Best single item to protect the gimble?

msinger · Dec 4, 2014

SilentAV8R, the Killer RC Gimbal Saver is not the same type of product as the Camera Guard. On the topic of gimbal protectors though, I don't think any change the way the Phantom fits into a case.

The Go Professional Case is perfect if you have the Camera Guard. It's completely flat on bottom where the Phantom sits.

justin00 · Dec 5, 2014

Yeah I'm talking about camera protector which sits inbetween the 2 legs... The one I mentioned in my first post in this thread on page 1.
It wouldn't go back into the factory box with the camera protector in place.. without modifying the cardboard thingo it sits nicely in(in the box)

Obviously the gimbal guards/intertia guard has no impact to storage..

Impact · Dec 5, 2014

I'd highly recommend Jims http://www.djiphantomfix.com/

Why? Simply cause it works and i've tried it from high altitude by my own.
But let me put a review for you....

Some weeks ago i flew with my new FPVLR Antennas very happily but it was my fault not to keep an eye to batteries life. Also i have to mention that we have almost Winter here.
So i was straight over my head at 1758,6 meters (~5769ft), with 100% signal quality while shooting photos with my P2V+.
Then i took a look at the battery bar and noticed its percentage drop cause i havent realized the shorter runtime in the very cold up there.
In short.... a beginners fault. I just thought RIPieces P2V+ and already said bye bye and hello to a bunch of confetti. You can imagine what happened....

Ok, last sign of life of the P2V+ was slightly from above 400 meters (~1312ft). Then the motors stopped working and the connection broke forever cause the battery run down to 0%.
Then it fell like a stone from the sky. I shout to a freind RUN cause we didn't know how and where it will crash. Lots of seconds of silence .... nothing happened you feel your heartbeat in your toes, in your head... everywhere.
And then ..... there it comes. i saw it fell like a stone the last 15-20m happily on farmers ground. Beside normal damage like propellers and complete housing and so on (i don't want to mention too much unnessecary details here),
also the Gimbal was damanged. But Jims clamp did it's job as it was expected to do. And let me say, with a star! Why? Because it saved the Gimbals arse that the lower to axis don't split and the Gimbals datacable wasn't cut.
Even not on that kind of heavy crash. The camera was kind of untouched. Just the upper jaw arm was bended and kind of minimalistic cracked on the side. But that was expected because of the impulse of the speed of the copter and
the mass weight of the camera + motors under the jaw arm. But look yourself:

The Gimbal is fully functional, the camera also. Just the Jaw arm needs to be replaced. I told him what happened and he's so nice that he send me another set of 3M pads to mount my clamp again for free from the US to Europe. Who will ever do this?
I bought this clamp in mid of October. Jims support was genious before i bought it because i wasn't sure what to choose, if it will fit... the usual things you know. He's a nice guy who helps you out in any situation i can say.
And that's also why i want to say "thank you Jim" with this review!

Jim said there will come something new the next days..... so stay tuned.
Hope my review helped you a bit.
Cheers.

MapMaker53 · Dec 5, 2014

FINALLY!!! A crash with a gimbal bracket on record! The theory has been PROVEN.. and not with just a hard landing. I knew we would eventually have a volunteer. Seriously, sorry you wound up crashing, Impact. Thanks for sharing with us.

Impact · Dec 5, 2014

No problem, i was told not to go so high often enough. It was my fault not to keep the battery in mind. But i was so happy with strong signal compared to before. Sometimes i need to learn it on the hard way

Larry L · Dec 5, 2014

Impact, Thank you for sharing your misfortune with us. glad it is not totaled. I have one too & the killer rc gimbal protector. I like both. Just not sure which one I am going with. ( you can never have too much protection

Does yours have the double sided tape on the top also?

Doono · Dec 5, 2014

SilentAV8R said:
Count me in with the "First, don't crash". But if you must crash, then the Killer RC Gimbal saver is THE way to go!!

But the first line of defense is truly learning how to control your aircraft rather than chasing it through the sky trying to keep up. These things are a double edged sword. They are deceptively easy to get in the air, but much harder to truly control well. Most get antsy and decide to find out how far/high/ they can fly. The woods are full of Phantoms destroyed for no other reason than a lack of patience.

