MTBF

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Posted a photo from my Phantom flying over the river today and someone asked me what the "mean time between failures" on this quadcopter was. I've owned it a couple months now and maybe fly it 3 to 4 times a week. Can anyone shed any light on when the moving parts get sketchy? Actually today it made a unusual sound while flying and I became a bit spooked and brought it down.
 
Explain the sound you heard....?

Any failure of any kind will vary with the operators flight habits. I can use any of 100's of examples, but just take one where the pilot lives in very humid climate. Like the kind where you see fog from it be so humid. I would have to think that alone would reduce the lifespan of the motors. Or take the guy the was out to break their distance record, knowing he'll get great reception with low cloud cover from a possible rain storm. Then is two miles from home point and has no idea it has started to rain in the location his quad is currently at. And last one,.....And then you have the pilot that lives near the ocean and goes the the beach from time to time to meet up with his bro's to fly along the beach front where occasional saltwater mist can come into play.

My feeling is the motors are going to be what gets the most wear over anything else. If DJI would allow us to see our max RPMso that we could rate the performance drop off it would beneficial to this question.
 
Normally the QC sounds like a horde of angry bees but it is always uniform in tone. The sound I heard almost seemed like there was some variant to the tone. The wind picked up some and I'm not sure if that was the cause or not. I put my second set of blades on it and tried again and I didn't notice anything too out of the norm. But I was quick in flying up getting my shot and coming back down. I may have to go out to my GF's land and fly low and examine it closer.
 
Any correction(s) required by the wind will change the sound.

Likely it was a non-issue.
 
Ok what you heard was extremely normal. The quad was hit with a side gust thus trying to move it from it position. The props then spin up to fight the wind to maintain it's position. The real high pitch sound comes from a sharp edge side of the prop itself. I personally do not like that sound. I use a 3M green scratch pad to go over my props with. It helps against the sharp edge I mentioned as well as smoothing the surface of the props to reduce wind resistance. The one great thing about the stock/factory props is, they are durable and generally take a lot of abuse before needing replaced. I flew several times early on this year when it was 15 degrees outside and the props don't much like the cold weather. At that temp they tend to break a lot easier, of coarse.
 
I've flown in wind before but had never heard this sound. But I may be over thinking it. This evening I tried mounting my pocketfinder to the camera guard I bought on ebay but I was unable to center it like I had planned. Just a little too big and it would be touching the camera. I put it off to the side but the copter would just do circles when I let off the controls while flying. Anyone have any better ideas on how to mount this thing? Personally I like flying without it but flyaways are a concern. Are most due to older model Phantoms or user error? Seems like there are a lot of people who say they have enough sats linked up and they set a home position and it flies off to never be seen again.
 

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