A North Cowichan man sent a drone sky-high and tracked down his stolen dirt bike, stashed in the woods by a thief.
It was only natural for software developer Ryan Sandnes, 36, to turn to technology when he discovered his purple 1995 Honda CR250 bike had been stolen. Out came his 3DR Solo Drone, equipped with a GoPro camera. The GoPro feeds images back to Sandnes’s iPhone, which operates the drone.
“I took [the drone] straight up about 400 feet in the air.”
He found his motocross bike in 16 minutes.
The search area was narrowed down thanks to footage from security cameras Sandnes had trained on the dirt bike and another bike, and on his boat trailer.
He had been out of town and did not realize the bike was missing until Feb. 5. By scrolling back through security footage, Sandnes saw that a man with short hair and a medium build took the bike at 4:17 a.m. on Feb. 2. Video showed the thief trying first to steal a nearby all-terrain vehicle, owned by a neighbour. When that did not work, the man cut through the chain lock on Sandnes’s bike.
Because there was no kick-start on the bike, the thief wheeled it off the property without power, turning left onto Cowichan Lake Road. The man even put on a helmet in an attempt to look like a bike rider, Sandnes said.
Fifteen minutes later, the man returned and made another futile attempt to steal the ATV.
Sandnes connected with his online international drone community, saying he was going to try to find his bike, but wasn’t sure it was going to work.
He decided to try anyway.
He figured that the thief could not have gone far in the 15 minutes it took to steal the bike and then return. The man was pushing the bike, which weighs between 400 and 500 pounds. Sandnes thought: “It’s got to be close by.”
On Sunday afternoon, Sandnes and a friend stood in the driveway of his apartment complex to hunt for the bike, scanning for something purple. At first, no luck.
He brought the drone back, put in a fresh battery and tried again, sending it up a “little cul-de-sac off Cowichan Lake Road.”
The dirt road was blocked to traffic, but the camera showed a tire about 15 metres in from the main road. It was not his bike’s tire, but Sandnes kept looking, and saw another tire attached to something metal. He sent the drone lower and spotted his bike.
“I saw the Honda. I saw everything on it. That was definitely my bike. So I brought the drone back up and we went flying out there.
“We were just extremely excited.”
North Cowichan-Duncan RCMP were called and went to the scene.
No one has been arrested, said Sandnes, who took the bike home and secured it with a stronger lock. “It’s such an easy idea. Send a drone in the air and let’s find our items.”
