This is the story of my drone crash.

I thought it might make for a cool effect to fly at night through the fog around University of North Florida. But once I got flying I realized it wasn’t nearly as good, the lighting was poor and visibility was low. I decided to land within 5 minutes, but before I could come in for a landing my DJI Mini 2 clipped the top of a building and dropped on the roof. I was scared and embarrassed, this was the first time I’ve ever crashed my drone. It was already 2am, and so I decided it was better if I came back the next day during daylight. I took a screenshot of the GPS location where the drone was last seen. The drone crash happened when it was hovering, I didn’t realize how close it was to the wall. There must have been a slight breeze or a wobble for a second and when I went back to look at the screen all I saw was black.

After returning in the morning I talked with several maintenance people and surprisingly most of them only took care of trash and recycling. I eventually found one guy who helped me get onto the roof where I then found my drone, broken, upside down, nearly in a puddle. I know it’s just a drone, but I felt sad leaving it there overnight, and I felt worse seeing it broken and abandoned in a puddle. 4 of the propellers had hit the wall and needed to be replaced, but even worse one of the arm joints in the back was damaged. Part of the plastic from the body had broken and the arm was completely loose. I debated for a while on how to fix it, I could either pay DJI to repair it which might be expensive since I didn’t have DJI care insurance on it, or I could buy a replacement plastic body for $50. What I decided was to glue the broken plastic back on to the body with gorilla glue. The broken plastic was only for one of the three screws holding the arm to the body, I found without it, it was nearly strong enough on it’s own. But with the gorilla glue and all three screws back in place it was as good as new. Since repairing it I’ve done several flights with no problem, if the body breaks again I might buy a replacement but until then it’s good to go. It even still folds up without issue.