I couldn't agree more fly dawg they do look identical. And in both cases the ulitmate event was a crash. But, unless there's info here that I'm unaware of (such as a hard bump could disorientate the imu or barometer or compass temporarily and require a reboot to reset, or something similar) I still dont understand why an intact AC at that altitude cannot recover from an impact and stabilize itself??? Am I missing something?
Another mysterious P3P crash to analyze
- Thread starter MassDrone
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If you noticed the aircraft did recover somewhat and was relatively level at one point. It appeared to be attempting to stabilize when it hit the trees. Remember the altitude can be off by as much as 20ft, depending on conditions and you have to add the tree canopy back in to the equation. Also, since we have no further data, the last data shown was a small gradual decrease in altitude which could have been in the mission. There is no way to know what the actual altitude was when the incident occurred so you can pretty much throw out those numbers. But if you "assume" the incident was at ~230 ft......- 100ft for the trees. You are only talking about 100 ft of usable airspace and falling rapidly. No time to recover.
Can't argue with that. Just watched again and yes it did recover and from the looks of it just in time to hit the canopy. Another 100 feet might have been enough.
2.1 seconds to be exact, from incident to the trees. Just for the sake of saying it.
Yup and it falls about 100m/s in free fall during the CSC test in the simulator (and in the P4 live CSC test) so yes it clearly would have fallen into the canopy during that time frame.
So to summarize and provide a crash analysis for the OP. The initial occurance was (likely) caused by a bird strike, the AC (which luckily survived any and all damage except for some nicked props)behaved normally and would have recovered if the strike occurred exactly the same way at a much higher altitude, since it didn't, the AC was too low to recover and hit the canopy, which then caused the AC to crash. As far as the FR data goes, that's still a mystery.
Sorry all if I seemed a little obsessed but, so far I havent heard a single story of P3 falling out of the air due strictly to mechanical failure. And I refused to believe this was gonna be one of those stories as I'm a bit biased on how reliable I believe the P3 is when it comes strictly to flight reliability. I think we've established this simply was an event where the AC was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and not a failure itself 
I don't make a definitive analysis without data to back that up. Since we have none to go by, I will still consider this as unresolved at present.
My P3 hit a palm tree and flipped over. It is like a cat and re -corrects itself. it never hit the ground and kept flying. Motors don't shut down.
Possibly a large bird brought it down. Hitting the props may have stopped the mission and restarted a new file.
If I happen to say something stupid. I have dame bramage. LOL
Possibly a large bird brought it down. Hitting the props may have stopped the mission and restarted a new file.
If I happen to say something stupid. I have dame bramage. LOL
That's not remotely realistic - the simulator is probably ignoring drag, and that definitely didn't happen in a P4 CSC test. The terminal velocity of an unpowered Phantom is around 25 m/s.
That is much closer. Acceleration of gravity being (33 ft/s)sq., terminal velocity seems closer to 25 m/s.
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Birdstrike RX: Most gardener's know the trick of keeping birds away by tying a piece of string to a rock and an old CD/DVD, and tossing them up into the tree limbs surrounding their garden.
I live in a heavily treed area, w/a passel of hawks. They would menace my drones on almost all flights, and I would have to take evasive action. Then I decided to try the reflective cd/dvd trick by putting reflective adhesive strips to my drones (see photo). Now I see the hawks get close, then peel off ;-)
I live in a heavily treed area, w/a passel of hawks. They would menace my drones on almost all flights, and I would have to take evasive action. Then I decided to try the reflective cd/dvd trick by putting reflective adhesive strips to my drones (see photo). Now I see the hawks get close, then peel off ;-)
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I doubt that this was caused by any external influences. It appears that the video continued to record after the DAT data logging ended, which implies a failure of at least some of the FC processes and so it is not at all surprising that it lost flight control and fell.
A bird strike could certainly knock it down, but one would not expect that to stop data logging, especially since it is still powered up and recording video. So that explanation is both redundant and unlikely since it requires two uncommon and simultaneous events, rather than just one.
A bird strike could certainly knock it down, but one would not expect that to stop data logging, especially since it is still powered up and recording video. So that explanation is both redundant and unlikely since it requires two uncommon and simultaneous events, rather than just one.
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