Mine just fell from the sky tonight

[gfredrone]

Repair or sell on ebay for scrap?

Looks like it's going to take about $500 to repair not counting RotorPixel.

Need:

GPS (possibly, knocked heat sink/reflector off gps chip)
Flight controller (possibly, plastic has a hairline crack)
Mainboard (For sure, it's cracked in half)
Cable pack (Several cables tore)
Shell (Arm cracked in half)

Camera survived without a scratch though 32GB SD card was damaged and won't read now. Lost all my footage of some good locations too.

So should I sell it on ebay for a few hundred or fix her up? Do you think anyone would buy a downed bird for parts?

Camera is good
Motors are good
ESC's good
5.8 Ghz new and good
Compass good (to the eye)
DJI 1 axis gimbal like new

What's it worth broke? Camera alone sells for $500.

 

[Mal_PV2_Ireland]

Thats pretty crap. Fixing it up and replacing the rotorpixel will nearly run into the same price as a pv2+. If I were you I'd be selling it for scrap and maybe hope to get a few hundred bucks and buy the pv2+. Think its the most economical option then you have a 3 axis gimbal. I think the most you could hope to get is around $500 altogether, maybe a little bit more if sold separately?

 

[WessexWyvern]

Would you really be happy flying a fixed up Phantom with parts that may have crash damage that hasn't manifested itself yet?

Personally I'd sell it all off, 1 part at a time if it fetches the best price that way. Get some money together and buy a shiny new quad with all new parts that are almost certainly going to be in better condition,even if they are DJI parts. Although I'd be looking for alternatives personally, I've seen too many things on my Phantom that make me nervous about flying it - I went as far as purchasing third party liability insurance for it today.

Get rid of it and start again IMHO.

 

[JimDE]

Just a few weeks ago the auction site had a listing of 12 P2V' for $599 new in box with free shipping.... Heck that is why I can't sell my like new uncrashed P2V with accessories and extra battery for .50 on the dollar I have in it. If I were you I'd buy a new one for $599 before rebuilding the old one and just keep the parts for future needs(as surely if you buy another phantom you will need them in time.

 

[gfredrone]

I filed a claim with Amex purchase protection for accidental damage within 90 days of purchase. I will update as the claims process moves forward. Fingers crossed...

Rotorpixel was in 90 day window
Phantom is out of 90 day window plus might not even be covered (see below)

They pushed the Rotorpixel claim through but I won't know for 10 business days if it's accepted. I'm sure they will find a way not to pay, probably on the accessory clause in the paragraph below. (Certain purchases are not covered which includes but is not limited to: motorized vehicles and watercraft, aircraft, and motorcycles or their motors, equipment, parts or accessories

An eligible purchase is an item purchased with your Card and a claim was submitted within 90 days of purchase. The item has to have been accidentally damaged or stolen (or lost for Platinum Card or Delta Reserve Card Members) when the incident occurred and you will need your original store receipt. Certain purchases are not covered which includes but is not limited to: travelers checks, tickets of any kind, negotiable instruments (including, but not limited to, gift certificates, gift cards and giftchecks), cash or its equivalent; animals or living plants; rare stamps or coins; consumable or perishable items with limited life spans (including, but not limited to, perfume, light bulbs, batteries); antique or previously owned items; motorized vehicles and watercraft, aircraft, and motorcycles or their motors, equipment, parts or accessories; stolen or damaged property consisting of articles in a pair or set. Coverage will be limited to no more than the value of any particular part or parts, unless the articles are unusable individually and cannot be replaced individually, regardless of any special value they may have had as part of a set or collection; items purchased for resale, professional, or commercial use; permanent household and/or business fixtures, including, but not limited to, carpeting, flooring and/or tile; business fixtures, including, but not limited to, air conditioners, refrigerators, heaters; and hospital, medical and dental equipment and devices.

 

[Doono]

Just a few weeks ago the auction site had a listing of 12 P2V' for $599 new in box with free shipping.... Heck that is why I can't sell my like new uncrashed P2V with accessories and extra battery for .50 on the dollar I have in it. If I were you I'd buy a new one for $599 before rebuilding the old one and just keep the parts for future needs(as surely if you buy another phantom you will need them in time.

What auction?

 

[gfredrone]

Just a few weeks ago the auction site had a listing of 12 P2V' for $599 new in box with free shipping.... Heck that is why I can't sell my like new uncrashed P2V with accessories and extra battery for .50 on the dollar I have in it. If I were you I'd buy a new one for $599 before rebuilding the old one and just keep the parts for future needs(as surely if you buy another phantom you will need them in time.

