Video progress report!

[copterboy]

Ouch...that looked like a nasty fall from grace!! Sounds like that WKM update cannot come soon enough. Soooo glad you found her

EDIT : Seems it is true what they say - the more you progress, the more ways you find to crash!!

[sutty]

Great news that you found it Tom, not so great that it went in so fast. Hopefully it won't cost too much. Since it could be a real long way away, you're going to have to get a great buzzer. Can the GPS position be relayed to the screen, so you could get near using that? Be good if you could. Sorry, just re-read your post properly, and saw that this is soon to come out.

Cheers

Sutty

[Tomstoy2]

It comes out next month. Going to get it and a recorder so I will have the last coordinates., plug it into the phone and walk right up to within 3 feet of it,,, along with a hell of a loud buzzer, too. But not sure if that will really work out well as the battery tends to come unplugged in crashes, being so heavy!

The damage won't cost much. The only expensive thing is replacing the tv camera I never found afterward.
It's going to take some time, though, to put it all back together. All the motors swallowed a lot of dirt so I'll have to strip those, possibly replace all the bearings, inspect the prop adapters, go thru every damn little thing.
It's not like I haven't flow the hell out of her this summer, though. Pushing close to 200 flights with her now!

[Tomstoy2]

After posting my incident on Multi Rotor Forums, a friend, Kloner, posted back that I either lost a prop or it loosened up in flight.
I had to go back and watch it, now having working sound again.
Sure enough, you can hear a deffinate pitch change when things went bad.

This prompted me to take a peek at the wreckage. The boom that broke had a seperated blade half!
Think it threw it off in flight . Even sounds like there was a thunk sound in the vid when it happened, as the thrown prop half struck the Hexa.

[Tomstoy2]

Well here is the pics of the carnage.
It's not for the weak of heart, ( especially when you pour your heart and soul into these things ), but to the critical eye of the initiated it won't look so bad at all.





This next pick shows the busted mounting plate of my gimbal, the one which the tv camera was mounted on and never recovered.
I can just envision some kid and mom cutting open a pumpkin and finding my camera imbedded inside!




The only broken parts was the boom and some plastic bolts used to secure the top cover plate to the frame.
Boom is $8.




And here is the culprit to all the mayhem! The prop nut, despite being double nutted, had spun itself loose thus making this one motor useless.
The prop, upon examination was broken on impact with the ground. I can clearly see the stress marks in the plastic.





Guess for now on I will resort to nylon lock nuts to secure the props. Though the prop hub and mounting nut are still firmly locked together I can spin both by hand on the shaft.

The new firmware that I did not upgrade my WKM to has a program that will shut down the opposing motor so the acft can still fly and be controlled.
I didn't upgrade to this as it was a 'beta' release. There has been hardly any negative reports on this firmware release, ( you do have to discard 99.5% of these reports. People are really quick in blaming the controller for their woes ). Today, DJI has upgraded the firmware from beta.

When it gets all back together I'll be upgrading and, of course, testing.

Right now, I have the landing gear snapped back onto the load rails, the broken boom removed and now need to take it out to the air compressor.
Next up will be stripping down all the motors and checking each bearing individually. Still debating about just replacing them, they do have a lot of time on them now.
The good thing about Tiger motors is they use ESO bearings, some of the best bearings out there.
Only way to test them is with the old insert a pencil into the bearing and feel for notchiness method. Just the tinest of resistance renders the bearing as trash.

I'll need to make a new mounting plate for the gimbal, not too hard to do, replace the 3s 850mah battery I used for vtx and tv camera, and the camera itself.

Live and learn.

[sutty]

Thanks for the interesting crash and damage reports. Pretty good news cost wise, though disappoiting about the camera. Didn't think it was going to be the cables, but certainly didn't know. I heard the speed up sound, but I took that to be the controller trying to ramp up the speed to control the sudden off angle roll. Now that it has been explained, it certainly clears it up. The reason I didn't think it was the cables was that I thought if it had have been the issue it would have been resolved as it got line of sight back, and it would have recovered. Also, isn't it meant to fly home on loss of signal? If so that would be another pointer that it wasn't that.

Even now that you have explained, and spoken about the new firmware which can cut the opposite motor, I'm surprised that it couldn't stay in the air anyway. I thought the controller would have been able to compensate with all those other sources of lift available. Take the MB, a different animal I know, but even if you have a terrible set-up, with all the servos out of line, not a good thing to do, but I've done it, the MB still manages to keep things almost perfect. I even flew once with the left aileron servo incorrectly positioned on the spline by 30 degrees, and it still flew fine. All I lacked was some of my normal +12 +ve collective, as one servo couldn't do that, it was already way down, so the controller just made all the others match so that the heli was still level, but lacking in punch for +ve climb outs. That's what I thought would happen with a slipping prop. The three opposite would cut power, the two either side would scream their heads off to keep up, and you would still be able to do a contolled descent. Would it be because there is not enough overhead on those two to be able to maintain balance? If this is the case you will still have a fast descent if that happens again, it will just be more level. Still seemed to keep it quite level though.

