First crash

Mav1c · Jan 10, 2019

I’ve heard, “It’s not if you crash but when”. Got about 20 hrs on the bird and it crashed into a tree on ActiveTrack going sideways. It was my first time testing out profile while tracking a fast moving object. My fault as I was relying too much on the sensors and it was getting dark. It must’ve not been able to see the tree. Dusted it off and replaced all props. Not a scratch. Amazing how tough these drones are.

It had been tracking for a while in a field and was working so well I got a little too confident.

Lesson learned. Do not rely on active track around trees at dusk

Porky · Jan 10, 2019

The sensors don’t work at dusk/nighttime, did you get a warning message on your screen about low light? Gutted you crashed but you learn from your mistakes, only prop damage

Just to be safe I would recalibrate everything so you know it’s all working 100%

JDawg · Jan 10, 2019

Side sensors don’t work well in the day or night...

Mav1c · Jan 10, 2019

I’ve seen those notifications before about the sensors not working because ambient light too low but I do not remember seeing them on this particular flight. The sun was dropping pretty quick and I had been in the air about 20 mins. I replayed the flight log and the only sensor warning I got as it went into the tree was from the sensor on the top. One other time in broad daylight it was circling while I was testing out the helix flight mode. It looked like it was getting dangerously close to the tree so I cancelled the mode because I got too nervous.

The trees I’m talking about are the ones that normally have leaves so their full of this branches. The drones sensors may not even realize it until it’s too late and it’s already sort of “inside” the tree.

What do you mean by recalibrate everything? IMU? I know that the gimbal recalibrates on everystart up if I’m not mistaken.

I tried posting the video of the flight but it says it’s an incorrect file type. .mov

Porky · Jan 10, 2019

I would recalibrate everything, compass/IMU/gimbal. You may find the gimbal has a slight angle looking at the horizon in photos after your crash, the gimbal does a self test on startup to make sure everything is ok.

You will find all the calibration settings in the general settings tab (three dots top right hand side) in the go4 app