I was attempting to fly slowly through a 6' wide opening beneath a pergola covering our back patio. I had turned off visual navigation and had it in Atti mode. I thought I knew what I was doing. But of course, I didn't.
I was only about 3 feet off of the ground and as I started to steer through the opening, I had it headed a little too much towards one of the pergola uprights. I then steered the other way and in a hurry it crashed into the wall of our house. To make things worse, we have one little pond of water on our 1/2 acre property and that's where it fell. The only thing that got wet were the front part of both aft motor housings. I quickly shut it down and took it out of the water. I dried it off and it runs fine. When it hit the house, I saw while plastic fly off and I assumed it was part of a prop. But it was both little plastic covers on the top inside of one of the landing gears. I popped them back on and things are fine.
I should mention that when I went to fly the first time after this, I got a warning that my vision system needed to be calibrated, which I did using the Assistant app on my Mac.
My post crash analysis is that I should have had my P4P in Tripod Mode. And that I should have been practicing this maneuver where there was no wall and water. Ah, the learning curve. . .
So my questions are:
All in all, I guess if I was going to crash, this is one of the more forgiving ways to have it happen (aside from the water.)
I was only about 3 feet off of the ground and as I started to steer through the opening, I had it headed a little too much towards one of the pergola uprights. I then steered the other way and in a hurry it crashed into the wall of our house. To make things worse, we have one little pond of water on our 1/2 acre property and that's where it fell. The only thing that got wet were the front part of both aft motor housings. I quickly shut it down and took it out of the water. I dried it off and it runs fine. When it hit the house, I saw while plastic fly off and I assumed it was part of a prop. But it was both little plastic covers on the top inside of one of the landing gears. I popped them back on and things are fine.
I should mention that when I went to fly the first time after this, I got a warning that my vision system needed to be calibrated, which I did using the Assistant app on my Mac.
My post crash analysis is that I should have had my P4P in Tripod Mode. And that I should have been practicing this maneuver where there was no wall and water. Ah, the learning curve. . .
So my questions are:
- What are the best settings for maneuvering through fairly narrow openings?
- If I had broken or cracked a landing gear, is that something I could order and fix myself?
- Finally, did I have to recalibrate because one of the gears had had a good whack?
All in all, I guess if I was going to crash, this is one of the more forgiving ways to have it happen (aside from the water.)
