Neither does reducing power to a minimum cause stall
I'll start with this one because it's the most obvious one. If you reduce power sufficiently, i.e. to the point where the motors stop and the props cease sweeping through the air, that will most certainly cause the blades to stall and the drone will drop.
Otherwise, if the motors are turning the props fast enough, and enough air is fed to the props, they will run efficiently and not stall. Still, there is a point between those two extremes, where the motors are turning slowly enough (not yet stopped), at which the blades definitely will suffer aerodynamic stall.
You will typically never encounter this type of prop stall because it's the flight controller is programmed to ensure the motors never run that slowly. If you insist on flying your drone until the battery is depleted, the flight controller is also programmed to repeatedly warn you and eventually it will even attempt an elegant auto-landing. But if you force it stay to aloft until the battery is dead, your props absolutely will stall out.
- descending into ring vortex is is a different phenomenon.
Yes, it is. Because here the prop blades are obviously stalled.
The pitch angle of the prop blades, relative to the motor axis and aircraft body, is fixed and doesn't change. In stagnant air, the prop blade generates lift as it sweeps forward through the air. But in a vortex ring state, the airflow is effectively blowing straight down onto the top of the blades.
What matters here is not the fixed pitch angle of the blade relative to the motor shaft, it's the angle between the propeller blade and where the airflow is coming from. If the airflow is no longer flowing smoothly over the surface of the prop blade, but instead becomes separated from the surface and turbulent, that is what causes aerodynamic stall.
DJI's Phantom series were prone to vortex ring state when descending too fast straight down into their own propwash. Firmware on newer drones put a limit on descent rate. Now, even if descending straight down, the drone can't descend fast enough to ever encounter vortex ring state.
Adding more weight does not increase the pitch angle of the props leading to a stall. If you tether the drone to the ground (effectively an infinite load) and try to take off, the drone attempts to rise, but has insufficient lift to do so. It does not stall (and fall/recover).
Close, but no cigar.
Tethering is
not effectively an infinite load. The tension in the tether is
not equivalent to full weight of the Earth. The tension is merely equal to the maximum lift capability of the partially stalled props.
For a better illustration, try suspending a weight from your drone, then launch the drone from some height. At some critical load the drone will only just barely be able to support itself and the load. That scenario is then the equivalent of your tethered example.
Now add increasingly heavier loads and eventually the drone will be unable to sustain lift and will drop to the ground. If it only sinks slowly, then the props are only partially stalled out but still producing
some lift.
Clearly there will be some finite weight limit after which the drone drops like a rock from the sky no matter how fast the motors are trying to spin the prop blades. If the drone is still in level attitude, but being dragged straight down fast enough by a heavy enough weight, what direction is the airflow going now relative to the fixed pitch angle of the prop blades?
The air is no longer flowing smoothly over both the upper and lower surfaces of the blade, as it would normally when the blade is slicing forward through stagnant air. Instead, if the drone is falling fast enough, the airflow is now blowing straight UP separating past the leading and trailing edges of the propeller blades. That's definitely aerodynamic stall.
Adding more weight does not increase the pitch angle of the props leading to a stall.
It most definitely does.
And the effect happens not only through increasing weight through added payload, it can also occur even without any added payload but in high-g flight manoeuvres.
Camera drones are typically firmware limited to prevent high-g flight stresses, but high-performance FPV drones can be flown into attitudes where the propellers lose bite and simply "mush" through the air when overloaded.