Over thinking it probably, but nothing else to do. Oooh, one last thing. Was that video available to you from your FPV set-up, or was it only after you recovered it. If you did have that vid, could you not tell where it was from the last few seconds of flight? Square out from the road, and in line with the big trees, or similar, etc, etc?

Doesn't matter really, just thinking about it, you got it back, and it's almost intact, that's the main thing.

By the way, yours is expensive, when I lost only my 250, without buzzer in the winter barley, I went cold thinking about the waste of money or it sitting there for months getting ruined until the farmer finally cut his crop and scooped up the crunched up bits into his grain hopper. Couldn't stop thinking about what a waste of a couple of hundred quid on just the perfectly good MB, sitting on it just out of sight in his field. Got my buzzer sorted after only one more excursion into his field, lol. Thought it really was gonner both times, as I couldn't go trampling all his crop. I guess I just got lucky.



Cheers

Sutty

[jperkosk]

Bummer, Tom, even if it turned out quite lucky under the circumstances

A guy at my club crashed his HPQ1 (identical to mine, although his seems to fly further out ) because he threw a prop. Ever since I locktite the prop nuts in place with the blue stuff.

[Tomstoy2]

It comes down to the dynamics of flight with a multi rotor.
Example, loose a motor on a quad and your screwed. No way it will do anything but flip.
My Hexa, it still flew bit with at least a 20-30 degree angle due to the loss of lift. That's why the new firmware will shut down the opposite motor.

An octo will continue to fly on with a motor loss, no problem.

To combat these issures you have probably seen quads, tri's and hexa's with 2 opposing motors on each boom. This was specifically done for redundancy plus more payload.

So, with that motor not being able to generate lift it still flew, but with no ability to correct angle of attack it just flew itself into the ground.
Pretty much the same principle applys as what my flight instructed taught me, the best chance of survival comes from flying as far as possible into the crash!

The vid was in the GoPro on board of the Hexa. Instill need to get a remote 12vdc recorder for my ground station, that way I could review where it went down at.
As it was I got lucky fnding it with my eyes before it went into the ground! The other road behind my place may not look it but it's a little over 1/4 mile away.

[sutty]

Inspired by the antics of the night fliers at the FFFN, and also frustrated by returning home from lovely weather in Yorkshire, only to find it raining here in Lancashire when I got home and until it went dark, I decided to take the 450 out for a little night fly.

Here's my crappy video. I did get four packs in, this is the first, and the quality and alignment is very poor, sadly it got worse, as the camera must have moved in the dark, so some of the better flight by the 4th pack was not captured at all.

Anyway, here it is, what you can see of it.



Cheers

Sutty

[dauste]

Nice movie of those lights in the distance!

Good effort though.

[sutty]

lol, I know, sorry. I tried though.

Cheers

Sutty

[ragge1]

first attempt on funnel at the field today

Ragge1 practising funnel (4 min 13 sec)

[copterboy]

Good work on the Funnels Ragge and some nice precise 360 1/2 piro flips

[ragge1]

thanks Denis

[sutty]

Yeah, won't be too long before you have them nailed. They were already looking pretty good. Funnily enough I was practicing those too yesterday on the 550, but they didn't come out as well as yours.

Today I binned the 250, so then went out with the 450. When I came in to switch helis I grabbed the hatcam. Managed 3 packs before the rain came, and sent me back inside, but I can't be bothered video processing packs 2 & 3. Firstly because they are very similar, and secondly because I recorded it upside down, and I have to hold my lap top upside down whilst I decide where to crop it, and I just cba.

Uploaded Pack 1 to youtube upside down, and turned it over on youtube, which I only found out today that you could do.



Cheers

Sutty

[ragge1]

thanks Andrew
nice flying ,I enjoyed it

[copterboy]

Inspiring as always Mr Sutcliffe Lost count of how many piro flips and how many tic-toks on several occasions

[Tomstoy2]

It flys again!!!!!!

It's a long boring vid, just out testing in the driveway, so I added one of my favorite songs to it. Helps to keep one from falling asleep.

I'm pretty damned pleased with the effort, though!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=RO45Ai5rJl0

[sutty]

You should be pleased Tom, that was pretty damned impressive. Great job on the repair. Good luck with the FPV flight test. Looking at that I feel sure it will go perfectly.

Cheers

Sutty

[jperkosk]

Look Mom, no hands!!!

Impressive indeed. Got DJI-NAZA GPS for my quad myself, will try to get it tested during my present stay at home...