Well,
I have had a 3D Robotics X8 for about a month now. I have been flying it in a large field near my neighborhood. I had just got it in the air in stabilize mode and was flying and moving about. I decided to get it up in the air a little and got the orientation out of wack and ended up over some trees. Well in went down and I have looked until dark and can't find it. I was connected via mission planner 2.0. So is their any way that I may be able to pull the last longitude and latitude settings from it? I am going back tomorrow to continue the search. Thanks
Replies
Time for ladybirding before flying anything over a 450 quad! Why risk an expensive X8 before being 120% able to bring someting back safely in stabilize? By the way: "This is the second major crash for no reason that I can find". I hope you know the reason for the second crash now.
Lowering expectations a bit and continue training with an appropriate machine. You will so much more enjoy your bigger copter in the end.
- get a ladybird or other micro quad and practice.... Working up to the lazy-8, laps, and other practice patterns until flight is smooth and orientation changes around an ROI throughout the flight.
- explore the simple and super simple modes
- put your name and contact info on that bad boy
- flying too low (over trees, such that you cannot see it) can be as big a problem as flying too high. When in doubt, gain altitude. That is, if the wind is low, and you are under the local regulated ceiling. This helps not just with orientation, but also with telemetry, control signals.
- plan your emergency procedures. Have a plan that doesn't involve going straight to RTL. Before conducting flight ops, tune and test other modes, like alt hold, position hold, etc.
Just some quick ideas...
Well,
Thats what I did and it yielded no real info. I went out this morning with about 6 good friends and searched until I/we found it. I am now grounding this thing until I can understand fully what is going on. This is the second major crash for no reason that I can find. The last crash was due to a "possible" prop coming off. This time I have no idea because the tlog file has almost nothing on it. I am using windows 7 and APM 2.0. Once I get it working again I am not going to fly it over 30 feet and keep it in a huge field until I can feel confident at it is going to operate like it is suppose to. I am very very lucky that this thing went down and did not end up in a car windshield are something worse. I had it in an open field and like I said the orientation got off and then it went out of control. I have two other copters and this has happened to me and I have always been about to get it back in the right place. I wonder if it is possible to write new parameters into the unit? I only have what came with it from 3D robotics. Is that even needed? Anyway thanks for the reply.
Brian
Oh, and put your contact information on your gear.