Negative experience - crash landing

[boris_kiev]

Hello fellow phantomers,

This is going to be my first post here -- I'd like to warn people new to the Phantom and alike and share my negative experience.

So it was my, I believe, 20th or something flight, I got accustomed to flying the copter, and wanted to do a spiral landing. It is when the machine descends in spiral motion. So I put left joystick all the way down and to the right (to make the Phantom spin and descend), and right joystick all the way down and to the left (do make it drift in diagonal motion).

The altitude was about 25-30 meters and to my surprise the rotors stopped spinning (obviously, due to positions of the joysticks). So the copter started falling down. It took me around one second to realize the consequences and push the left stick all the way up. But the precious time was last by that moment and copter hit the ground.

Right skid is broken now, the body has cracked, one propeller is broken. The motors seem to be ok, so are the internals. So I plan to replace the body and the skid, do a diagnostic at a local repair shop.

Just a piece of advice - know your limits and always study the manuals/how-tos/forums/etc.

Good thing that I didn't not attach the Hero 3. Like I knew what was gonna happen

 

[edunwody]

Yep, you put it in shut down mode. If you put the sticks all the way down, that was going to be a pretty fast decent even if you didn't shut the motors down. Would have been hard to recover anyway with spinning motors.

Wew!

Lessons learned I guess.

E


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free

 

[tanasit]

Phantom was NOT designed for the fancy moves but for taking video/picture but you can still do those by choosing the MANUAL mode (power will not cut off) and increase the Attitude GAIN for quicker response.
You can even use the hidden 7th channel to change the GAIN in flight to suit your flying style.

 

[bumper]

But, you can close the throttle all the way in a descent* and the Phantom will stay upright, just descending fast. You need to add power in plenty of time to arrest the descent though. Also, you need to consciously avoid inadvertently moving both sticks to a "shut down" position as you found out.

*I mention this as during the first bunch of flights I was afraid to try it.


bumper

 

[tanasit]

One more note, if you maneuver your Phantom to the point where it lean over 70 degree and you have the motor stop set in Intelligent mode, the motors will automatically stop regardless of the throttle position.

Below is the quote from the manual:

If you choose the Immediately Mode, you should not pull throttle stick under 10% during flight,
because it will stop motors. If you do it accidentally, you should push the throttle stick over 10% in
5 seconds to re-start motors.

 

[MrMediaGuy]

And another comment, just in case any new flyers read this thread in isolation -- important to know that if you execute the CSC with the sticks in flight as the original poster did, just pushing the throttle back up won't save you. You have to restart the motors by executing the CSC again, then you can attempt to add throttle and *maybe* save yourself from crashing. But 9.8 meters/sec^2 goes by pretty fast.

This points out that it's really important to understand the settings you choose for *your* Phantom in the NAZA Assistant and how that affects your recovery procedure. For example, if you set the motor stop mode to "Immediate," then moving the throttle below 10% (regardless of what you do with the right stick) will stop the motors. In this mode only, moving the throttle back up within 5 seconds will restart the motors, no CSC required with the sticks.

On the other hand, if you choose "Intelligent" motor stop, then moving the throttle below 10% will trigger an auto-land procedure. Once this sequence engages, every input but throttle is ignored by the NAZA. That means you can add throttle to slow the landing but you can't pitch or roll to guide the descent in a different direction.

So the basic lesson is, never move the throttle below 10% unless you are on the ground.