Cockiness leads to toasting your drone :(

[Barrattrn]

So I've had my P3A since about a month after they were released and had a Parrot Bebop drone before that. I have always been astounded at how much better the quality is with the P3. I had recently been getting some weird error messages stating it was warming up so after making sure my firmware was up to date I reinstalled the app on my ipad. This fixed the problem, so I went on a hike to some local water falls. This is where my mistake was made. I was sitting on a rock at the top of the falls and there was a little water right beside me so I was worried that the propellers would splash it up on the drone when I started it, so I put the drone behind me. There was only about 6 sq ft area of window here due to some brush, which is normally not a problem. But the drone drifted just a tad more than usual and I panicked. Hitting the wrong directional button straight into a limb which caused it to tumble all the way down the rocks landing upside down on a rock at the bottom in about 0.25" of water. I thought maybe I got lucky, but then I noticed I had camera separation. The sad part is that I have the gimble protector to prevent separation, but never put it on because I hadn't got the locktite yet. When I powered it up it said 1. Camera error (well yeah) 2. gimble error (obviously) 3. accelerometer error (I'm not sure if this is in the gimble) but it also said no signal on the ipad which made me too afraid to invest $400 in a new camera or start adding the cost to send it for diagnostics and repair, so I opted to replace it, which now I have the 2nd charger, and an extra battery so it made it a little less sickening. We all know that this is a chance we take, especially when flying around water though. But it made me want to puke as I saw it tumbling down the rocks.

 

[Bambola]

Sad pictures, I guess everyone can have a bad day!

 

[eBird]

That's a bummer, but that is the hobby. Sometimes you crash. Beautiful area there.
Since you are not completely comfortable with the stick controls yet (panic always uncovers this) you should always launch with the Phantom pointed away from you (battery facing you) so any emergency flight input needed will be "natural" (eg. left is left, right is right).
Glad you were able to replace her. Now go practice practice practice!

 

[Meta4]

One option you didn't consider is sending it out to a 3rd party repairer.
One is a member here (Hunch) and he has a good record repairing gimbals.

 

[Reed L]

Wow, what a beautiful spot. I took the poll and there should be another choice because the first thing that I will do when that day comes, is come here and ask for help. Then I will take it apart and fix it to the best of my ability. If I can't fix it myself, which there is a slight chance, I will definitely send it to Hunch. From the pics it doesn't look that bad. On another note, I didn't have loctite either because I put it on in the field at base camp, but there was already blue loctite on the threads of the gimble protector's machine screws from the factory, which made me happy. So I put the protector on along with the carbon fiber gimble saver. So the 4th choice should be "Try to repair yourself". Which is still an option for you because the body looks fine from the pics. Replace the body if needed but take it all apart and see what you can do, it's part of the fun of RC.