Another one bites the dust...

Tomstoy2

Tomstoy2

Member
Damn, that's a lot worse than what I did last night!

Was doing a late evening fpv flight, pushing the Hexa off to my left, testing out my new 600mw vtx, when all of a sudden my reception dropped out!
About that time it dawned on me, "oh yeah,,, I'm using crosshairs on my goggles! Turn your head, stupid!"
 
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helloman1976

Ziptie Relocation Expert
Tomstory2 LOL!!! Good one! That's classic, you should now hook up a heart rate monitor your FPV goggles and record that so we can see your sheer terror :) Good save!
 

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helloman1976

Ziptie Relocation Expert
SMP said:
Debating whether I should bother responding... In a moment of stupidity I mounted the GPS puck backwards (its mounted on the crash cage which we remove on/off for shipping). During the very short flight I had about 11.3% flight control, Meaning virtually none. I got lucky as it cost me a landing leg but I can tell you unequivocally while a ditch in the river may have been planned I certainly didn't have enough control of my copter to steer it anywhere. I strongly suspect he didn't either and got lucky just like me. Iris has it right with the no crowds policy. The bottom line is that there are the right tools available for certain jobs and multi's over people isn't one of them. Anyways off rant/on topic w GPS related failures... check your puck orientation.
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Very interesting story. I've trained myself to flip to manual mode as my default action which probably would have allowed you to have control. I actually do 2 things by default, flip to manual mode and hit the throttle up as quick as I can...I can't tell you how many times that's saved me. :)
 

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Str8 Up

Member
DKTek said:
So, are you saying that it is safer to fly worn out equipment with thousands of flights over several years? Your battery packs must be out of this world to have flown that many flights. What about the ball links, bearings and servo's? Honestly, just how much of the original flight control parts are still in use? I'm not looking for a logic war here but your definition seems far more dangerous than actually flying over the crowd.

Bottom line here is when any part of the control system is replaced for regular maintenance whether scheduled or not, reliability is then reset to zero until proven worthy again. On that note, who determines when a part is to be replaced as scheduled maintenance and who determines at what point the aircraft is worthy again? How long must it fly and when does it expire?


Just playing the devils advocate.......
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After an aircraft has logged thousands of flight hours, the various components self-prioritize themselves in regards to useful service life. This info can be used to develop a r/r schedule. On our large rigs that carry the Red Epic, cyclic servos are replaced every 100 flight hours (tail rotor every 50 hours), main gears every 25 hours, main/tail thrust bearings every 30 hours and so on. Many parts don't wear significantly and are still original. Every winter a full "annual" inspection/tear down is done. We have at least one clone for every design that is used to flight test new components before being put on a working rig. The proof time varies by component but is never less than six flights. AP machines are not as hard on components as 3d machines and using them as a reference is very conservative. Either my system works or I am the luckiest man one the planet. Over the last 35 years flying rc helis, I have managed to beat pilot error out of my system. After that, it gets much easier.
 

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Str8 Up

Member
Benjamin Kenobi said:
This video was an example of best practise. It was a legal flight approved by the CAA. The pilots were in touch with London City airport and only flew with their consent. The flight plan was approved beforehand. There was an investigation and the pilot passed with flying colours. He just retook his flight test with his new aircraft and also passed that with flying colours.

The outcome from the investigation was that the GPS antenna came off in flight. The pilot noticed something wrong, brought the landing gear down, still not responding correctly so ditched it in river as planned in the risk assessment.

I just wanted to add some facts here.

Cheers!


Using Tapatalk...
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That video and best practice should not be used in the same sentence. Just because you can do something, doesn't make it the smart thing to do. You are trying to put lipstick on a pig here and call it a beauty queen.
 
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SMP

SMP

Member
helloman1976 said:
Very interesting story. I've trained myself to flip to manual mode as my default action which probably would have allowed you to have control. I actually do 2 things by default, flip to manual mode and hit the throttle up as quick as I can...I can't tell you how many times that's saved me. :)
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Aye, we were going over root cause and what I should have done and arrived there as well. It's now one of those things I'm going to start repeating to myself verbally before every flight till it becomes ingrained as an automatic option.
 

Benjamin Kenobi

Benjamin Kenobi

Easy? You call that easy?
Str8 Up said:
That video and best practice should not be used in the same sentence. Just because you can do something, doesn't make it the smart thing to do. You are trying to put lipstick on a pig here and call it a beauty queen.
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Oh dear. Poor piggy.

In the UK we have a regulated industry. The flight mentioned in this post was agreed by the CAA. The fact he cut his throttle and allowed the £25,000 camera to fall into a river took some balls. He realised he had no control and followed the plan.

I personally wouldn't have gone anywhere near this job but when X-Factor offers this opportunity it would be hard to turn down.

For those of us who wish to make a living we'll need to offer some quite dynamic shots to stay ahead of the well established aerial crews.

I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here. If the government says its okay then is it okay?


Using Tapatalk...
 

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swisser

Member
Benjamin Kenobi said:
In the UK we have a regulated industry. The flight mentioned in this post was agreed by the CAA. The fact he cut his throttle and allowed the £25,000 camera to fall into a river took some balls. He realised he had no control and followed the plan.
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I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here. If the government says its okay then is it okay?
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I am not sure that it took any particular balls. I have no idea if the camera was owned by the pilot but it may well not have been. Regardless, do we know why the pilot lost control? The losing of the GPS connection mentioned earlier shouldn't cause the craft to crash; switch to a non-GPS mode and fly it away from the crowd and land.