After a bit of experience, you'll find SilentAV8R's comments to be spot on.

singapore_phantom · Dec 6, 2014

Thanks for that, Impact. Not sure if flying that high was a good idea, but all's well that ends well. Kind of.

Couple of things.

1. I have the Fix as well and I, too, am happy with the service received. No guarantees, but good to see that it worked as intended in the field.

2. If you know a controlled landing is out of the question, would it have been an option to CSC-kill the motors, restarting them before impact?

boncroz · Dec 6, 2014

Impact said:
I'd highly recommend Jims http://www.djiphantomfix.com/

Why? Simply cause it works and i've tried it from high altitude by my own.
But let me put a review for you....

Some weeks ago i flew with my new FPVLR Antennas very happily but it was my fault not to keep an eye to batteries life. Also i have to mention that we have almost Winter here.
So i was straight over my head at 1758,6 meters (~5769ft), with 100% signal quality while shooting photos with my P2V+.
Then i took a look at the battery bar and noticed its percentage drop cause i havent realized the shorter runtime in the very cold up there.
In short.... a beginners fault. I just thought RIPieces P2V+ and already said bye bye and hello to a bunch of confetti. You can imagine what happened....

Ok, last sign of life of the P2V+ was slightly from above 400 meters (~1312ft). Then the motors stopped working and the connection broke forever cause the battery run down to 0%.
Then it fell like a stone from the sky. I shout to a freind RUN cause we didn't know how and where it will crash. Lots of seconds of silence .... nothing happened you feel your heartbeat in your toes, in your head... everywhere.
And then ..... there it comes. i saw it fell like a stone the last 15-20m happily on farmers ground. Beside normal damage like propellers and complete housing and so on (i don't want to mention too much unnessecary details here),
also the Gimbal was damanged. But Jims clamp did it's job as it was expected to do. And let me say, with a star! Why? Because it saved the Gimbals arse that the lower to axis don't split and the Gimbals datacable wasn't cut.
Even not on that kind of heavy crash. The camera was kind of untouched. Just the upper jaw arm was bended and kind of minimalistic cracked on the side. But that was expected because of the impulse of the speed of the copter and
the mass weight of the camera + motors under the jaw arm. But look yourself:

The Gimbal is fully functional, the camera also. Just the Jaw arm needs to be replaced. I told him what happened and he's so nice that he send me another set of 3M pads to mount my clamp again for free from the US to Europe. Who will ever do this?
I bought this clamp in mid of October. Jims support was genious before i bought it because i wasn't sure what to choose, if it will fit... the usual things you know. He's a nice guy who helps you out in any situation i can say.
And that's also why i want to say "thank you Jim" with this review!

Jim said there will come something new the next days..... so stay tuned.
Hope my review helped you a bit.
Cheers.

Agreed. Very good product, shipped quickly.

Impact · Dec 6, 2014

Larry L said:
Impact, Thank you for sharing your misfortune with us. glad it is not totaled. I have one too & the killer rc gimbal protector. I like both. Just not sure which one I am going with. ( you can never have too much protection Does yours have the double sided tape on the top also?

Larry yes it does. Just look at that two pictures i took after mounting it onto the Gimbal. Hope that helps:

Impact · Dec 6, 2014

singapore_phantom said:
Thanks for that, Impact. Not sure if flying that high was a good idea, but all's well that ends well. Kind of.

Couple of things.

1. I have the Fix as well and I, too, am happy with the service received. No guarantees, but good to see that it worked as intended in the field.

2. If you know a controlled landing is out of the question, would it have been an option to CSC-kill the motors, restarting them before impact?

You're welcome man. I'm surely not happy what has happened because of my fault but i see this all with my special kind of humor

Most important thing is that you have a proof that this clamp works as it is intended to be from a fall of 400m to the ground. I'm not sure about others especially not with those plastics ones out from 3D printers.
I just want to give you an idea of the crash... the clipped in Battery was smashed out from birds arse ~ 1,5 meters away. I'm not sure if other clamps will stay on it's place.

2. yes i was told about that, but i have never tried that. I'm still a beginner and fear such experiments. But i was also told to try this to go down more quickly: ATTI mode + left lever down + right lever up. I will try this when all is repaired again.

