Discussions

Hey guys,

I recently got into flying and decided it would be a great idea to build myself a quad! I decided to use the apm 2.5 as it seemed very configurable and powerful and so forth. Introduction done, time to get to the real question.

I've had a few strange happenings with my quad. Now I've flown it quite a bit, probably about 100+ flights. But there have been a few problems. First, my loiter was horrible, no matter how many satellites I had it always seemed to have a mind of its own. It wouldn't toilet bowl per say, it looked like it would make a mistake and then over correct and sometimes even fly off in a random direction. Second, my althold worked great before I added the GPS. However, after the GPS it was horrible sometimes shooting up into the sky, other times falling to the ground, and sometimes just descending as I was flying along and slowly loosing altitude. Nevertheless, I continued flying and just didn't use the other modes, and just stuck to stabilise(which worked great).

Then one day as I was flying about 300m away from me, I suddenly had no control! The quad shot off to the side at about a 75 degree angle and just kept going. It eventually flew itself into a building at top speed! I looked at the onboard footage, and I'm still baffled as to how this could have occurred. Because,

1: I was only 300m away, so radio link should be strong

2: How could it achieve angles that great when its supposed to be limited to 45 degrees?

3: Why didn't the RTL at least work to some extent?

To sum it it seemed like it would make a mistake, over-correct, and then take about 10 seconds to try and correct again, and then again over-correct, until crashing.

After the crash I repaired it and went to fly again, this time without GPS(it was broken anyway). I uploaded a slightly newer version of the firmware than what I had been using. It was very unstable, it would started oscillating at the slightest touch of the sticks. I then connected to the internet and loaded the newest firmware. With this firmware it was even worse! It would flip over on takeoff, every single time! I then went back and loaded the firmware I had been using (9.9.*** or something like that). Now it was unstable, but at least it flew. However, I discovered something disconcerting. It would not enable data logging. Every time I put it on, I write the parameters, refresh, it shows its on. When I disconnect and reconnect, its disabled! 

Anyway, I kept flying, sometimes it would still flip over on takeoff but once in the air it was fine.

Then the other day, I went for a quick flight, and at about 2.5m off the ground the motors went straight to idle! I pushed the throttle to full but there was no reaction, it just fell from the sky. Luckily it landed right side up. However once on the ground it increased throttle and flipped over on its back and then dropped back down to idle. 

Has anybody got any advice or explanation on this?