The flight may have been agreed by the CAA but they don't fly it. They just look at the reasonableness of the risk assessment and grant permission to deviate from the standard permissions which would have prohibited this flight (if they wouldn't have done then they wouldn't have needed the CAA to approve the flight). However, I am not at all convinced that the CAA know enough about this to make a judgment. I think the "if it goes wrong we'll ditch it in the Thames" notion is flawed; when you lose control of a multirotor craft you can lose control VERY quickly and have no control at all. If you have any control why not just fly it away from the crowd and put it down somewhere safely, even if not gently or neatly. And if you have no control then what's to stop it doing its own thing and actually ending up flying towards the crowd?

This means even if you're not flying over or close to a crowd (and in that video the copter does look pretty close) you could end up with it flying in to the crowd and people couldn't get out of the way by the very nature of a crowd. The best you could do then would be close the throttle and hope that the at least those razor sharp blades aren't spitting at thousands of RPM when they hit the people.

I don't think the reliability of even "professionally assembled" multirotor craft, regardless of how many flights/hours it and/or the pilot has successfully made in the past, justifies flying close to a crowd of totally unsuspecting people. That the loss of a GPS antenna or whatever it was caused the flight to end "out of control" suggests that point to me.
 


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ghaynes

Member
Sorry it was not Helicam.

[h=2]X Factor – Not us![/h]APRIL 16, 2013 BY ADMIN
Recently, a company involved in an X Factor shoot were forced to ditch their helicam in the Thames.
We are pleased to report that it was not us!
The incident has been well reported by sUAS News<here></here>
Given the circumstances the pilot made the right decision to abort the flight, and ditch the aircraft without further endangering to the crew and members of the public. The key question is whether the environment was safe to operate a Helicam, and whether the correct safety margin was in force.
It would certainly have been a difficult shoot:
- The location was next to an open river, where the wind could have been very unpredictable and gusty. In this situation is would have been difficult to maintain a safe operating margin. Also, due to the adjacency to the river and the conditions of the risk assessment we would have insisted on the provision of a safety boat.
- The pressures of a public location with a significant number of people in close proximity, would have put additional pressures on the pilot.
At the moment, there seems to be very little information available concerning the incident but we will strive to update this artice as more information becomes available.
 

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andrewrob

Member
Bit of a weird statement that, when is a river not an open river and also what would a safety boat do apart from provide something to hit when it hit the water?

ghaynes said:
Sorry it was not Helicam.

X Factor – Not us!

APRIL 16, 2013 BY ADMIN
Recently, a company involved in an X Factor shoot were forced to ditch their helicam in the Thames.
We are pleased to report that it was not us!
The incident has been well reported by sUAS News<here></here>
Given the circumstances the pilot made the right decision to abort the flight, and ditch the aircraft without further endangering to the crew and members of the public. The key question is whether the environment was safe to operate a Helicam, and whether the correct safety margin was in force.
It would certainly have been a difficult shoot:
- The location was next to an open river, where the wind could have been very unpredictable and gusty. In this situation is would have been difficult to maintain a safe operating margin. Also, due to the adjacency to the river and the conditions of the risk assessment we would have insisted on the provision of a safety boat.
- The pressures of a public location with a significant number of people in close proximity, would have put additional pressures on the pilot.
At the moment, there seems to be very little information available concerning the incident but we will strive to update this artice as more information becomes available.
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swisser

Member
A quote from elsewhere, from the diver who recovered the camera: "The camera was attached to a remote-controlled helicopter — the helicopter floated to the top and they managed to fish that out. the camera had sunk and they had even bought a catfish net to try and get it out."

I'm surprised the camera detached from the gimbal after crashing from a modest height in to water. Likewise I'm surprised the aircraft floated to the top which presumably means other components (lipos?) were detached at some point.
 

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DennyR

Active Member
We use WaterBuoys which self inflate when they go under, each one lifts about 1.6 kilos. Never needed to see how well they work.
I always design stuff so that batteries will detach in a crash.
 
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swisser

Member
"I always design stuff so that batteries will detach in a crash."

Interesting. In the UK one is encouraged to have the lipos in a rigid structure to protect them from being pierced in the event of a crash, which would preclude detaching them.

Also, I assume you don't design the (£20,000) camera to detach?!

 

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andrewrob

Member
Glad you mentioned those Denny. Always wondered if you could get a larger version of the ones that rescue your keys when they go overboard
 

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R_Lefebvre

Arducopter Developer
Any tips on how to allow the batteries to detach in a crash, but not detach in a 3G turn would be appreciated.

The waterbouy thing... could be interesting. I'm going to be flying my heli in an autonomous vehicle competition in June, the flight path is over water. I'm a little nervous. I'd probably need a lot of those buoy things though...
 


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andrewrob

Member
iceman said:
Have been reading this story on sUAS news and the company flying the UA might have CAA permission to undertake aerial work but they need to look at the limits and regulations imposed. In the first paragraph of their web page @ http://www.skypower.co.uk/#!aerial-camera-drones/conh they claim to film from heights "in excess of 400'" how did they get that?
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With special permissions. Any operator can fly outside of the limits outlined in CAP 393 with special individual permission from the CAA. For example we were given permission to fly at 650ft above Euston Station.
 

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