WTH Just Happened? Props just flew off!

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Okay,
so I went flying today (Vision + V3.0 ESC v2.1) with a battery that I didn't much trust, but never had a problem with. So I shoot up 600ft in a deep mountain valley over some trees and go out about 1900ft. I reached my destination and began to roll backwards towards my location, when I hear the phantom make a weird noise then silence. Looking at the fpv, one second its flying perfect, next second screen goes immediately black and silence. Having a marco-polo I was able to hike 1500ft out through stomach deep snow and find everything (Right on Course), but I noticed something really weird. All the props were in perfect condition about 100ft or so away from where everything else was. If I didn't know any better I'd swear the motors reversed and spit all the props off, and this was only 2:30 into flight. Recovered all but last 10 sec of video and data tracker (Vision Utility+) and all show me at 600ft before logging/video stops while returning to home. So one second I'm 600ft up, 10 seconds later I'm crashed into ground. I'm kinda shocked, and pissed at the same time, especially since my gimbal it bent to hell. Took Phantom apart and don't see anything that looks disconnected, but I'm looking at $300 in parts to get back into the air, not including the most expensive part (Camera / Gimbal), and whatever piece of mind I actually had in its reliability.

Sad, Sad Day
 
It's possible the esc's or wiring failed and locked up the motors causing the props to fly free from the motors

Sucks for it to happen though
 
If all 4 motors are 'involved' it would seem like a power or other common (to all) issue.
4 ESCs failing at the same time is just not very likely.
 
I feel ya bro... had it happen to me but just one motor... the motors don't have to necessarily spin backward for this to happen with self tightening props... just coming to a slamming stop is good enough for inertia to spin them off the rest of the way...

That being said...

REALLY weird hearing it happen to all four at the same time... super strange... like the entire system switched polarity or the firmware threw a bad command at all ESC's at the same time.

But the stranges part of this story...

You found four white props in waist deep white snow 100ft away from the bird... that ****'s like finding bigfoot!! :shock:
 
Did you use the wrench and torque your props?

This "Prop leaving the Phantom" issue seems to be occurring quite frequently these days.

It doesn't sound like it would have made any difference, unless the motors restarted.
Then again, if the motors reversed with the props still on, you may have found your bird in a crater.
 
Well if I was any kind of lucky, the snow has been there for weeks so there was a nice hard crust on top. Unfortunately all 160lbs of me wasn't able to walk on said crust. Props were visible on top crusty snow all pretty close to one another with zero marks. I really wish the **** thing would have just landed 30ft in any direction, but nope right into trees. BTW, I didn't loose control or fpv prior to incident, and I was in the middle of nowhere Colorado many, many miles away from any wifi or interference. I was flying around 11,000ft above sea level, with zero wind. Will try to post the video if I can correctly repair it, cant use the camera to fix it, but mp4 repair online seems to be able to view it.
 
It does suck to not have logged data all the way to the point of failure. This problem has to be related to the battery. The thing is we never had this type of stuff take place until after they added the software to reduce the life of the batteries.
 
IflyinWY said:
Did you use the wrench and torque your props?

I never use the wrench, but for some reason with the new v3.0 motors the wrench doesn't seem to work well anyways. I always spin tighten and make sure the blades spin on nice and tight. Never had a problem prior, but it makes me rethink.
 
jshull0 said:
IflyinWY said:
Did you use the wrench and torque your props?

I never use the wrench, but for some reason with the new v3.0 motors the wrench doesn't seem to work well anyways. I always spin tighten and make sure the blades spin on nice and tight. Never had a problem prior, but it makes me rethink.

Post a pic up of the gimbal if you can.... It may be repairable. As long as the crash didnt jam the j-arm into the main board it can be fixed. I have only had 2 sent into me that crashes had completely wiped out and they where not repairable.

Jeremy
 
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One last weird thing I noticed, after the crash I picked up the battery and it flashed 50% after only 2:30ish of flight starting off at 97%. Once I got the battery home a few hours later I noticed it flashed 75%. Either way this battery is getting tossed at only around 30 cycles.
 
burlbark said:
jshull0 said:
IflyinWY said:
Did you use the wrench and torque your props?

I never use the wrench, but for some reason with the new v3.0 motors the wrench doesn't seem to work well anyways. I always spin tighten and make sure the blades spin on nice and tight. Never had a problem prior, but it makes me rethink.

Post a pic up of the gimbal if you can.... It may be repairable. As long as the crash didnt jam the j-arm into the main board it can be fixed. I have only had 2 sent into me that crashes had completely wiped out and they where not repairable.

Jeremy

Here ya go, any help would be appreciated Jeremy. Hopefully Im not completely screwed... The arm defiantly made contact with the bottom of the board, but its not jammed in any way. There is a pin in that j-arm that is defiantly bent, and when powered up it just buzzes with no movement but all is free and nothing is jammed. The ribbon cable looks to be completely intact as well.
 

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was that battery in storage over the winter break? did you use that battery after a long time and was it full for a long time, that could also be the cause of the battery problem draining so quickly, not good to keep batteries full like that for long periods of time.
 
clayton4115 said:
was that battery in storage over the winter break? did you use that battery after a long time and was it full for a long time, that could also be the cause of the battery problem draining so quickly, not good to keep batteries full like that for long periods of time.

The battery in question may have sat for a few days 100%, but that's all. I've really tried to play it safe with these battery's and store them at 50% or as close as I can get to that. I have noticed a little puffiness in that battery. Ironically the only thing that survived unscathed was the dang battery.
 
Cruising at11,000 feet, very impressive. Do you do much high altitude flying?

I'm flying a FC40 which uses totally different batteries, than goodness.
When I'm at 8,000 and using a 10c discharge rate battery, I can easily suck the juice faster than the battery can supply.
I will get a low battery indication if I am flying aggressively, even with a full battery.
I can then mellow out my flying and get much more flight time and the low battery indicator will go off.

I wonder if that's what happened to you, or something similar.
Didn't you mention, you didn't like that battery anyway.
 
IflyinWY said:
Cruising at11,000 feet, very impressive. Do you do much high altitude flying?

I'm flying a FC40 which uses totally different batteries, than goodness.
When I'm at 8,000 and using a 10c discharge rate battery, I can easily suck the juice faster than the battery can supply.
I will get a low battery indication if I am flying aggressively, even with a full battery.
I can then mellow out my flying and get much more flight time and the low battery indicator will go off.

I wonder if that's what happened to you, or something similar.
Didn't you mention, you didn't like that battery anyway.

I guess I never thought about it, I've flown at a friends house many time with no issue and he's at 10'000ft Above Sea Level. This was one of my higher flights above sea level, hope altitude above sea level doesn't affect the craft too much, or I'm kinda screwed for flying.
 
High altitude flights have greatly reduced flight times compared to flights at sea level.

The simple explanation is,
air density is less at 10,000 feet so the motors have to spin the props faster to produce the same amount of lift.

My guess is, with a good battery, you will get about half the flight time as you would at sea level.
 
Makes sense, although I never really noticed to much difference in flight time from 6200ft to 10,000ft. Your hard pressed to find anything lower in altitude round here.

If anyone is interested this is the last 6,seconds of recorded video that I could recover. 20sec later in the trees. Flight recorder showed a few more seconds, but not the event.
https://youtu.be/kEFF8CpS8QM
 
Prop locks are an interesting idea:

Inspire_1_006.jpg


However, even if the props were locked on, wouldn't the Phantom still crash since one or more of the props is not spinning at the correct speed?
 

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