My first major crash- and what a time for it!

[hughsnews]

I am an archaeologist and got into Aerial Photography last year when I was tasked with using kite photography on a site in Greece. I made the switch to the Phantom 2 and have built custom mounts etc for it to help with my job.

A few days ago I FINALLY, managed to get my two bosses out to a small field in our University to show them the power of the Quadcopter. Flew it around for 15 minutes, showed them the FPV, the speed of launching etc etc and they were thoroughly impressed!
I even showed them the auto-land feature to help ease their minds over safety.

As I was about to land due to my battery getting low, I shot it up about 20ft into the air just for a final hoorah!
But suddenly, it began to spin and descending rapidly, wobbling! I slammed on the upwards thrust, but it just slowed it and the quad hit the deck!

Despite being embarrassed and this being my first crash(apart from it sometimes tipping over when landing in wind), I was lucky.
The field I was on has this thick inch high grass that was incredibly spongey! I had also just installed landing protector pads that day and I had prop protectors on. It hit the deck on its LG pretty hard, bounced and flipped onto its top. I have a lovely chipped prop and the others are scratched but I tested it quickly by launching and landing it and nothing else seems to be broken/cracked.

So now I wonder- what caused the crash? Were my props slightly damaged and could this have caused it to lose control and descend? I was in an area where there is wifi like 40-50m away? Could that have hurt? Did one of the props hit something in the air? I noticed that my controller was on ATTI, but am unsure if I accidentally flicked that when I ran to see if it was ok. Any suggestions?
Thankful to say that because it wasn't broken and because I launched it straight away to show my bosses it still worked- they seem super impressed!!! :? :lol:

 

[goldfishrock]

Two questions. Firstly have you enabled NAZAM mode in teh Assistant software? If not that the ATTI mode won't have been enabled as in Phantom mode that switch position is functionless.

Secondly you said that battery was getting low.... how low was it? When battery levels are low the P2 will descend of it's own accord. There are several stories of people losing P2s because the battery ran down when they were over water!

 

[LandYachtMedia]

If you were getting a low battery warning then shooting up and drawing a LOT of current from the battery could have indeed caused the problem.

 

[hughsnews]

Hey guys-
Yeah Goldfishrock I have NAZA enabled. But as I said I think that perhaps I hit the switch after the crash. I know that it will start to land itself but it wasn't the way that it has happened in the past.

Landyachtmedia- yeah I wonder if with it being low, pushing the battery the way I did may have caused it to have a momentary freak out and lose control. I will test more in the coming weeks to make sure it isn't anything else but I have a feeling you are right and it serves as a lesson to me that when it starts to flash- get that puppy down!