Have you heard of a pilot accidentally doing a CSC power shut off in mid flight?

[Meta4]

I have no idea if this is even possible, but if the props spun backwards, could not the drone pull itself downwards?

It doesn't need to, gravity does it perfectly well.
When a drone descends, pulling the left stick downwards just reduces the props speed so the drone isn't working as hard against gravity.
Max descent rates are 3-6 metres/sec depending on the model, but freefall drops at around 15 m/s.

 

[Meta4]

The big problem with hypothetical discussions on avoidance manoeuvers, is that out in the real world, you often cannot tell how close or far your drone is from the oncoming plane or helicopter.
Distance and parallax makes it very difficult.
You cannot tell if your drone is higher, lower, further right or left of the plane's track.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

Can you say what you mean by tuning sport mode?

I have installed Super-Patcher, and used Assistant 2 1.1.2 in debug mode to adjust flight parameters.

howto:super-patcher [dji.retroroms.info]

wiki.dji-rev.com

 

[HoozierDroneDaddy]

That is simply not correct.

For a normal DJI drone the maximum controlled descent speed is severely limited .... unless the firmware has been hacked. This is possibly to avoid "Vortex Ring State".
With quite a few drones the maximum descent speed changes with flight mode, sports mode generally offering the fastest.
The Mavic 3 & Air 2s have the fastest I have noticed in a normal drone i.e. a non FPV drone, and that is listed as 6 m/s.
Some others are limited to 5ms e.g. Air2, Mini 3 pro.
Others are limited to 3m/s e.g. Mavic Pro, M2P/Z, Mavic Min (sports made), Mavic Air.
Those are just the drones whose manuals I have looked at.

The free fall terminal velocity of a Phantom style or Mavic style drone seems to be between 14m/s and 16m/s and that appears to be reached with in the first few seconds, besides the initial descent would be at maximum controlled descent speed, or accelerating to it. It would be interesting to see what the free fall speed of a DJI FPV.

A 'normal' DJI drone can not pull itself downwards and, if you think about it, for a controlled descent at more or less constant speed and at less than free fall speed the props must be running at near hover speed otherwise the drone would accelerate.
I looked at this a while back and, from memory, descent motor speed is only slightly below hover motor speed, I assume the difference in speed/thrust takes vertical drag into account. Similarly I recollect ascent motor speed if fairly close to hover speed for the same reasons.

Think of travelling in a lift, your apparent weight changes only whilst the lift and you are changing speed, when the lift is travelling at constant speed your weight is normal

I do not argue that horizontal control would be good but in order to lose height free fall is the fastest.

I may be wrong, but to increase your decent without having the Vortex Ring State, simply give some forward or backward direction with the decent. Decending in a spiral should increase your downward speed while not creating the Vortex..

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Horizontal movement is used or can be used, to avoid Vortex RIng State but, with a drone, I doubt it increases the descent rate above the maximum stated in the manual for the flight mode in use.

 

[lewisrassee]

If you enable emergency CSC power shut off, how likely is it that you'll accidentally shut the power off mid-flight? I don't think about not doing the CSC by accident, but now that I'm wondering about this for the first time, I'm wondering if it's safe to leave CSC power stuff off enabled by default? Leaving it on lets you drop the drone in emergency situations, like if a low flying helicopter comes out of nowhere in uncontrolled airspace flying low and fast. What are your thoughts in terms of flying safe? Safer to leave CSC power shut off enabled or not? Nox Vidmate VLC

In both instances the flight log ended i.e. the motors stopped, after the CSC position had been held for around 1.5-1.7 seconds which appears to be period in Mavic style drones. One went into a lake but I can't remember where the other ended up.

 

[jeff Voigt]

If you enable emergency CSC power shut off, how likely is it that you'll accidentally shut the power off mid-flight? I don't think about not doing the CSC by accident, but now that I'm wondering about this for the first time, I'm wondering if it's safe to leave CSC power stuff off enabled by default? Leaving it on lets you drop the drone in emergency situations, like if a low flying helicopter comes out of nowhere in uncontrolled airspace flying low and fast. What are your thoughts in terms of flying safe? Safer to leave CSC power shut off enabled or not?

I leave mine on. But be cautious. If you’re flying the drone backwards and descending, you’re really close to the emergency stop stick positions.

 

[netfolks2000]

If you enable emergency CSC power shut off, how likely is it that you'll accidentally shut the power off mid-flight? I don't think about not doing the CSC by accident, but now that I'm wondering about this for the first time, I'm wondering if it's safe to leave CSC power stuff off enabled by default? Leaving it on lets you drop the drone in emergency situations, like if a low flying helicopter comes out of nowhere in uncontrolled airspace flying low and fast. What are your thoughts in terms of flying safe? Safer to leave CSC power shut off enabled or not?

I think you can do a which lowering which is not much less faster than a motor shutoff. A shutoff means a crash in most cases.