A place for mourning?

[Cash Williams]

Shall we have a thread for mourning the a loss?

On Saturday while staying on the gulf coast, I decided to wake up and try to grab some footage of the sun rise over the ocean. Everything was going great, but then about 5 minutes in (full battery normally got me 15+ minutes) something went very wrong. The copter decided to lean into the wind and slowly lose altitude and set it self down about 30 feet off the shore. I think either a motor started failing or a prop started slipping, and it was a soft slow decent and was less then 100 m away from me.

Thus my diy 380 is no more

 

[Petr Hejl]

@Cash Williams that sucks, sorry to hear that. I do a lot of flying over water, and know that the odds are slowly stacking against me. What flight controller did you use? Did you have any control of the copter at all?

 

[Cash Williams]

I was using the cc3d revo, but did not have a GPS for return to home.

I didn't have control of it, however, failsafe did not kick in. It didn't lose signal because the props kept spinning, where as I had fail safe setup to kill the motors. After thinking about it, I really feel like one of the props wasn't spinning properly (either coming loose or motor was failing) which caused the other 3 to slow to keep it level. The motors were over powered for the weight, such that I never used full throttle normally. I pushed the throttle full, and it didn't seem to care, just continued to lean at an angle and lower.

I'll also add that it is completely gone, I never found it, so I couldn't check to see what the issue might have been.

 

[Petr Hejl]

Interesting, I had this happen with a Naza V1 a few times, fortunately for me the copter has just flown itself into bushes and a field, but in a very similar fashion that you described. It felt like the IMU lost the horizon reference and got confused. I've experienced a prop slip on one of my builds, but these usually demonstrate themselves for a very brief moments first, and cause the copter to "wobble", not just tilt. Also, if you had a prop slip or a slower motor, I would assume that the copter would no longer be able to maintain it's yaw attitude and may go into a spin. Not to speculate, and not that any of this will make any difference. Again, sorry this happened to you, I hope you have some more copters to enjoy flying with.

 

[Cash Williams]

@Petr Hejl It'll be a little bit before I can justify a new copter with the spouse, however... I've been thinking I could grab a P3Pro (or Advanced since I don't really need 4K) for a discount now that the P4 is out. However the Typhoon H is looking pretty nice as well. Are you going to get your hands on a Typhoon H to do a review anytime soon? Thoughts?

 

[Petr Hejl]

@Cash Williams , I sure hope so. The P3 is a pretty good deal now, while the P4 has some great features, the camera itself is not much of an improvement over the P3P. If you don;t need 4K, the advanced is a great deal, at less than half the cost of a P4 or Typhoon H.

 

[Talon Six]

That really sucks Cash. I had a flyaway with a fixed wing FPV aircraft of mine last September, so I know what it's like to have your hard work disappear on you. Sorry about your loss.

I agree that the Typhoon H does look pretty interesting! The remote controller is just as interesting as the drone to me, although I'm skeptical from a human factors standpoint. It appears to be awfully complex...

 

[Petr Hejl]

I am not a huge fan of the "transceivers" with the little screen in the middle of them. While it's a pretty elegant solution, it forces the operator to look down a bit too much & too often to my taste. I actually build a rig that keeps the screen "in my face", so I can quickly go from looking at the screen to looking where I'm flying.

 

[John Locke]

Petr, Please post a picture of your setup you described. Do you use a tripod for the display?

Cash, go for the Phantom 3 Adv. You'll like it way better than the H from Yuneec. I saw the Typhoon H at CES in January. Here's my conclusions:

1. The 6 motors on the H is nice for redundancy, but it makes the craft too large and cumbersome to easily backpack.
2. Although the 6 motor arms come off to be more compact, the backpack will unlikely comply to be within carry-on size for commercial airlines 20X14X9".
3. The top speed is 22mph, which is an improvement over the Q500 @ 17mph, but the Phantom3A is 33mph.
4. The H uses old school WiFi communications, it's unlikely to get a mile distance. P3A uses Lightbridge technology, it can go over 2 miles, much better connection.
5. The RC display is small, with no options. P3A is perfect with iPad Mini4, and awesome with iPad Air2, but these devices are an additional cost to the drone unless you already own one.
6. The H isn't shipping yet, maybe late April, and will cost $1299. Interesting that Yuneec announced it at $1799 at CES, and now that P4 beat them to market they've lowered the price 28% before launch, a full $500 decrease. Competition is great, eh?
7. The retracts look cool on the H, but it's required for the camera to have 360 views. Operating a 360 with single pilot can get you in trouble because you look in a direction you aren't travelling. VLOS is mandatory with doing that, and in that case you can't look at the display and craft at the same time, hence the need for a cameraman to control the camera. The second RC is an added cost.
8. The camera control of the P3A is way more capable then the Q500+ 4K, I would assume the H will be similar software.
9. Phantom 3A $800 + iPad Mini 64GB w/cellular $650 = $1450 Yuneec H = $1300, but the display is really small.
10. P3A is easily backpackable and carry-on legal when traveling on commercial airlines. The H is likely difficult to backpack, assuming it's even possible.
11. Setup time of the H seems like a hassle, installing the gimbal, installing 6 motor arms and props each time. That's worse than setting up an Inspire which is twice the chore of a Phantom 3A. Petr, do you agree?
12. Compass calibrations for Yuneec products are odd. Phantom's are easier and straight forward. I've owned both.
13. Collision avoidance is nice, but at the cost of a slower craft. I have a Phantom 4 with CA and I hardly ever use it because of the 22mph limitation of CA mode. Too slow.