While I personally have never been to a drone show, I can pretty confidently say it's meant to be magical. The idea of a load of fluttering lights making pictures is the type of thing you'd hear in a fairytale, right?
Well, the fairytale experience that Sydney residents were getting quickly devolved into a nightmare. That's because, as reported by People, 89 drones ended up plummeting into the Darling Harbor.
The light show was a part of Vivid Sydney. According to their website, the event aims to "fuse art, innovation and technology" in an event which spans 23 days. Their website also says that they won the Best Tourism Event alongside the Australian Event of the Year at the Australian Event Awards.
A part of the event is called "light", where they do all manner of light shows. These include drone light shows which are managed by an affiliated company called SKYMAGIC.
But, things went pretty catastrophically wrong during the light show on Monday, May 25. According to a SKYMAGIC spokesperson, there were some unfortunate "unforeseen technical difficulties."
More specifically, they explained, "During the performance on the evening of May 25, SKYMAGIC experienced a technical issue that resulted in 89 drones landing in the water around Cockle Bay."
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The Issue Was Caused by the Drone Signals Malfunctioning
The SKYMAGIC spokesperson continued, "The root cause of the issue was an unforeseen change in the radio frequency (RF) environment occurring after take off."
Etei described RF as a "big neighborhood filled with invisible streets." It's basically how wireless devices communicate with each other - whether it's your phone, your RC car, or your car's radio. And it includes pre-programmed drones, like in the Sydney light show.
The spokesperson continued, "This [RF] anomaly caused a number of drones in the fleet to enact failsafe landing procedures." Luckily, the pilot "immediately performed a stop command rendering the fleet stationary in the air," preventing further disaster.
Darling Harbour worker Robert recalled the incident. "You could hear them physically crash and smash onto the cement marina. They're not meant to fly over anyone or even close to anyone, and it fell within feet of people I was with."
Luckily, no one was hurt in the shocking incident. Robert said it was "remarkable" that no one was injured.
