Let me preface my story with my P3 stats:
174 Flights since June 29 with almost 2 million feet.
I developed stress cracks back in late August but I used Bondic and was able to seal the spreading stress cracks on the one arm. I had no further noticeable issues over the succeeding two months and figured the problem had gone away with a later plan to replace the shell during the winter. I haven't flown much the past two months due to family issues, maybe once or twice a week and was just about to buy a new shell instead of sending it to DJI.
Today I decided to relieve some stress and took a brief flight in a little park in town. I did typical flight checks and noticed nothing unusual. After flying 2000 feet in either direction I started to bring it in with a controlled fast descent, forward throttle when I noticed the rotors making unusual sounds as it approached me. The sound went away as it hovered over my head and I could see nothing unusual by the stress cracked arm or any other. I did a short tornado like ascent to 75 feet around me to run the battery to 50% when the sound returned and I decided to bring it in as a preventive measure. It was then that the drone made a bee line towards some trees before righting itself 5 feet in front of me. I quickly killed the motors with a hand catch and took to looking at the stress cracked arm.
The center part between the motor mount screws was gone as I have seen from others on this forum and the motor was hanging very loose in the mount. I believe the Bondic saved the motor from flying out but not the unsecured center between the screws and cracks.
I will upload some pictures later before I start my surgery (new shell is on its way from B&H) sometime in the next few weeks but I thought I'd share my experience with others about the benefits and limitations of using Bondic for shell cracks.
174 Flights since June 29 with almost 2 million feet.
I developed stress cracks back in late August but I used Bondic and was able to seal the spreading stress cracks on the one arm. I had no further noticeable issues over the succeeding two months and figured the problem had gone away with a later plan to replace the shell during the winter. I haven't flown much the past two months due to family issues, maybe once or twice a week and was just about to buy a new shell instead of sending it to DJI.
Today I decided to relieve some stress and took a brief flight in a little park in town. I did typical flight checks and noticed nothing unusual. After flying 2000 feet in either direction I started to bring it in with a controlled fast descent, forward throttle when I noticed the rotors making unusual sounds as it approached me. The sound went away as it hovered over my head and I could see nothing unusual by the stress cracked arm or any other. I did a short tornado like ascent to 75 feet around me to run the battery to 50% when the sound returned and I decided to bring it in as a preventive measure. It was then that the drone made a bee line towards some trees before righting itself 5 feet in front of me. I quickly killed the motors with a hand catch and took to looking at the stress cracked arm.
The center part between the motor mount screws was gone as I have seen from others on this forum and the motor was hanging very loose in the mount. I believe the Bondic saved the motor from flying out but not the unsecured center between the screws and cracks.
I will upload some pictures later before I start my surgery (new shell is on its way from B&H) sometime in the next few weeks but I thought I'd share my experience with others about the benefits and limitations of using Bondic for shell cracks.