Was out yesterday practicing my gimbal panning skills. My subject was a gnarly old dead tree (see attached pic). I've shot it many times prior to this, but this time I wanted to try using the touch screen gimbal control to see if it gave me smoother control. The tree is 30.7 meters high (measured using the readout from the Pilot app), and my P3 hight this time was 32 meters. The planned shot was to approach the tree from this altitude, pass directly overhead, and pan the camera down as I was going to keep the tree centered in the shot.
I was almost right over the tree, looking at the shot in the screen and suddenly saw an expanding blur in the lower right. Looked up just in time to see a hawk coming up out of the tree branches and hit the landing rail on the right. The P3 did a wild tilt to the left, slid sideways and down, and caught the upper branches. The impact shattered two of the four props, and the P3 cartwheeled down into the brush below.
Moral of the misadventure: Never assume a tree is just a tree. Could be somebody's home. To add insult to injury, when I got my P3 home, I found the MSD card had popped out at some point in the crash. Didn't even have exciting crash footage to post.
The left front rotor arm took the brunt of the landing, and was bent so that a prop mounted on the motor will hit the top of the shell.
I cleaned it out and did a complete external visual inspection. Powered up the P3 and did a cold IMU calibration successfuly, then a gimbal calibration, also successfuly. The camera transmits perfectly and with a new MSD card installed, records like it always has. I started the motors, and there's no problems there. No vibrations, binding, or strange noises. So it looks like I got off VERY lucky, with only a bent motor arm, missing LED cover, and lost MSD card. Won't know for sure until I can get it back in the air if everything is indeed alright. I've pre-ordered a replacement shell (top and bottom) and while I'm waiting, I'll try to straighten the arm out enough to be able to carefully test fly it to make sure the electronics are okay.
BTW, anybody else done a complete transfer to a new shell? Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.