Phantom 3 Advanced - Wind gust crash

[npaden]

This happened back this summer but I'm just now getting around to posting this and selling my busted machine.

Here's the link to the video.

I think this is the link to the flight log uploaded to healthy drones.

Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

I was flying in about 20 mph winds with occasional gusts. Right when I started filming you can see a gust and I should have brought it back down right then. Things seemed to calm down though and I spent almost 2 minutes flying around. I really wanted to see what was up on the other side of that ridge.

As I got closer to the top of the ridge a gust caught it and flipped it upside down. There wasn't anything that I could do to get it back upside right (that I know of anyway). It was a pretty sick 15 seconds as it buzzed toward the ground.

In the video it looks like it was spinning, but I think that was just the camera trying to figure out how to get itself leveled out.

I tried looking at the flight log but I can't really tell much other than it had a lot of speed warnings after it flipped over.

I have the micro SD card but there is an error in the video so all I could post was the low resolution version from the iPad.

Anyone know of any free software that might be able to get the video file on the micro SD card playable?

 

[pomonabill220]

So sorry for your loss! That is a beautiful location.
Yes, you probably should have aborted your flight in the beginning as you said because of the rather violent gusts.
I wonder if there were strong up/down drafts near the canyon walls that caught your bird.
Well chalk it up to experience... and don't do that again and trust your insincts.

 

[npaden]

Yes. It was a mountain bowl and for sure as I got closer to the walls it became more of an updraft than a straight across wind. I don't think there was anything I could have done to correct it once it flipped, but maybe an expert can look at the flight log and see. I know in the 15 seconds I had I couldn't figure anything out.

 

[GMack]

Bad luck with that ridge.

Maybe a moral to the video is: "If you see the legs in the video feed, the bird ain't happy and best to land it soon rather than tough it out."

Fwiw, I've watched mine get slapped around pretty bad at times in winds that I measured showing gusts to only 10 MPH on the ground with my float gauge. Must've been really bad where it was about 50 feet up as I could see it rock to the side at times and the yaw and horizon was always messed up if I turned it 90 degrees.

 

[Sevyn13]

It probably lost power and interrupted the video file from closing the file correctly. If you put the card back in the bird and power it on and then power it back off correctly it might fix the video. I've heard of that working for people.


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[IFlyHi]

As a hang glider pilot I've experienced what we call some pretty nasty rotor that can occur on the back side of a ridge that has strong airflow over the top. The walls of that ridge look to be fairly steep and would be prime for those kinds of conditions.


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[robiaman]

A full throttle and full fwd could have broke it state of confusion.


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