After carefully planning a flight from a ridge, I decided to make a slight modification to the first part of a Litchi flight. As originally planned, the flight was straight outward from the ridge and over lower ground. I didn't notice that the change resulted in the initial part of the flight going over slightly higher ground. As soon as the drone took off, I realized the mistake, but it was too late to stop it. I took my eyes off of the drone to look at the controller, but it seemed to crash into a tree that, fortunately, had bright fall foliage. Otherwise, I might have never found the drone. It didn't take long to find the battery (still blinking) under that tree. I scanned the top of the tree with binoculars but didn't see it. Suddenly, I noticed that it was about 12 feet up in a tangle of small branches (see the attached photo). After being careless, I was very lucky that the small branches cushioned the blow, and the only damage was a broken prop. It's bad enough to have a crash, but this seemed to be the worst right when it happened. I had spent weeks planning to use the drone to get some images of the gorgeous fall foliage. My plans seemed to go up in smoke with the crash, but I was able to finish the project and produce this video.
got lucky after a careless mistake
- Thread starter cinclodes
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Things seem to go wrong with my drones this time of year also. I’m doing good so far this year.
How bad is the damage?
How bad is the damage?
The only damage (other than to my ego for making such a careless blunder) was a broken prop, which can be seen in the image (hard to see, but it's the end pointing upwards of the prop that appears at the bottom). This wasn't a matter of something going wrong with the drone. The crash was entirely on me.
Yes, embarrassing, but you told on yourself. Lol Be careful, sometimes things can show up later. I know, experience. If slight anomalies start to happen be leery of the gimbal ribbon cable. They are very fragile.
I didn't save the video of the crash, which cut off a few seconds before impact.
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Don't understand why the video stopped before impact unless you switched it off.
I had similar crash three years ago with my old P3A. Very solid and damage resistant product. I hit a tree while I was flying backward presuming the drone position somewhere else that it was in fact. My beginners fault - don't fly backward if you don't see the drone! After the impact it was falling down the tree hitting almost all branches it passed and then rolling down the hill slope over grass leaves and rocks and stopped around 100m under. I thought it was in pieces. But only one propeller was broken and it flies with no issues since then.
I had similar crash three years ago with my old P3A. Very solid and damage resistant product. I hit a tree while I was flying backward presuming the drone position somewhere else that it was in fact. My beginners fault - don't fly backward if you don't see the drone! After the impact it was falling down the tree hitting almost all branches it passed and then rolling down the hill slope over grass leaves and rocks and stopped around 100m under. I thought it was in pieces. But only one propeller was broken and it flies with no issues since then.
I didn't switch it off. I had one other crash in which it kept recording as it tumbled through tree branches, but in that case the battery didn't pop out.
I agree. I crashed my P3S almost 2 years ago on an AutoPilot follow mission where I didn’t take changes in ground elevation into account. Only damage was a stuck IMU which I fixed by removing top and banging IMU. This past summer, about 2 years later I had my gimbal wobble a bit during a flight. My gimbal slowly began having more sporadic problems (limp on startup but returned to normal after a gentle shake). Now I am searching for a gimbal cable that works as my gimbal is now always limp and finding an original one is proving difficult.
I can’t help wondering if the one and only crash 2 years ago has contributed to my current gimbal problems.
Chris
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I was hoping the video would show the crash. Although I hate it when there is a mishap, it's always interesting to see the video!
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