Impact · Dec 6, 2014

MapMaker53 said:
FINALLY!!! A crash with a gimbal bracket on record! The theory has been PROVEN.. and not with just a hard landing. I knew we would eventually have a volunteer. Seriously, sorry you wound up crashing, Impact. Thanks for sharing with us.

You're welcome man

morph000 · Dec 7, 2014

WTF !!!
1700m up and 5 minutes battery left (which we all know means more like 2 minutes).
3m/s descent speed..
Oooooooh boy !!

eBay special - brown trousers bulk lots available ! :mrgreen:

Anyway.. having damaged my camera unit in a flip, I too, like so many, have been after a protection solution.
Being a genius [ :mrgreen: ] after 1 hour's thought today I came up with a design offering 2 more levels of protection & superior protection frame resilience and won't break the piggy bank.
By sheer coincidence I stumbled across a product that may offer the manufacturing solution for my design too.
"I love it when a plan comes together"...

So stay tuned for the new year when I get the bird back and prototyping can begin

mij119 · Dec 7, 2014

MapMaker53 said:
FINALLY!!! A crash with a gimbal bracket on record! The theory has been PROVEN.. and not with just a hard landing. I knew we would eventually have a volunteer. Seriously, sorry you wound up crashing, Impact. Thanks for sharing with us.

I wouldn't go that far. You forgot about my crash which you commented on earlier. viewtopic.php?f=27&t=30690

Photo attached shows the gimbal protection device where it binds up against the pivot arm(circled in pink). As stated earlier this seized up my motor, burning it out. The device probably caused more harm than any good it did. I probably would have been better off with a separated pivot arm and a broken ribbon cable which can now be bought for $25.

I guess 1 success out of two "on record" isn't bad.

daleseprime · Dec 8, 2014

Having already had a broken gimbal repaired by the manufacturer I added both a gimbal bracket (http://www.ebay.com/sch/mcmac1943/m.htm ... 7675.l2562) and UAVbits' Minimalist Protection Rod (http://www.uavbits.net/store/p6/Minimal ... uard_.html) to my Phantom. The theory was to prevent a direct impact to the gimbal camera assembly with the crosspiece and to stop an actual separation of the gimbal itself.

Thanksgiving weekend I had a WiFi blackout in flight compounded by GPS mis-location of the coptor's take-off point which resulted in a tree landing and free-fall from 25' up. The only crash/fall damage was one motor and/or its ESC along with the lower body shell arm that had said motor mounted (the screw holes for the motor were sheared). The camera and gimbal were unscathed.

The video of the flight can be found here: http://youtu.be/yoyLzmJISvg

Larry L · Dec 8, 2014

Impact said:
Larry L said:

Impact, Thank you for sharing your misfortune with us. glad it is not totaled. I have one too & the killer rc gimbal protector. I like both. Just not sure which one I am going with. ( you can never have too much protection Does yours have the double sided tape on the top also?

Click to expand...

Larry yes it does. Just look at that two pictures i took after mounting it onto the Gimbal. Hope that helps:

Thanks for some reason I just saw the photos of the bent protector. The one I received, did not have the top tape on it. Mine had more room at the bottom.
Thanks,
Larry

tritontr21 · Dec 8, 2014

Dale, how do you get telemetry on your video?

MapMaker53 · Dec 8, 2014

mij119 said:
MapMaker53 said:

FINALLY!!! A crash with a gimbal bracket on record! The theory has been PROVEN.. and not with just a hard landing. I knew we would eventually have a volunteer. Seriously, sorry you wound up crashing, Impact. Thanks for sharing with us.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't go that far. You forgot about my crash which you commented on earlier. viewtopic.php?f=27&t=30690

Photo attached shows the gimbal protection device where it binds up against the pivot arm(circled in pink). As stated earlier this seized up my motor, burning it out. The device probably caused more harm than any good it did. I probably would have been better off with a separated pivot arm and a broken ribbon cable which can now be bought for $25.

I guess 1 success out of two "on record" isn't bad.

The gimbal bracket is designed to prevent inertia separation of the gimbal halves. It is not meant to act like a Hummvee bumper. So it is unfortunate that it got physically rammed into the gimbal when you crashed it, but I doubt if it was never designed to withstand that sort of impact or crash. Even with that type of force in your crash, the gimbal didn't come apart. Nothing to celebrate though in you case. An unfortunate type of crash. What happened to the camera?