Help Needed: Recovering a Crashed DJI Neo from a Tree

Was on a walk with the dog a few days ago, I encountered someone flying a little camera drone, so of course I walked up to have a chat. Turned out it was someone who crashed their new DJI Neo in to a tree and was trying to get it out with another drone, he launched it from underneath a tree and when doing an automatic return to home it flew straight in to it.

We exchanged phone numbers just in case he was unable to get it out and I offered to give it a try with a big 5 inch the next day if he was unsuccessful.

So the next day I took my 5 inch to the spot and gave it a try myself to see if I could get the Neo unstuck from tree. I did not do any preflight checks and just packed up my drone, and of course the video transmitter had died (I suspect due to a bad cable causing it to fry itself, I had done an antenna upgrade no too long ago and never properly tested it afterwards), so I had to go all the way back home just to grab another drone.

Back at the spot again I prepared the drone with an extra heavy battery and duct-taped a 40cm antenna to the front of the drone which I could use as a poker or to grab on to a branch without risking my own drone.

I flew up, slowly approached the branch it was stuck on, and pounced on it like a cat. It immediately dropped.

The owner was overjoyed to get his drone back. Turns out he was an IT teacher from a local college who was intending to use this drone to record some footage for the college website to advertise their drone operator courses. Next year a couple of local colleges will start offering courses for drone operators for stuff like off-shore and agricultural use cases, I just think that is very neat.