Crash Poll

[Derek Mackinnon]

I've had a few.

My very first p1 I was flying in a large field. There were people in the field so wanted to launch far away and the only place to launch was from under some very large trees. This was perfect for me as I was well out of the way. This was possibly my second or third flight with the bird. Everything went well and I ended up losing signal and the bird started to proceed to head to the home point. I only realised when it was above the trees what was about to happen.

I couldn't regain control and it came down and proceed to cut some branches and get stuck in the tree. Luckily for me the rotors kept spinning g and it eventually cut itself free. Lesson learned right there.

On to the p4 and loads of flights later. Again a return to home landing. Showing my friend how cool this thing was. It started coming down but it never lands exactly where you launch it. It proceed to come down beside my car and the props gave the side of my car a few nice scratches that polished out. Another lesson learned. Again no damage to the drone. It's always little things I forget when I'm too excited to get to the sky.

I certainly have more sense now when setting the home points and heights it returns at. I'm just glad I have several batteries now where I'm not trying to get the absolute maximum flight time out of them.

Probably 200 flights in now and no accidents now to report. Certainly find the p4 much better to control where you can look at the screen and see what it's doing. You didn't have that luxury with the p1. Well I certainly never knew enough to get it rigged up that way.

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[John1960]

80 flights with P4; 160,000 ft, 80 hours and only one incident: After having demonstrated with total success to some people how front collision avoidance performed just by flying against a metallic mesh fence at some 20 ft altitude, I wanted to repeat that to other people some hours later at exactly the very same place, same spot, same speed and orientation... Everything went well except that this time the P4 DID NOT STOPPED AT ALL and "crashed" against the fence. It only sliced the two front propellers against the mesh, fell three to four feet down, but recovered nicely before reaching the floor and I was able to safely land.

The cause?: it was sunset, and sun was very low over the horizon and just in front of the drone! Lesson learnt: Even if you think that you are repeating everything the same way, external conditions might change and provoke a disaster. Not this time, and I was very lucky.


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80 flights and 80 hours.........What battery are you using ???

 

[Javier Ruiz O]

Upss. Many thanks for noticing, John. I carefully edited many typos due to my poor english and automatic spelling... But not the important one: I have 80 flights and 12 HOURS 51 MINUTES. You are right and that kind of battery should exist. I would prefer one hour per battery improvement than any other addition in a future version!


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[John1960]

Yes a one hour battery would be great my friend

 

[AWD]

Hey! I get "one hour a day" flights.

It just takes all three batteries to do it.

AD


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[Dharszolin]

Had my first true crash. New years, midnight.

I decided to quickly pop the bird up to take some ariel photos/video of my neighborhood to catch local fireworks at the stroke of midnight. I own an acre property in a semi-rural / suburb area so I just shot it up about 150 feet (just above tree level) and did a few rotations to record the revelries. Literally no lat/long change, just height and rotate. When I was done and was bringing it down is when I ran into issues.

I knew it was a bit windy, but being it was dark out, and the fact I (myself) was moving around as well, I didn't realize the bird had drifted closer to my house. At about 12' AGL a wind gust pushed it just enough to tap my gutters. I was also unaware of the direction it was facing as I was concentrating on descent and from the angle where I was standing I could not clearly see the lights. I didn't realize that when I "backed it up" to get away it actually pushed it more into the gutters, *sigh*. Wound up breaking off about 2 inches from one of the props but the bird did land safely once I got control.

Lessons learned...

• Always know what direction forwards and backwards are so you can react appropriately in an emergency
• In the dark/dusk your depth of field is severely reduced
• Account for drift, whether it is to change your own position or get a bearing using a downard facing camera view
• When in doubt, land with a clearance of at least 15'-20'

 

[Echopiece]

I just bought a P4 for Christmas and only have about 10 flights on the bird. No crashes here, just one close call. When I was taking off on my last flight, one of my props flew off and landed about 10 ft away. The drone never left the ground thank goodness. But moral of the story, check and double check your props when you install them. Otherwise, even being totally new to quadcopters, these things are fairly difficult to crash.

