Recently I was flying my P3P on a routine local Litchi mission that I've flown dozens of times before without incident. This time, it didn't come back. Fortunately, I had recently attached a Trackimo 3G GPS tracker to the bird. Within minutes I recovered the drone, which was still powered up and recording video the whole time. Two props were damaged, but everything else just needed a damp cloth to remove debris.
Now I'd like to figure out what happened, so I can learn to avoid this in the future.
The video, shown below, doesn't clearly indicate what caused the craft to lose control and plummet into a forest. The video shows a short downward drop a fraction of a second before the drone began to spiral down. My guess is a bird strike from above and behind. One clue was seen in the end of the video, which I slowed down to show a large bird flying away. We do have lots of crows and hawks in the area, so that's not unreasonable.
I was able to download the .DAT file from the drone. I used DatCon to convert that to an Excel file. Both of these, and the video, are found here. The .DAT file itself is 78MB, whereas the Excel file is 'only' 13.5MB.
Can any gurus here interpret these files to see if something other than a bird strike downed my drone?
Now I'd like to figure out what happened, so I can learn to avoid this in the future.
The video, shown below, doesn't clearly indicate what caused the craft to lose control and plummet into a forest. The video shows a short downward drop a fraction of a second before the drone began to spiral down. My guess is a bird strike from above and behind. One clue was seen in the end of the video, which I slowed down to show a large bird flying away. We do have lots of crows and hawks in the area, so that's not unreasonable.
I was able to download the .DAT file from the drone. I used DatCon to convert that to an Excel file. Both of these, and the video, are found here. The .DAT file itself is 78MB, whereas the Excel file is 'only' 13.5MB.
Can any gurus here interpret these files to see if something other than a bird strike downed my drone?