An unmanned aerial vehicle has a substrate. A tether sensor is mounted on the substrate. The tether sensor determines an orientation of the tether relative to the substrate. A micro controller, receiving the measured orientation from the tether sensor, determines an orientation of the tether relative to the substrate, and as a function of the orientation, determines a corrective value and outputs the corrective value to the unmanned aerial vehicle as at least one of a roll output and a pitch output control signal.