Replacing my infamous iPhone X

David Loftus

David Loftus

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Jan 1, 2021
Messages
114
Location
Johns Creek, GA
Display Name
Display name:
dmloftus
The 100 dollar hamburger as an excuse to go flying will just never be quite the same to me again…
 
mandm said:
What did you pay for the damaged crops? Hehe

Nice video, thanks for sharing.
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I wanted to give the owner $50 for the crops. Drove around looking for the owner, but no houses within a mile. This was just a few months into the pandemic so I didn't think it was wise to start knocking on doors in rural Arkansas. Good way to get shot ;-) I actually reached out to the local newspaper with the story to see if they could help me identify the owner, but they never responded. An Atlanta radio station, WSB, somehow saw my story on another pilot forum and interviewed me on the radio.
 
David Loftus said:
I wanted to give the owner $50 for the crops. Drove around looking for the owner, but no houses within a mile. This was just a few months into the pandemic so I didn't think it was wise to start knocking on doors in rural Arkansas. Good way to get shot ;-) I actually reached out to the local newspaper with the story to see if they could help me identify the owner, but they never responded. An Atlanta radio station, WSB, somehow saw my story on another pilot forum and interviewed me on the radio.
Click to expand...
I guess if you would have went right away, you could have pinged your iPhone to ring / beep? But by the time you got back the battery was dead I imagine.

Fun story, and not a scratch? Wow
 
I saw that video before, not connected to POA. Amazing story!
 
I happened across that video too. Interesting story.

I was curious about how the phone way laying when you found it...how deep into the dirt was it? I would think it would have been traveling something around 100 MPH when it hit.... (based on approx. terminal velocity of a skydiver = 120MPH) or maybe even a bit more if it streamlined itself to fall on-edge because it likely wouldn't fall face down or up...
 
Brad W said:
I happened across that video too. Interesting story.

I was curious about how the phone way laying when you found it...how deep into the dirt was it? I would think it would have been traveling something around 100 MPH when it hit.... (based on approx. terminal velocity of a skydiver = 120MPH) or maybe even a bit more if it streamlined itself to fall on-edge because it likely wouldn't fall face down or up...
Click to expand...
You can see it in the video at 5:52 as I found it. I expected it to be half buried or in pieces, but it was just lying flat on its back with very little indentation in the hard dry soil. You can see more dirt on the bottom right corner where it likely struck the ground first. The soybean crops were about waist-high so it's possible they broke the fall a bit. I agree it must have been falling around 100mph. Really says something about Otterbox cases. I was skeptical when I first bought it, and I never liked the added bulk on the phone, but I'm a strong believer now. I spent years as an engineer, and I'm still scratching my head about how it could have survived, and continues to work flawlessly to this day (two years after the fall). There's also an element of luck in this as I've dropped phones from 3-4 feet and cracked screens. I'm really glad I had the idea to video the adventure.

Screenshot 2023-09-20 164028.jpg
 
Haha, glad mine didn't land there. Not enough sanitizer in the world to recover that. There is another video where a guy lost his phone 1000' above a beach in Iceland and it survived. I was shooting a still so I did not capture the ride to the ground. But I haven't heard of one surviving a higher fall than mine. I was really lucky that it fell close enough to an interstate where it could connect to a cell tower. Had it been a bit more rural, I would have never found it.
 
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