What auction?

He probably saw a listing for an fc40. I've searched the competition and can't find a P2V that low.

 

[JimDE]

E Bay, it was a single add with 12 P2V's available. Think it was the week before the DJI Father's Day sale. I saw that ad and unlisted my used one off craigslist. I am not going to give mine away and could not compete with that add.

 

[Doono]

Just a few weeks ago the auction site had a listing of 12 P2V' for $599 new in box with free shipping....

What auction?

He probably saw a listing for an fc40. I've searched the competition and can't find a P2V that low.

I would have bought 2 at that price.

 

[gfredrone]

Amex just credited me $389.00 for my damaged RotorPixel. Anyone want to buy the crashed gimbal carcass?

 

[gfredrone]

Amex just credited me $389.00 for my damaged RotorPixel. Anyone want to buy the crashed gimbal carcass?

Maybe you can post it here : viewforum.php?f=9

Geert.

I will when I get a chance. Keri won't respond on a parts request so I guess I'll just dump it, as is, and let someone else worry about repairing.

 

[AllanVB]

Amex just credited me $389.00 for my damaged RotorPixel. Anyone want to buy the crashed gimbal carcass?

Maybe you can post it here : viewforum.php?f=9

Geert.

I will when I get a chance. Keri won't respond on a parts request so I guess I'll just dump it, as is, and let someone else worry about repairing.

I feel for ya. I too, lost a P2V+ couple of weeks ago. :|

 

[itsmecarl123]

My P2V fell out of the sky as well in January of this year. It fell into San Diego Mission Bay. I had to go swimming to retrieve the craft, exploding battery and all. I managed to save and finish compiling the video from the flight. The videos just stops the moment the craft fell, which indicated a complete power loss.

After 3 months of pestering the 3rd party vendor and DJI with photos, complete log of my flight, etc... I got a replacement about a month and a half ago. Since then, I take my time before I take off... No more flying over water.. and I use DeoxIT Gold on the gold pads and the two prongs just about every other flight. So far so good.

I wonder if these new P2V builds are a lot better after Colin Guin left?

 

[ProfessorStein]

I just got my Vision just over a week ago and, for the most part, I do agree with JUSTNONEYA. But after reading some of these posts I have to say I'm a little scared to even take it out anymore... fuming that I might have just bought a $1,000 piece of coffee-table sculpture rather than the reliable product I had thought I was buying. (where were these posts when I was doing my initial research???) If JUSTNONEYA has 4 Visions, he can obviously afford to replace one if it crashes. Me, on the other hand, am counting on my one Vision to last me a while.

At the very least, I want to make sure I'm doing everything I can to try to prevent an occurrence of this with my own hardware... and until I know the cause with a little more certainty, I'm very uneasy.

Cleaning the contacts, as Geert recommends, is probably a good practice just in general. But, to me, technically, it doesn't seem like it would do anything to prevent the types of accidents that are being described. If the contacts are dirty, you're going to see symptoms from the moment you plug the pack into the Vision... not 10 minutes into a flight.

I'm thinking that the cause has more to do with heat, and the affect of that heat on the one-piece battery design. Heat, any heat, is going to start to deform plastic. To varying degrees, obviously. But you combine a warm battery, with a long flight, and a warm sun beating on a white plastic shell of the Vision, it's going to get pretty hot inside and I would imagine a lot of deformation is going on in the structure. Get the right amount of deformation, in just the right place, and in just the right direction, and I could see it pushing the power contacts apart (we all know how little it takes to dislodge the charger plug from the battery... or is that just me?). And suddenly the "selling feature" of the one-piece slide-in power pack is now a detriment (with the batteries in most other platforms, you hook up the power connect manually and the wire leads provide a certain amount of slack, so that a great deal of movement can occur and the connection is still in place).

Kind of wondering if we need to find a solution that adds the wire leads back onto the battery, so we can snap the connection on and ensure it's solid, independent of inserting the pack itself. Might mean some knuckle-busting to hook up, given the ergonomics of the current design, but if it means more confidence that we aren't going to suffer a catastrophic power failure, it might be worth it.

 

[JimDE]

Justnoneya, Your grandfather must be a wise man and looks at the broader picture (I too am a grandfather).

