Now that camera drones are coming down in price, more and more people are able to explore the world from an aerial perspective and post their footage on the internet.
Some videos are simply breathtaking, like those entered into the SkyPixel drone video contest, while others capture unusual happenings in the sky. This video definitely falls into the latter category—it has to be one of the most unusual drone videos I’ve ever seen.
The footage was captured by a drone pilot in Rhode Island. He was looking to capture some epic footage of a local wind turbine when he noticed something interesting at the top.
You can clearly see in the footage that the door on the top of the turbine was open. It’s unusual and it means that someone must have either left the door after doing maintenance or the door must have blown open. The drone pilot was curious and guided his drone in for a closer look—to his surprise, there was a man sunbathing 200 ft in the air.
As one viewer commented on the video, “you can’t get peace anywhere these days.”
Update: It turns out that this video was actually taken in 2015. At the time, NBC 10 reported on the video explaining that the wind turbine belongs to Portsmouth Abbey School and that the extreme sunbather is actually the caretaker of the turbine.
The footage was recorded during the 2015 summer heat wave on 16 August. Wind speeds were too low to turn the blades of the wind turbine and so Joseph Byron, a monk at the Abbey, took the opportunity to venture to the top for some peace and quiet.
Speaking with NBC 10, he said:
It’s beautiful up there—absolutely gorgeous. You never know what’s out there hovering around.
The next thing I heard was the buzzing. And at first I was kind of, I had never seen one before so, (saying to myself) that’s kind of cool.
At that point I was like, ‘come on, really?! The longer it went I thought ‘you know, how about a little peace up here, you know?’
According to the Daily Mirror, the drone pilot was a visiting tourist from San Diego, California. In an interview with the tabloid, he said:
I thought this was my chance to get up close to capture what is usually tough to access. So I decided to drive up to get a super close video while [the turbine] was not in operation.
When I reached the bottom, I noticed that the maintenance door was open and thought someone was up inside doing repairs.
The guy must have been napping because he did not notice the drone for 5-10 seconds, but once he heard it he sat up to take a look.
At that point I decided to take a closer look by moving closer to say hi. Once I got closer I moved the drone side to side to say hello and he motioned back to the drone. It was a cool interaction between us.
Upon landing, he saw me bring the drone down and was leaning over the edge. I looked up and wave to him and he waved back.
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