Watch: Pipeline Barrel Swallows Drone
Picture Christmas morning.
After unwrapping your loot, spiking your coffee with a nip of Christmas cheer, and enduring family time, you go for a stroll to your local playground or park.
There’s a good chance there will be a child there – in some cases a “man child” – flying their brand-new, recently-unwrapped, highly-expensive drone. There’s also a good chance that newly-minted drone operator, or “pilot,” will crash their new toy immediately. Sorry, mom and dad.
Drones are everywhere these days. They’re used by the military, by scientists, and by civilians – particularly, in the latter realm, as a means for photography.
And surf photography, specifically, has seen an explosion in the use of drone-operated imagery. At a place like Pipeline, on the North Shore of Oahu, there will be numerous unmanned aerial vehicles buzzing above the lineup, capturing the action.
But like that kid on Christmas morning, sometimes drones go down – either by user error or technical problems.
The above clip from master drone operator Tucker Wooding features the former. As Wooding was filming a wave out at Pipe during the recent, nonstop run of pumping swell, he captured another drone as it crashed head-on with the barreling lip.
A surfer, North Shore local charger Makai McNamara, was in the tube when the crash happened. Luckily, the drone didn’t collide with him. But unluckily for the drone operator, their Christmas present now lies with the broken surfboard bits, knocked out teeth, and chunks of surfers’ flesh in the watery graveyard that is Pipeline’s reef.
Rest in pieces, drone.
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