Re-attaching PV2 camera wires

[nav66]

Okay, I had a bad day, and crashed my P2V into thick grass. The battery popped out, and the camera mount came loose. The aircraft structure seems none the worse for wear, but the three wires to the camera have been severed. Question: does anybody know the right gauge of wire I should use to splice the wires? My plan is to do a simple splice with electrical tape before resorting to soldering. I am not an electrician by any means, but I believe this would be sufficient. Then I will bring up the system to test the camera and the gimbal.

I searched for threads relating to separated camera, but didn't find anything. If this same tragedy (albeit self-imposed) has happened to any of you, please let me know how you handled it.

Cheers!

 

[arinvideo]

http://www.dronefly.com/ProductDetails. ... cable-pack

The vision cable pack includes the camera cable.

 

[nav66]

@arinvideo, thank you. I will order a pack immediately!

 

[F6Rider]

Same thing happened to my buddy Rick, got to close while weaving thru the trees and clipped one, resulting in a crash. Seem every time the camera and battery pop off. In his case the camera just came un-plugged but the jack broke.

 

[nav66]

Wow - if the jack breaks...that's part of the camera housing. Did he find a way to repair it?

My accident was so unnecessary. I started getting fancy when the battery reached around 25%. I attempted to land on a wooden footpath. But then - and this is where I start beating myself up - I forgot the engine shutdown procedure. Somehow, one of the props got caught in the wood, splintering the wood, but the prop appeared okay. The system stopped the engines, as the prop in question actually got caught under a sliver of wood. I should have quit then and took her home. Like a fool, I elected to take off again. The lights underneath were flashing red, and the P2V ran away from me. I could not get it to return to base. I think I panicked and shut down the engines with the infamous in-flight both-sticks-angled-down. My fault, but it sure does bruise the ego.

 

[Pull_Up]

Some people tie fishing line or similar through the rubber dampers to keep things together in a crash, or thin cable ties. Tight enough to save cable strain, loose enough to avoid introducing vibration.

 

[nav66]

@Pull_up- thanks for the tip. Fishing line sounds good. I'll give it a go.

 

[gbshovel]

Use the camera tip I just posted for next time....

 

[nav66]

Here's a brutally explicit graphic of what I did to my P2V:

 

[arinvideo]

That is not the cable I thought was severed. I thought you had severed the cable going to the camera. Just checked the cable pack and I believe the cable your looking for is included as well. Took a quick pic for you.

 

[nav66]

That proves a picture is worth a thousand words! Thanks, @arinvideo.

 

[nav66]

Here's my follow-up and close-out of this issue. Happy days are here again.

Got the cable pack. The real trouble we had was with one of the small screws at the tip of one of the arms. You know what I am talking about. Tiny little Phillips head. In my voracity, I mildly stripped the bite. My wife actually removed the screw using Zen-like channeling of forces. Me? I could not have done it. But she did.

With the screw removed, the replacement of the motor gimbal cable was relatively easy.

We put the shell back on, and ran it through power-on checks. Alas, the camera would not power on. I rechecked connections, and nothing seemed to work.

I had already posted a sob story on Amazon trying to see what recourse I had, when suddenly I thought, "Gee, that jack pin that goes to the back of the camera has three segments... that's a pretty long plug." I decided to try re-plugging it one more time. Sure enough, I hadn't pushed it in to its rightful depth.

Ran the power-on once again, and all works swimmingly. My wife and I endeavored to take it out flying at the Baylands (South San Francisco Bay), but the winds made us think twice. I'll do a compass calibration and GPS lock check tomorrow.

Bottom line, all seems to be working again. And proof positive that the Internet works!