Years experience with Quadcopters?

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Curious to know how many years experience you guys have under the belt flying these quadcopters/drones? If you care to share, how many accidents you've had (tend to think as a newer flier one would crash early on in their experience and prevent further mishaps?)

I'm going to try my very best to avoid a crash but then again it's probably inevitable right? Oh well practice makes near perfect. I guess the more experience, the most seasoned one becomes at flying.

Your take on experience? :smiley:
 
I've been very luck to have been flying R/c for over 4 decades now. First planes (planks) then heli and then MultiRotors. They've come a long way.

Crashing happens eventually to almost all of us. I had one P3Pro with over 400 hours before the first (and last) crash of that particular unit. The only way to NEVER crash is to NEVER fly.

Good luck and safe flights :)
 
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5 years for me, I've owned a few quads and built a few. Crashed tons of times, I recently crashed my Phantom for the 1st time the other day, luckily from only 3 feet high, it was totally a dumb reason to crash too, the land yard spun around on me making the sticks push in when in it hit my chest causing it to crash LOL. Oh well, nothing wrong with it still flys perfect lol.
 
I've been flying almost 16 months. I fly every day I can. If I can't, it's usually because of the weather.

My crash log:

Early Aug '15 - First launch, drop from the sky from 15 feet height. It was a 5 sec flight. Bad battery. I was too much of a noob to know it. Minor damage to gimbal ribbon cable.

Mid Aug '15, - First flight with FPV after practicing two weeks without an app. Launched from my property instead of a nice big open field like I should have. Took my eye off the quad for a sec to look at the screen. Looked back and it was drifting towards a tree. I reacted badly and it wedged itself into the Y of the tree way up high. Had to use extension ladder fully extended and painters pole fully extended and stand on my tip toes on the second to highest ladder run to hook the landing gear and get it out of the Y. No damage.

Mid Sep '15 - Friends came over and I wanted to show off my drone. Flew it from the house around 100 yards away. Then turned my back and turned off the controller to show off the RTH. When I turned back around, it was flying over my willow tree and trying to land in it!?! Concerned but not panicked, I calmly flicked the S1 switch to regain control - and it kept coming down into the tree! I flicked it again and again - no change! Down it went into the branches and then kind of gently fell through the long branches and hit the ground. What went wrong? Couldn't figure it out at the time but thinking back, I think I might have had "Dynamic Home Point" enabled and my tablet had a bad fix. What else went wrong? I forgot to turn the controller back on! No damage.

Feb 2016 - On a mission - crashed into a tree at full speed over a mile away and 100 ft high. Found it thanks to Flytrex Live 3G. Broke gimbal arm. Fixed it fairly cheap and easily. Got lucky.

July 2016 - Lost it again when it dropped unexpectedly during a descent (suddenly dropped 15 ft / sec for about 5 secs during long angled final descent) and it dropped into very thick woods about a quarter mile away. Found it thanks to Flytrex Live 3G. Lots of deer ticks in there. Found a cool deer skull though. Major damage as the motors continued spinning and heated up, melting the plastic motor mounts, and then pulled themselves right through the arms. I was able to even out the melted white plastic and remount the motors with longer screws and flat washers. It flew like new.

Aug 2016 - descended too low on angled descent and it got caught up in some low tree/bush branches and hung there at the edge of my property. No damage.

Sep 2016 - Hitting a high tree while very low on battery - fell 100 ft. from the top of the tree onto my property. Broke gimbal arm and all four props among other things. Ordered parts and fixed it.

Early Nov 2016 - Lost it again when a prop spun off at 400 feet height two and a half miles away. It fell onto a horse farm field. Found it with Flytrex Live 3G. One wing was bent 90 degrees and filled up with three inches of dirt and which also broke the ESC into two pieces and the compass was gone. Clam shell somehow opened up during the crash and then slammed shut onto the top of my center board leaving the receiver plugs outside. Lost all four rubber dampeners and the SD card and yet the gimbal/camera was unscathed. Battery was completely trashed - case was cracked like a nut shell and the litho bags shoved up into the electronic head. No litho leak though. Replaced shell, ESC, compass, and other parts. Good as new.

And it's still flying today - the same aircraft - over 600 miles total distance and still going strong!

Thanks! To my friends who have helped with repairs!
 
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I've been flying almost 16 months. I fly every day I can. If I can't, it's usually because of the weather.

My crash log:

Early Aug '15 - First launch, drop from the sky from 15 feet height. It was a 5 sec flight. Bad battery. I was too much of a noob to know it. Minor damage to gimbal ribbon cable.

Mid Aug '15, - First flight with FPV after practicing two weeks without an app. Launched from my property instead of a nice big open field like I should have. Took my eye off the quad for a sec to look at the screen. Looked back and it was drifting towards a tree. I reacted badly and it wedged itself into the Y of the tree way up high. Had to use extension ladder fully extended and painters pole fully extended and stand on my tip toes on the second to highest ladder run to hook the landing gear and get it out of the Y. No damage.

