re: DJI Phantom 2, non-vision, GoPro Hero3+ Black Edition
Howdy ~
After 2-3 test flights without the camera, everything was fine with new bird #3 (first two had errors out of the factory), so I took her out flying with the GoPro.
Everything went fine. Great, in fact. The gimbal was off-axis horizontally, but I figured I could get to the bottom of that the next time out.
I was at the far end of my flight pattern (out and back) when I appeared to lose control. The video reveals that the DJI2 merely entered a slow descent. I think that this could be caused by a low battery, yes? It was trying to save itself from the over-eager pilot logging too many untracked minutes?
In any event, the video also reveals that about 10-12 feet off the ground, the DJI2 encountered a few branches, flipped a bit, and pitched to the pea gravel below. Time stamps reveal that I arrived within 30 seconds, but in the interim, the bird was on one skid and leaning on two props, thus they could not spin but were still trying to spin. There was a slight burning smell (the prop motors?).
I let everything cool down, 3 new batteries arrived to prevent me from trying to overfly a battery again, and tried taking it out now 3 days later.
The bird turns on. Solid red lights. I calibrated the compass and received solid greens, but moving joysticks to the "start engines" position does nothing. Nada. Zip. Nyet.
What's the protocol on getting these fixed? How does one go about it? Where? What are people experiencing in terms of round-trip return times?
It's rather frustrating that it's taken me over 4 weeks to finally get bird #3 that works (because of factory error), and now because of my error, I'm going to be out a bird for what - another 2-3 weeks? Another few hundred bucks?
Somebody please give me some good news!
As a bonus for reading this, here's the video I shot before I crashed http://youtu.be/Iq2sB79HLnc
Howdy ~
After 2-3 test flights without the camera, everything was fine with new bird #3 (first two had errors out of the factory), so I took her out flying with the GoPro.
Everything went fine. Great, in fact. The gimbal was off-axis horizontally, but I figured I could get to the bottom of that the next time out.
I was at the far end of my flight pattern (out and back) when I appeared to lose control. The video reveals that the DJI2 merely entered a slow descent. I think that this could be caused by a low battery, yes? It was trying to save itself from the over-eager pilot logging too many untracked minutes?
In any event, the video also reveals that about 10-12 feet off the ground, the DJI2 encountered a few branches, flipped a bit, and pitched to the pea gravel below. Time stamps reveal that I arrived within 30 seconds, but in the interim, the bird was on one skid and leaning on two props, thus they could not spin but were still trying to spin. There was a slight burning smell (the prop motors?).
I let everything cool down, 3 new batteries arrived to prevent me from trying to overfly a battery again, and tried taking it out now 3 days later.
The bird turns on. Solid red lights. I calibrated the compass and received solid greens, but moving joysticks to the "start engines" position does nothing. Nada. Zip. Nyet.
What's the protocol on getting these fixed? How does one go about it? Where? What are people experiencing in terms of round-trip return times?
It's rather frustrating that it's taken me over 4 weeks to finally get bird #3 that works (because of factory error), and now because of my error, I'm going to be out a bird for what - another 2-3 weeks? Another few hundred bucks?
Somebody please give me some good news!
As a bonus for reading this, here's the video I shot before I crashed http://youtu.be/Iq2sB79HLnc
