Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Instrument
Situational Awareness; Training / Qualification
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Other / Unknown; Inflight Event / Encounter Object
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged
Aircraft; Environment - Non Weather Related; Human Factors
I was filming the sunrise over the buildings with my 'DJI Mavic Pro' drone over downtown; at about 350 ft AGL. To capture the shot; I had the drone flying sideways for roughly a hundred feet or so. Prior to the shot I turned the drone to the direction of flight to ensure that nothing was in the drone's path; and there wasn't; and the drone performed the maneuver as planned. The next planned maneuver was to rotate the drone 180 degrees; and capture the same shot while traversing the same horizontal track in the other direction. Unfortunately; when I made my turn; I ended up a few degrees shy of exactly 180; which made my return track not perfectly parallel with my original track; and the drone drifted into a construction crane.I guess I would say the problem was caused by me not realizing that my horizontal track wasn't exactly the same as the first. To prevent this in the future I will use a waypoint mode to program and define preset GPS points along a predetermined route that are known to be obstacle free. Or a 'track' mode; that will 'fix' the compass heading so that no deviation is possible. That way the drone can fly the route; allowing the operator to work the camera with confidence that the drone won't hit anything.The only other thing that could have prevented this would be additional obstacle avoidance sensors installed on the drone. The drone has obstacle avoidance sensors facing forward; and downward only. If there were sensors on the sides; rear; and top as well; theoretically; it would be impossible to crash into anything. In this instance; a sideways facing obstacle avoidance sensor would have detected the crane as an obstacle and stopped the drone; preventing the crash.
UAV pilot reported running into a crane while filming a sunrise over city center.