 

[jwt873]

I've got 260 flights with over 600 miles flown since May 2016. My only incident was a mid-air collision with a P3 last summer. I didn't crash, but wound up with two chipped props and no damage to the body.

 

[aermale]

Had my first true crash. New years, midnight.

I decided to quickly pop the bird up to take some ariel photos/video of my neighborhood to catch local fireworks at the stroke of midnight. I own an acre property in a semi-rural / suburb area so I just shot it up about 150 feet (just above tree level) and did a few rotations to record the revelries. Literally no lat/long change, just height and rotate. When I was done and was bringing it down is when I ran into issues.

I knew it was a bit windy, but being it was dark out, and the fact I (myself) was moving around as well, I didn't realize the bird had drifted closer to my house. At about 12' AGL a wind gust pushed it just enough to tap my gutters. I was also unaware of the direction it was facing as I was concentrating on descent and from the angle where I was standing I could not clearly see the lights. I didn't realize that when I "backed it up" to get away it actually pushed it more into the gutters, *sigh*. Wound up breaking off about 2 inches from one of the props but the bird did land safely once I got control.

Lessons learned...

• Always know what direction forwards and backwards are so you can react appropriately in an emergency
• In the dark/dusk your depth of field is severely reduced
• Account for drift, whether it is to change your own position or get a bearing using a downard facing camera view
• When in doubt, land with a clearance of at least 15'-20'

I did the exact same thing. I went straight up to 150' in my small backyard on new years to get the fireworks, too. I really watched the horizontal distance on my pad the whole time, though. I noticed a little drift on my data but I zeroed it, before descent. In the options, I activated the front LED lights and it told me the orientation, too. After that, i knew id be a target for bottle rockets on the way down, so i rushed it. She made it home in one piece, but i dont think id do it again. I considered it a dangerous flight, made a plan and executed it, though...

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[Dharszolin]

I've got 260 flights with over 600 miles flown since May 2016. My only incident was a mid-air collision with a P3 last summer. I didn't crash, but wound up with two chipped props and no damage to the body.

From about 1:28 to 1:37 it looks like you can see a prop chunk flying off into the distance.

 

[Ed Hahn]

none with my p4 But I did have two with my Yuneec 500

 

[Landrum]

Obstacle avoidance was disabled during descent, and it nicked a branch of a tree beside my landing zone...it fell about 4 feet and pranged one of the landing skids. Very minor and it doesn't affect performance. My bad...but it could have been much worse.

 

[Drone_MR]

1 Minor crash. Was flying low parallel to a bike race. Didn't realise the tape and small markers where not level to the track. Caught a prop and shut it off. Thankfully only a foot from the ground and no damage. Noob mistake not walking the flight path. That and someone talking to me while I flew it.


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[Travels with Yoly]

About 3 weeks into ownership of a P3, I was trying to bring the copter down through a small(ish) opening in a stand of trees in a park. It was windy and I was inexperienced. Some passer-bys stopped to ask questions and I got distracted at a critical point. The wind pushed the bird towards a tree and I lost orientation due to the conversation and I zigged when I should have zagged ! $550 dollars for a new camera and bimbal later, I thought I'd learned a solid lesson.

Then last November I was flying the P3 over the same line of trees by my house as I had dozens of times. I had determined that this tree line was right at 120 feet and I routinely passed over them at 200 foot elevation, out over the lake. Then one day I was flying over them at 160 foot elevation because I thought the footage looked better than at 200 feet. Still had 40 feet of clearance, right ? Forgot to take into account that a few trees were growing on a hill that was approximately 40 feet higher than my take off point. Poor Mr. Zoomie died a painful death

My take away on all this ....... trees are bad, they're bad ! (in my best South Park voice)

The only upside is that my new P4 arrived yesterday (film at 11)