I took my MM up for a flight in an area I'm used to flying in. I took off and almost immediately had a red 'sensor error' come up on the display for the very first time. Started to descend, but the warning disappeared. Display said 'OK to fly' so I took off... (probably my first mistake)
I lost connection later, so started to pull back on the stick to reverse and gratefully regained control. In stead of performing an RTH, I decided to go manual and so I continued to fly back whilst descending until around 73m and got off the sticks to compose myself a bit. My phone then decided to crash and restart itself. I tried not to panic at this point and hoped that I'd either 1: be able to still fly with the controller on its own (didn't know if that was even possible), or 2: restart my phone and reconnect with the drone. The phone did reconnect, long enough for me to record what was going on and continue with my flight back at 73m - well above any obstacles.
A few moments later, I see the drone on the display flipping over and rapidly spinning out of control and descending. I focused on the tree tops I can see getting ever closer to the drone's camera. I was surprised to find that I could still affect the drone's flight path a little. I wanted to see if there was any chance I might be able to 'steer' into a gap to the ground. I didn't quite manage that it seemed, and then the phone display went black. Lost RC connection. Crashed and now lost = Gutted.
If I could at least find the drone, that'd be great, but I wanted to know the CAUSE of the crash. I tried to access the cached video on my phone but all my photos and videos were missing so I could not review the flight footage at alI. I went into the logs and used the find my drone function and could see the drone suddenly spinning downwards. I went out on a reccie to find it. It was starting to get near dark in the end and proved impossible to find. Time to sleep on it and try again at first light...I was hoping it wouldn't rain, and that it wasn't in pieces.
The next morning I used the GPS map and it was very accurate. It told me it was only half a metre below the take off position, so I knew it was likely that it was at the very top of a tree. It had made it to the ground, no damage to the body or camera thankfully, and the battery was still inside it - The camera had kept recording for around half an hour after the crash which really surprised me! If only I could've got to it's location sooner, I may have been able to get it beeping and flashing etc
So what was the cause?
I found a couple of broken propellers, but most significantly, I found that one propeller and it's screw was COMPLETELY MISSING. Looking at the flight log data after the fact, you can see the 'level' tip over suddenly over a couple of tenths of a second and then it was all downhill from there lol
So I have learned a very important lesson: don't ignore any safety check, use thread lock on the prop screws when fitting them, and check them for tightness before you fly.
I hope this proves useful to someone else who thinks they don't need to check their drone's propellers before a flight?
I lost connection later, so started to pull back on the stick to reverse and gratefully regained control. In stead of performing an RTH, I decided to go manual and so I continued to fly back whilst descending until around 73m and got off the sticks to compose myself a bit. My phone then decided to crash and restart itself. I tried not to panic at this point and hoped that I'd either 1: be able to still fly with the controller on its own (didn't know if that was even possible), or 2: restart my phone and reconnect with the drone. The phone did reconnect, long enough for me to record what was going on and continue with my flight back at 73m - well above any obstacles.
A few moments later, I see the drone on the display flipping over and rapidly spinning out of control and descending. I focused on the tree tops I can see getting ever closer to the drone's camera. I was surprised to find that I could still affect the drone's flight path a little. I wanted to see if there was any chance I might be able to 'steer' into a gap to the ground. I didn't quite manage that it seemed, and then the phone display went black. Lost RC connection. Crashed and now lost = Gutted.
If I could at least find the drone, that'd be great, but I wanted to know the CAUSE of the crash. I tried to access the cached video on my phone but all my photos and videos were missing so I could not review the flight footage at alI. I went into the logs and used the find my drone function and could see the drone suddenly spinning downwards. I went out on a reccie to find it. It was starting to get near dark in the end and proved impossible to find. Time to sleep on it and try again at first light...I was hoping it wouldn't rain, and that it wasn't in pieces.
The next morning I used the GPS map and it was very accurate. It told me it was only half a metre below the take off position, so I knew it was likely that it was at the very top of a tree. It had made it to the ground, no damage to the body or camera thankfully, and the battery was still inside it - The camera had kept recording for around half an hour after the crash which really surprised me! If only I could've got to it's location sooner, I may have been able to get it beeping and flashing etc
So what was the cause?
I found a couple of broken propellers, but most significantly, I found that one propeller and it's screw was COMPLETELY MISSING. Looking at the flight log data after the fact, you can see the 'level' tip over suddenly over a couple of tenths of a second and then it was all downhill from there lol
So I have learned a very important lesson: don't ignore any safety check, use thread lock on the prop screws when fitting them, and check them for tightness before you fly.
I hope this proves useful to someone else who thinks they don't need to check their drone's propellers before a flight?
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