Not quite 2 hours after being delivered from FedEx, I had my first crash. I was flying indoors, and was attempting a manual landing. It went down about 12" from touchdown and then stopped. I had a brain-fahrt and seeing how steady it was, I did a CSC to shut it off. Wrong move... It shot about 3' across the room and into the wall. Scuff marks, but no knicks, dents, or cracks anywhere the props - or so I thought.
I inspected all four props (while attached) and determined it was no big deal. I took to the air again - both inside and out - and it flew like a dream.
As I was putting it away, I just happened to remove one of the props. I was just playing around with it, and wasn't really doing it for inspection purposes. When the blade off, I noticed only two of the three stanchions/legs were still there. The third had snapped off, and was still inside the receiving mount on the motor bell. I was able to get the broken piece out without much effort.
I quickly checked the remaining props, and found no other broken parts.
I don't know how critical it is to have three functioning points of locking for each prop, but suspect it's probably not a good thing to fly on only two. The scary part is, there were no outward indications - both from a visual inspection, or flight performance aspect - that would indicate a failure had occurred.
So, bone-headed move caused the crash, yes. But lesson learned is to regularly inspect those locking pegs on each prop.
I inspected all four props (while attached) and determined it was no big deal. I took to the air again - both inside and out - and it flew like a dream.
As I was putting it away, I just happened to remove one of the props. I was just playing around with it, and wasn't really doing it for inspection purposes. When the blade off, I noticed only two of the three stanchions/legs were still there. The third had snapped off, and was still inside the receiving mount on the motor bell. I was able to get the broken piece out without much effort.
I quickly checked the remaining props, and found no other broken parts.
I don't know how critical it is to have three functioning points of locking for each prop, but suspect it's probably not a good thing to fly on only two. The scary part is, there were no outward indications - both from a visual inspection, or flight performance aspect - that would indicate a failure had occurred.
So, bone-headed move caused the crash, yes. But lesson learned is to regularly inspect those locking pegs on each prop.