us from a major failure down the line. Now they want me to fly that same rig on the regular even after the crash. Has anyone else had a site gadget break in a way that actually uncovered something big?

3 comments

3 Comments

felix_black19d ago

That hairline crack thing sounds kinda dramatic. I've been around construction sites long enough to see cracked welds that've been holding for years without an issue. Structural guys miss stuff all the time during inspection, that's what the follow-up checks are for. Half the time those tiny cracks are just surface stuff from the welding process itself. Your $1,400 drone crash might've just found a nothingburger that a welder would've ground down and re-tested in five minutes anyway.

miles_garcia19d ago

$1,400 for a drone and they got a free crane inspection out of it. Sounds like a steal compared to what a full NDT survey would cost. I bet Felix here is the guy who looks at a crack in a support beam and says "nah that'll hold for another 30 years" right before the whole thing pancakes down to the parking garage level. Glad your drone took one for the team though. Now every time you fly that new one over the site you can just tell yourself "at least I'm not the one holding the cracked weld photo.

price.gavin19d ago

That Felix guy is way off base. A hairline crack in a weld on a crane boom is not just some surface scratch from welding. Cranes lift thousands of pounds every day. A crack like that can grow fast under that kind of stress and load. If it went unnoticed and the weld failed, you are looking at a boom dropping or collapsing. That is a life and death thing, not a five minute fix. Your drone crash probably saved someone's life, not just a few bucks on repairs. Felix should stick to whatever he's inspecting, because he clearly doesn't understand crane safety.