Not every drone lives a life of luxury, flying lazily over parks with soft grass below to cushion its fall in case of an accident. Some drones live dangerously and get run over by flying jet skis in spectacular mid-air collisions.
Filmmaker Guy Mac on Tuesday released the official event video for the 2016 Yamaha New Zealand Festival of Freeride 4, a celebration of daring jet ski tricks. It's full of beautiful action with helmeted riders piloting their vehicles along crashing waves and zipping elegantly into the air. It also features a spectacular drone wipeout.
The whole video is worth watching for the watery acrobatics, but the slow-mo view of the drone crumbling against the bottom of a jet ski is something else. It comes near the end of the video. The jet ski is silhouetted against a cloudy sky and the poor drone is just hovering there, minding its own business, when the smackdown comes.
The drone appears to be a DJI Inspire, a piece of equipment that costs about $3,000 (around £2,100, AU$4,000). The mangled drone ended up in the water along with the rider, who fell off the jet ski.
We've seen some impressive drone knockouts before. A flying squash dispatched a drone late last year during a pumpkin-chucking event. Firefighters swatted a pesky drone down with a blast from a fire hose. An annoyed chimp got in on the drone beat-down action by leveling the machine with a tree branch.
The jet ski footage may be the most scenic of the bunch. There's something majestic about the melding of action sports, slow-mo video and the destruction of a very expensive drone.
(Via Gizmodo)