Airborne Motors and Motherboard Failure

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How often does a motor burn out or something irregular happen 400ft in the air and you're screwed? How can I take certain measures or look out to maybe prevent such tragedies?
 
I am hoping never.

DJI recommends hovering for 30-60 seconds before going anywhere.
I have noticed most crash reports are in that first minute.
But who likes to hover and waste battery.
 
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You can only take preventive measures to avoid tragedies at such heights, some of them are:
1. Fully charged batteries
2. Good pros conditions and snug fit before flying
3. Good compass calibration
4. Safe RTH settings
5. Flying above the highest obstacle in the flying area
6. Home point set before flying
7. Not too windy conditions
8. Not too cold conditions
9. Obviously knowledge about flying

And many more tips :)
 
How often does a motor burn out or something irregular happen 400ft in the air and you're screwed?
Only once
Electronic failures, while possible are quite rare.
How can I take certain measures or look out to maybe prevent such tragedies?
It's like your TV or your laptop.
It's unlikely to fail but there's nothing you can do to influence that.
 
On every new battery I will put the bird up to six feet and let it stay there for a few minutes. I'm 5'11" anything weird and I will snatch that thing from the air so fast.
 
By manually spinning the motors and feeling for end play, roughness or other bearing irregularity as part of your pre flight check you are unlikely to have a motor failure in flight.
 
One of my motors "failed" on my P2 without warning. Did three flights in March no issues. But on starting up the craft a couple of months later one motor started to twitch and stop. Runs fine without props- but won't with prop fitted. Nothing happened to the craft between these two batches of flights and I never had a crash or tip over- always hand catch. So no idea why the motor went bad. I don't fly that often so the craft has only had about 8 hours in flight. On the good side it happened when the craft was on the ground. On the bad side my "trust" in the Phantom has been reset and even when I get the craft fixed will not be able to fly it without extensive worry!! Knowing it can & will eventually fail. Though I have to say never really expected anything else as these are just consumer grade craft with no backups- just good luck & bad luck!!
 

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