If something does happen and one of your 4 drones flys away and hits a child scaring their face or drops on the roof of a hospital and the battery corrupts and catches fire you will see what "so what" means in real dollars when the legal system cleans you out for using a known unreliable toy. Just your last post alone would hang you out to dry in a court IF a slick lawyer got ahold of it if your drone happens to hurt someone or something. Judges don't like "so what!" answers when liability issues are concerned.

As far as the rest of your comments ....... I will just ignore you and them being as you have a whole 8 posts on the forum. Obviously ProfessorStein read it and other what you call negative BS posts on these forums and thought about the "what if's" of Vision flight. In this case ignorance isn't bliss it can cost you BIG BUCK's!!! .......


ProfessorStein, I too did not do a deep enough research prior to jumping into this activity back in March......... the unknown reasons for fly aways and units dropping out of the sky have been written about for the past 8 months on many phantom forums on the web. For someone who takes accountability seriously there is a lot to think about when you push the left control lever up making the Phantom take off. Admittedly, the majority of these flyways are pilot errors but the ones that are not are the ones that concern me and anyone not wanting their pants sued off if a worse case scenario occurs. Maybe Justnoneya carries a multi-million dollar liability insurance policy on his toys that will help defray the cost of the lawsuits for scaring a young girls face or punching through a $30k mainsail on a unlimited class yacht or falling on a person driving a motorcycle down the highway.... I don't and honestly could not justify the premiums especially considering the poor image quality these Phantom Visions produce. The end results are not worth the potential financial risks for my photography needs and wants. I will continue to express my (as Justnoneya calls) negative BS posts so others do not potentially get into something without reading about things to consider on both sides both Pro's and Con's.

 

[ProfessorStein]

Even if no one gets hurt or sued, over and above even the economic and emotional impacts on a pilot directly involved, I think these failures should concern ALL flyers.

Your Vision might be rock solid for the entirety of it's life, great.

But all it's going to take is just one near miss by someone ELSE'S drone in your neighborhood (where... maybe the copter doesn't tear some girl's face off like JimDE so eloquently describes... but simply crashes close enough to a child to scare him/her badly enough) or even one minor incident of property damage where maybe a Vision takes out something as innocuous as someone's prized rose bush, and all of a sudden your city/county/state will be up-in-arms insisting that there be regulations placed on when and where our drones can fly. Effective shutting us down as a whole. Drones already have a pretty heavy stigma hanging over them, and people are already pretty leary of these things flying anywhere near them. All it's going to take is one or two incidents involving the right folks (the kind of folks that shout the loudest at city council meetings) and we're ALL screwed.

So these issues can and will affect the entire flying community, whether or not YOU experience issues directly with YOUR hardware or not.

I should think that EVERY drone pilot should be actively interested in investigating why these catastrophic failures are happening, and should be pressing DJI and other manufacturers to take the issues seriously and find solutions quickly. Otherwise we're not going to be able to fly and enjoy our copters very much longer.

That may sound like "negative BS"... but it's just simple reality.

 

[phantomguy]

How long have powerful gas/nitro powered RC planes and helicopters been flying?

 

[ProfessorStein]

How long have powerful gas/nitro powered RC planes and helicopters been flying?

A long time. But... typically, in the past, they:

a) were flown in designated areas (there are several dedicated RC "airfields" within 1/2 hour of me)
and
b) did not have cameras

With platforms like the Phantom, pilots have taken to flying them anywhere, and using the cameras non-stop. Both of which bring their operation to the forefront of peoples minds. And the use of the cameras, in particular, makes a drone a very thorny issue for a lot of people. And the crashing of drones causes these already leery people to boil over.

 

[JimDE]

All good point ProfessorStein.... And I agree that the number one priority for owners is to get real solutions to the unexplained fly aways and repeating mechanical drop out of the sky issues.

Sadly, I feel it is a inherent issue with drones as a whole not just Phantoms. If 1 military drone crashes every 9-10 days for all kinds of reasons including unexplained fly aways and mechanicals then obviously it is a much larger issue with this technology. Again I will say it is a extremely sophisticated technology that IMO is not quite ready for prime time. Especially those units using GPS/NAZA for flight control.

I feel the cheaper they sell these consumer drones the greater the risks immature pilots will take and the sooner something no one wants to happen will happen. If these phantoms sold for $200 we would very quickly hear all kinds of problems with person or property damage. Ask any photographic team running a high dollar drone for professional purposes what they feel about the current consumer drones and you will undoubtedly get a earful.