First and hopefully last FLY AWAY with Naza v2

C

censrd

Member
After reading about all these fly away issues i have been super careful with my MR in fear of similar happening to me. But after almost 6 months of flying it happened. I had just gone through 2 batteries without a glitch, took off in ATTI on my third battery flew out about 80m from T/O and was holding position with GPS mode. Turned away for a second to look back and see my 550 rapidily banked and headed towards a big group of trees. Despite a quick flick into manual mode this didn't seem to have much affect on its intended flight path. Then tried going to failsafe and that too had no effect. It then landed about 10 or so meters up and tree, thankfully i wasn't too high and the tree caught it for me. I'm in the process of trying to clean and assess damage but apart from dirt in the motors it doesn't look as bad as it could have been.

Everything was balanaced out and been enjoying awesome flights with my rig, why would it just suddenly do this. Now I've lost all the trust i had in this thing, so disappointing/scary.

DJI 550,
naza v2
4s 5000mah
dji 30a escs
1038 dji comp props
zenmuse h3-2d
iosd 2
avl-58
 



T

Tahoe Ed

Active Member
Did you check the solar activity for your area? How much time between flights? This is unusual behavior. Also check all your connections. After 6 months solder joints can fail, connectors come loose, you have the picture. I had a F550 with a WKM that banked to the left, rose 60 feet and became inverted and crashed. I checked everything and could never figure what happened. I have flown that controller multiple times on my S800 with a new GPS, cracked the Rx, and never had an issue. Sometimes we never know about the ghosts in the machines.
 

C

censrd

Member
Thanks for your reply Tahoe Ed, um.... was that a serious question??? did I check solar activity? what the "flamewheel" you talking about? forgive my ignorance but I've done a fair bit of research into this hobby/sport/profession and I can't say I've seen anything about solar activity... based on the rest of your post I can only assume you are serious... um I wouldn't even know where to look let alone what to look for... how does this influence a rc device? - it was probably somewhere between 4-6 minutes between touch down and take off. But I did check the motors and esc's and they were pretty much cool as I hadn't been flying hard the previous flight.

Due to some recent gear addition I had basically pulled the aircraft apart just a few weeks ago, but have had 15-20 flights between then and yesterdays hell flight. I have started to strip it down again to clean/repair and everything still looks solid. I did notice however one of the motors had a bit of that burnt smell to it but was still spinning like all the others and it was only faint. Should i replace it or just keep watch on it? I've also been looking into getting simon k escs over the djis in your opinion would this be a wise upgrade? I'm about to plug the iosd in and try see if i can pull the flight log and look for anything weird, not that i really know what to even look for but its worth the effort. Ghost in the machine.... I'd say it was pretty much possessed.
 


T

Tahoe Ed

Active Member
Solar activity effects GPS locks. So yes I was serious. Any changes in your set up requires advanced IMU calibration. I use the DJI escs and have not issues some have with the bullet connectors. I have use SimonK escs on a quad with a cc board. They were ok. That is the extent of my experience with them. I would replace the motor if it were me. It is your decision. Motors are cheap and gimbals and cameras are not. Flight logs off the iOSD are great and can tell you a lot about what has occurred during your flight. I would highly recommend it to anyone that flies a lot of money in the air.
 

Benjamin Kenobi

Benjamin Kenobi

Easy? You call that easy?
I would also recommend replacing that motor. And yes, check solar activity before you go out if using GPS. I use this site:

http://www.n3kl.org/sun/images/noaa_kp_3d.gif?

As you can see on December 8 it was through the roof! As long as it is in the green you're fine, yellow is moderate, red is real bad!

And you're fine with the DJI ESC. Never had a problem myself (well, one failed after a years operation but noticed on the ground first).
 


P

PeterLester

Member
If indeed your MR shifted to manual mode and did not remain in GPS mode, then you should have been able to regain control regardless of solar activity..... unless ofcourse, you ran out of time to make flight corrections before getting into the trees.
For what its worth, I had a buddy box training switch interfere with FC GPS activation simply because I was only verifying each RC switch function on the bench and not looking for other RC functions occuring in the background. Not to say that that it is an FC issue necessarily.
 

C

censrd

Member
Ok well i guess this is another lesson learnt in this field, have now downloaded a solar flare monitoring app so will keep in mind that in future. On a side note I just plugged the MR into the naza software and initially had my TX switched off. And i noted that my gain settings were off the charts and nothing close to what i actually had set before flying. EG Pitch and Roll were showing 421%. Even after turning on my tx and adjusting as far as i could it only went up to 302%. Does this sound a bit suspect to anyone?
 




C

censrd

Member
Well after checking the solar charts as best i knew how, and setting up the battery powered flying bird again, i took to the skies last night beads of sweat running down face and i nervously took off. The good news is she flew straight and true, but as i stand there i just question if i can fully trust her like i started to only weeks earlier... Thanks for the suggestions people. I'm quite chuffed with the support on these forums.
 

Bartman

Bartman

Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
i'm not an expert but I seriously doubt gps flares would cause a sudden acceleration away from a fixed position to the point that even manual control would be ineffective.
 

Benjamin Kenobi

Benjamin Kenobi

Easy? You call that easy?
True. It would cause less accuracy in GPS hold, so instead of the +/-2m accuracy it may be 3m. Not a big deal. GPS doesn't have full control over the aircraft anyway so it does seem silly when people are scared of GPS modes or blame them for flips of death or what ever. It's the IMU that is responsible for attitude control. GPS just adds a little more accuracy.

Did you change anything on your aircraft? I forgot to mention your gains changing by themselves. Have you assigned a switch to change gains? Like X2 or X3 on the assistant program? Did you maybe change them in flight?

Did you find a faulty motor or ESC?
 

C

censrd

Member
Sorry just to clarify are you asking if i changed anything just before the crash flight? Not just before, I had installed the 2.4 GHz Bluetooth module but that was about 8-10 flights before the crash. So I would have to assume that didn't cause it. The flight just before the crash was done via pc using way points, vs the crash flight I took off and flew out into the middle of the oval myself. I have assigned gain change too the X2 channel on the 14sg. I'm using the RD (right dial) so its not a switch that could have been knocked. Also even if turned all the way to max the values don't get anywhere near what the software showed.

I have replaced one of the motors as it smelt like that burnt electrics smell and there appeared to be a glue or something that had melted down. But it still seemed to function just fine. I did a ground run with props off, rotating the craft through different axis for about 5min and all seemed well. Then did a test flight a couple days ago and it flew fine... so yeah its still a mystery as to what caused it. Any others thoughts?
 

Benjamin Kenobi

Benjamin Kenobi

Easy? You call that easy?
I think you've fixed it. Burnt out motor was probably the cause. Trust in your craft will slowly return after a few good flights.

Have fun!
 

C

censrd

Member
Hopefully although i suspect the motor was damaged whilst it was spinning like a mad man when up in the tree. Of course there is no way to find out for sure. I've looked over the flight log IOSD file but I'm a complete noob with the data so no idea what I'm looking for that would be out of the norm, its all just wiggly lines to me. But I found your info regarding what "control" the gps over the FC very informative and more in line to the way I assumed / thought it would behave, thus the solar flare concept totally threw me.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.
Top