Another P2V+ v3.0 tumbles out of the sky.

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Yesterday during my second flight of the day my P2V+ tumbled out of the sky. Luckily it landed almost inverted into a soft grass area. The shell is toast but the rest of it is fine. No damage at all to the camera or gimbal.
The rear black motor is toast and is definitely what caused it to plummet. The ESC were 2.1 and they are fine.
Stuck in a new motor and it actually still flies. But looks more like a wounded duck in flight. I just wanted to make sure all the other components were not damaged.

According to my Flytrex data it was at 178 ft when the poo hit the fan. It was in a straight line of flight and then it just did a tumble of death spiral to the ground. Gravity wins another round.

Does anyone happen to know if the P2V shell is the same as the P2V+ v3.0 shell? I had to replace a shell on my P2V because of cracks that developed where the motors mount. I'm not sure what to order for the P2V+ v 3.0. Rather than have it sit for six weeks at DJI, I will eat the cost of a shell and the motor so I can be flying again in just a couple days.

I will call a couple dealers later when they open, they might know what I need.

This just affirms my decision to wait on ordering a P3V until more is learned on whether it will also have the fall out of the sky syndrome. I consider myself very lucky because it could have been a total loss if it had crashed into something other than soft grass. My P2V+ only had about 25 flights and is only 3.5 months old. So much for "It can't happen to me". Thanks to Flytrex for pin pointing exactly where to find it.
 
Can you elaborate on the motor you assign fault to?

Does it test bad in some way?

Could the ESC be damaged due to motor fault?
 
DSC03301.JPG DSC03302.JPG DSC03301.JPG DSC03302.JPG
Can you elaborate on the motor you assign fault to?

Does it test bad in some way?

Could the ESC be damaged due to motor fault?

Only the motor is damaged. The windings blistered and shorted. I won't trust the ESC because obviously it has been stressed. I had a spare ESC and motor on hand as spares, I will replace the ESC as well as the motor in the repair. But it did fly by just replacing the motor. As I said, I consider myself very lucky, it could have easily been a total loss if it had not been for the soft grass area and the fact that it apparently was almost fully inverted when it hit. That saved the camera and gimbal from being crushed.

Here are two pictures of the shell, as you can see both the bottom and top shells have damage. Mostly to the bottom shell. The top shell has scratches from the impact into the soil and the vent holes damaged apparently due to flexing during impact.

I have a video capture app installed in my phone monitor, but as luck would have it I inadvertently touched the save button right after I had started it so none of the actual flight was recorded. Just my Flytrex data is available. Murphy's law strikes again! Just before it fell out of the sky, there are some voltage aberrations in the Flytrex data graph.
 
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johnp44, this is the shell you need.

You might also want to check out the GPS antenna too to see if it's cracked. It's likely since it landed upside down. If needed, that's available on Amazon here.
 
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johnp44, this is the shell you need:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...Code=as2&tag=ph079-20&linkId=SN3BIOTBRYZGFD4K

You might also want to check out the GPS antenna too to see if it's cracked. It's likely since it landed upside down. If needed that's available on Amazon too:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...Code=as2&tag=ph079-20&linkId=ISJECTPJBDCDDF6T

Thanks for the info. I already have a new 4MM GPS antenna puck that I was already planning to put in it the next time I had to open it up, so I'm good to go as far as that goes. I just wasn't expecting to have to open it up for the reason I am having to do it now. Just another day, another dollar, well in this case another 100 dollars. But like all hobbies, none are cheap anymore.
 
Have you been able to determined the cause of the failure?
 
Have you been able to determined the cause of the failure?

My best guess is that the motor had a poor insulation coating somewhere on the motor winding wire. After enough flight cycles it finally developed into a short. There are some battery voltage aberrations seconds before it started the death spiral which I am thinking was the beginning of the short in the windings, then the heat it generated blistered the rest of the insulation and finished it off. I am amazed that the ESC didn't blow too. But I plan on using the new ESC I have because surely those mosfets were stressed almost to the max even though they don't show any signs of damage. It flew ok by just replacing the motor. It shook a bunch because the one of the arms has a huge crack and was flexing a bit. It looked like a wounded duck trying to fly. I just wanted to check the rest of the components to determine how damaged it was. Everything seemed to be working fine. GPS (11 sats), Atti, CL, HL, Failsafe are working so I think I got off very lucky, especially since the camera and gimbal didn't get damaged.

I don't have the last min of video because it ejected the battery and the recording didn't finalize properly. I guess hitting the ground from 178 feet can do that to a battery. However I do have all the Flytrex data.The only other clue was that the prop on the bad motor was loose, just a thread or two from coming off and the other three were still tight. Which to me would indicate that it stopped spinning while the other three were still rotating. That's all folks...
 
That loose prop is very telling. A spinning prop hitting the ground should actually tighten a self tightening prop even further. The fact that it was on it's last string of threads is pretty good evidence that it started working its way off in the air.
 
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Sorry about your crash Johnp44, I had a simmilar experience.

I my case, the culprit turned out to be some small metalic grains that were stuck to the motor magnets. I believe they were picked up from a prior location where I had landed the bird on the ground.

Fortunately, the debris was easily collected by motor putty, and I hand catch now.

Good luck on your repairs!
 
I to had the same thing happen. Reading the OP it was just like my Dec. 27th crash. That crash was due to weak solder point that I did myself. Or at least I never found any better reason for why the one motor stopped and the quad rolled to that side and straight down it came.

I just had another drop out of the sky a few weeks ago. Just like the Dec crash this one was also a vPlus V3. I run 2 flight loggers at all times and this time it possibly pointing to something I'm not yet ready to mention in the public. However, it may be the exact same reason your quad dropped? If I could see your flight log I could tell right away. You might consider creating an account here http://www.flightreplay.com/ so you can share your log experiences with whomever. It's not my site, but I am helping with giving advice here & there. Others can join also while it's in beta stage. Just tell them flyNfrank forced you to create an account. :)
 
mine fell out of the sky a couple of days ago, it was only 4 weeks old and had done 14 flights, it was hovering and just dropped on one side and headed down like a missile, vanished out of site, I found it 20mins later it had hit a tree 200 metres away and fell to the ground, smashed to bits gimble and camera destroyed and 3 out of 4 of the motors melted into the frame. was obviously a dead short on one of the motors or a wire coming of the esc, Ive taken it back to dealer who has sent it back to dji ive mailed them 3 times now telling them I don't want it repaired or replaced as I have no confidence in the v3 now after reading all the crap about motors and esc faults and I'm demanding a refund as it was only 4 weeks old, and I want to get the phantom 3 which I hope will not have these issues, so far ive had no reply from dji
Check out video on my site
https://www.youtube.com/c/flightofthephantomuk
 

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