Feb 2016 - On a mission - crashed into a tree at full speed over a mile away and 100 ft high. Found it thanks to Flytrex Live 3G. Fixed it fairly cheap and easily. Got lucky.

July 2016 - Lost it again when it dropped unexpectedly during a descent (dropped 15 ft / sec for about 5 secs) and it dropped into very thick woods about a quarter mile away. Found it thanks to Flytrex Live 3G. Major damage as the motors heated up and pulled themselves right through the wings, melting the plastic. I was able to even out the melted white plastic and remount the motors with longer screws and flat washers. It flew like new.

Aug 2016 - descended too low on landing and it got caught up in some low tree/bush branches and hung there. No damage.

Sep 2016 - Hitting a high tree while very low on battery - fell 100 ft. very close to home point. Ordered parts and fixed it.

Nov 2016 - Lost it again when a prop spun off at 400 feet height two and a half miles away. Found it with Flytrex Live 3G. Fixed it.

And it's still flying today - the same aircraft - over 600 miles total distance and still going strong!

Thanks! To my friends who have helped with repairs!
yeah I fly every day as well, I can't remember all the crashes ive had lol.
 
I have been flying RCs for over 25 years and used to have crashes now and then but it was a fun to repair them back and fly again. My first quadcopter I bought about 5 was Parrots AR Drone which was easy to fly but I crashed in winds. I have better luck with DJI drones.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots
 
I have a whopping .5 years in now.
Swarm has so far not had crashes.
Pea (and Pea II) have hundreds. :D

Pea and Pea II the little itty bitty Syma x12s. I count hitting anything unintended as a crash, even though I have hit branches and had it self right and not hit the ground.
 
photo-df3-onwhite.jpg
About 40 years, I built my first multi rotor an RC Toys DraganFlyer about 12 years ago


The DF came as a kit, with a single gyro and a crappy little camera. But WOW is was so cool back then.
 
Only about 8 months here. I started out with the unmentionable skyrocket drones. Cheap, hard to fly, and very unpredictable. They were up in trees, banged against the side of my home, even up on the roof. I finally purchased a P3S and man it's between night and day with the technology. I've only had a couple of instances with not much damage. The biggest thing I learned was from here. Stay in wide open areas. And keep reading these forums. These guys a very very smart! A wealth of information!!
 
Only about 8 months here. I started out with the unmentionable skyrocket drones. Cheap, hard to fly, and very unpredictable. They were up in trees, banged against the side of my home, even up on the roof. I finally purchased a P3S and man it's between night and day with the technology. I've only had a couple of instances with not much damage. The biggest thing I learned was from here. Stay in wide open areas. And keep reading these forums. These guys a very very smart! A wealth of information!!
Sometimes that's what you need, these Phantoms are night and day from what I use to fly. It's the easiest and most stress free quad i've ever owned.
 
I've been very luck to have been flying R/c for over 4 decades now.

Crashing happens eventually to almost all of us.............................The only way to NEVER crash is to NEVER fly.


Wow you guys have really logged in some years of flying ! Totally understand; I guess I'm bound to crash some day as it sounds like it comes with the territory to a certain degree. A hobby like this has it's inherent risk factors that are there if one isn't careful and experienced, so would like to thank you all for sharing your experiences b/c it provides me with some insight when flying.
 
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Wow you guys have really logged in some years of flying ! Totally understand; I guess I'm bound to crash some day as it sounds like it comes with the territory to a certain degree. A hobby like this has it's inherent risk factors that are there if one isn't careful and experienced, so would like to thank you all for sharing your experiences b/c it provides me with some insight when flying.
Its pretty hard to crash a Phantom, you have to make some pretty stupid mistakes to crash one, unless its mechanical. Buy you a quad that doesn't have all the bells and whistles like the Phantom does and I guarantee you crash a lot sooner than you would with a Phantom. Flying a Phantom is almost like having training wheels on when you come from flying Quads with no GPS or any other sensors like I have.
 
3 years, 3 crashes in first 3 weeks, each operator error, and all damage easily fixed. But worse was a crash a year ago when the pickup carrying the two Phantoms had an 80 mph single vehicle rollover crash. Phantoms, batteries, and controllers went flying all over the highway. Cracked the housing on one of three batteries, and an antenna on one of the controllers snapped off, necessitating a new (pre-owned) controller. Otherwise, everything still flies just beautifully in spite of a few dinged controllers and prop tops.
 
4 yrs - 1 tip over.
 
Been flying about a year. I had one crash due to a compass error. From about 3 feet off the ground the drone took off right towards me going 15 mph, hit the ground and broke a prop before I could shut it down. I've had several near misses, the latest when trying to use the follow me function and the drone decided to go to the previous home point because of weak device gps


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots
 
I've been flying since April 12th of this year, and no accidents so far. I have flown over 2,561,000' over 137 flights.

I first started flying indoor gyrocopters. I bet if I added up all of the time on both of them, it would add up to about 2 hours of flight time. My Phantom 4 was easier than both of them to fly, but I'm sure the experience on an RC was only a plus toward my drone flying.
 

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