I dont know if anyone else has had a motor stop or jam but it happened to me with my Phantom 1 a couple of years ago, i think my findings may help some have a "little" control over where it is going to end up.
I took it to a local park and started it up as usual, done a few little flights around the area and flew over a new feature the local council had placed in the park, if you watch this video @ 04:35 and 06:12 youll see it starting to react strangely (even managed to edit it to the music)
.. or watch all the vid
... anyway it fast went out of control, my video editing has kinda hidden it and youll notice some unusual perspectives in the clips where im trying to bring it back, what had happened was my shell cracked and the motor starting rubbing on the shell effectively throwing it out of control (i didnt know this at the time), my instant reaction was to grab some height so up it went over the trees, i quickly learned that forward/backward/left and right did nothing, all i had was yaw and throttle, so i basically yawed it in the general direction i was standing, when it got closer it started running normal again - i thought hmmmm some interference maybe ... anyway i brought it to a hover behind some bushes and was just about to go grab it when off it went again, i quickly give it yaw and it came back like a boomerang straight into the ground on the other side of the bush, no real damage (other than i realised when i picked it up its gonna need a new shell), the cause from all i can see was it had either had a motor jam or the shell cracked inflight and caused the motor to rub on it, it did look melted around one half of the lip so im assuming some kinda structural failure (it had been abused a lot before i bought it but flew fine) and it rubbed the motor, there was no control with this motor in the air, it was an out of control drone that i managed to limp back in my general direction, the editing probably hides that from most viewers but youll see which bits are it out of control, i think the motor kicked in a few times and worked but overall the best i could control (haha) it with was yaw and throttle.
Hope that helps someone should something similar happen to you ... and that even a good bit of editing can make a bad vid look ok.
I took it to a local park and started it up as usual, done a few little flights around the area and flew over a new feature the local council had placed in the park, if you watch this video @ 04:35 and 06:12 youll see it starting to react strangely (even managed to edit it to the music)
.. or watch all the vid ... anyway it fast went out of control, my video editing has kinda hidden it and youll notice some unusual perspectives in the clips where im trying to bring it back, what had happened was my shell cracked and the motor starting rubbing on the shell effectively throwing it out of control (i didnt know this at the time), my instant reaction was to grab some height so up it went over the trees, i quickly learned that forward/backward/left and right did nothing, all i had was yaw and throttle, so i basically yawed it in the general direction i was standing, when it got closer it started running normal again - i thought hmmmm some interference maybe ... anyway i brought it to a hover behind some bushes and was just about to go grab it when off it went again, i quickly give it yaw and it came back like a boomerang straight into the ground on the other side of the bush, no real damage (other than i realised when i picked it up its gonna need a new shell), the cause from all i can see was it had either had a motor jam or the shell cracked inflight and caused the motor to rub on it, it did look melted around one half of the lip so im assuming some kinda structural failure (it had been abused a lot before i bought it but flew fine) and it rubbed the motor, there was no control with this motor in the air, it was an out of control drone that i managed to limp back in my general direction, the editing probably hides that from most viewers but youll see which bits are it out of control, i think the motor kicked in a few times and worked but overall the best i could control (haha) it with was yaw and throttle.
Hope that helps someone should something similar happen to you ... and that even a good bit of editing can make a bad vid look ok.
Last edited:
