I think I found out my "Flyaway" problem...

[PJA]

I posted last Sunday night and Monday morning about My Phantom not being responsive after it took off. I couldn't control it or even land it myself or through RTH. This resulted in my Phantom crash landing from approximately 150 feet off the ground after running out of power. See Post: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2704

I know it's not considered a FLYAWAY, but it became unresponsive nevertheless...

After recovering my quad and opening it up, it was obvious I needed a new shell. It hard landed and warped one of the arms. Anyway, on further investigation, I notice that the connection on the receivers board was half way off and stuck in a bent position. It couldn't have happened in the crash because no other circuit boards had disconnected pins, cracks or anything for that matter... Everything inside was intact...

I only opened the shell up once last week to solder wires to the auxiliary to set up for a gimbal I was going to use. I didn't touch, move or bend anything in the area of the receiver board. Now that I'm looking at this, I'm wondering if it had a lot to do with losing control of my Phantom. Looks like it either was coming loose from all the vibrations over time, or it came like this from the factory and finally disconnected altogether in my last flight. (see pics below).

I'm not a complete noob to these things. I have flown the XAircraft X450 and X450 Pro Quads with a Spectrum TX/RX set up. I never saw such a 'primitive' piece of electronic hardware set up in my life - IMO. At least all other receivers are encased and have decent plugs for the pins... My rebuild is definitely going to be with the Futaba T8J set up...

I think this was my problem all along... Thoughts?

 

[eckoner]

IDK... I mean it's still making a connection ? As long as that connector is getting contact on all leads it cant be that. With that said perhaps that connection is not solid enough?

I would have to check the terminals and make sure none of that eye goop stuff got in there.

also...everytime you take off it could be the last time you see it! lol

 

[LJ35]

Looks like that could be an intermittent connection. T8J sooner, not later!

 

[marcus_canada]

This is going to sound crazy, but here I go.

- Remove the plug
- straighten the pins (Which you 99% definitely bent yourself when you had the top off)
- Refit the plug
- Hot glue the thing on
- Go fly.....

 

[PJA]

Now that I straightened the pin and looked it over carefully, I MIGHT have bent the peg & pin when I put the shell back on. There are, I guess you would call, stress tabs all along the outer upper shell. If you are not careful to line up the bottom and top shell, one of those stress tabs are very close to that plug... Most likely it did get bent as I was trying to line up the two halves...

At least I'm confident that this was the intermittent control problem I had while it was in the air... And IMHO, the glue wasn't worth a ****... It didn't do it's job completely... I'll glue both sides this time...

A needless accident over a stupid mistake... Live & Learn...

The good news is my Phantom powers up... All motors run and sound fine... Transmitter controls are again engaging...

On the down side, one RED esc strip is out, (the crash hit hard on that arm), so I ordered another because one LED loosened and fell off while I was checking it out. Too intricate to solder... The rebuild begins this weekend...