I happened to experience a pretty serious crash with my previous drone from another manufacturer. Rose about a foot off the ground and hurled itself at a fence without touching the sticks. Despite having a sister site to this one for that brand of aircraft and the experts there review the log files, clearly showing an uncommanded crash, the manufacturer refused to help in any way with the repair. Between the accident itself and the resulting lack of concern I abandoned that bird, and bought a Mavic 2 Pro.
So far it has been flawless for me and I've been more than happy. But seeing some of the recent threads on M2 crashes sits in the back of my mind and thankfully means taking extra caution when flying to try and mitigate pilot caused crashes.
I always check my props for nicks and cracks before each flight. However yesterday I spent a little more time going over them and noticed on one motor the blades flexed easily whereas the other 3 were quite stiff. I don't have a way to test definitively but if I had to guess they were about 20% as stiff as the other 3. No cracks and there have been zero impacts with any objects. Without trying to put much pressure on the good ones, I couldn't bend them easily, the soft ones flexed considerably with minimal effort. The props had maybe 30 flights and a total of 5 hours of flight time. I know there is some discussion out there about how often to replace with some doing it more frequently and others only when showing damage. I replaced the more flexible one with a new one.
Some of the threads where there was speculation of props coming apart, unseen bird strike, etc. Like this one Mavic 2 Pro Crashed into the sea without apparent reason
Given in my case all 4 props were the original ones that came with the bird, all had the same flight time under the same conditions, I'm wondering if there wasn't a batch of them with a manufacturing defect, slightly different materials, something that caused this prop to feel so much weaker than the others. Maybe that flexibility doesn't translate to any actual failure and I'm completely wrong, pure speculation on my part based on this observation. Maybe a wide variation in flexibility of the individual blades is normal. But it seems in the few short months I've had my Mavic 2 that I've seen at least several threads where it seems a prop loss was the cause of the crash with no cause for the loss of the prop.
If nothing else I'm going to continue paying extra close attention to their condition and replacing frequently. Props are cheap enough that there is no point trying to milk an extra flight out of them. I do wonder if anyone else has noticed something similar?
Clearly replacing when damaged is a good idea but I'm thinking those that suggest frequent replacement after say 20 or so hours of use are on to something.
So far it has been flawless for me and I've been more than happy. But seeing some of the recent threads on M2 crashes sits in the back of my mind and thankfully means taking extra caution when flying to try and mitigate pilot caused crashes.
I always check my props for nicks and cracks before each flight. However yesterday I spent a little more time going over them and noticed on one motor the blades flexed easily whereas the other 3 were quite stiff. I don't have a way to test definitively but if I had to guess they were about 20% as stiff as the other 3. No cracks and there have been zero impacts with any objects. Without trying to put much pressure on the good ones, I couldn't bend them easily, the soft ones flexed considerably with minimal effort. The props had maybe 30 flights and a total of 5 hours of flight time. I know there is some discussion out there about how often to replace with some doing it more frequently and others only when showing damage. I replaced the more flexible one with a new one.
Some of the threads where there was speculation of props coming apart, unseen bird strike, etc. Like this one Mavic 2 Pro Crashed into the sea without apparent reason
Given in my case all 4 props were the original ones that came with the bird, all had the same flight time under the same conditions, I'm wondering if there wasn't a batch of them with a manufacturing defect, slightly different materials, something that caused this prop to feel so much weaker than the others. Maybe that flexibility doesn't translate to any actual failure and I'm completely wrong, pure speculation on my part based on this observation. Maybe a wide variation in flexibility of the individual blades is normal. But it seems in the few short months I've had my Mavic 2 that I've seen at least several threads where it seems a prop loss was the cause of the crash with no cause for the loss of the prop.
If nothing else I'm going to continue paying extra close attention to their condition and replacing frequently. Props are cheap enough that there is no point trying to milk an extra flight out of them. I do wonder if anyone else has noticed something similar?
Clearly replacing when damaged is a good idea but I'm thinking those that suggest frequent replacement after say 20 or so hours of use are on to something.
