After flying and shooting a waterfall here in costa rica, I saved my last battery to fly around in the other waterfall we were goinn to in Guanacaste. When we got there, there was a bunch of people swiming there, and the flight angles were just not good, so I decided not to fly. To drain the battery, I decided to do a flight in the parking lot of the hotel. After testing how fast the Y6 would fly in Drift mode (the answer is FAST!, for those of you wondering), I was coming in for a landing, and all of the sudden, the battery suddenly gave up. Props were still spinning, but the Y6came down HARD! Broke a leg, busted the screws on the other 2 legs, props are all done (it flipped on me), and it seems the gimbal is toast too... Looked at the 3DR site, but could not find the legs. Any idea where to get them?
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Well, I will end up going with the X8 legs after all... I called 3DR, and got them for $19.99 (a set of 4 legs complete with spacers and everything) + $10.88 shipping. Since this is for the X8, I will even have spare legs! So thumbs up to 3DR for their service! I will still have Doug's LG idea in the back burner, though. And I am still fiddling with the idea of a body shell like his (I would probably go with another color, as black may increase heat unnecessarily, but similar to his).
When I started breaking the nylon hardware that sandwiched the original legs together on my 3DR quad, I got myself some hollow nylon spacers and ran a zip-tie through them and around the legs. This held the legs together while allowing for some degree of flex.
Eventually I broke the fiberglass legs and cut myself a new set out of thin lexan. Only one piece per leg. That way they could flex a bit on hard landings without cracking.
This of course can be a double edged sword, as a hard vertical drop will likely damage components higher up in the frame (widening the holes where the legs and center plates attach to the arms, bending arms, etc.)
Hope you're getting some great shots in Guanacaste. I spent a week flying there in March. Absolutely breathtaking.
I decided to go with the stock legs... Order should be on its way. As for Guanacaste, I am back in San Jose now, but as I live here, I get to go back often!
I'd give 3DR a call and order the legs over the phone. They have a listing on the site for the old style legs but not the new one. The only place I see them is in the Y6 Replacement kit. I'm sure they have them, it doesn't make sense that they would have the old version and not the new one since they are still selling the 2014 kit.
On a side note, I hate the way the new site is organized, if you can call it that. Everything is just jumbled together without any kind of organization. And every time you change pages the top of the page takes up the whole screen! The old site was much easier to use!
BTW what did you have your battery failsafe set for? Was the battery bad or was the failsafe set too high, or not at all?
Regards,
Nathaniel ~KD2DEY
Called them today. They are shipping me a kit of X8 legs for $19.95 + Shipping. Not bad at all! And I will even have spares!
To be hones, the battery failsafe option was ticked, but left at whichever default value it comes at. I also swapped my batteries out for new packs (I left the old ones fully charged and they bloated) for Luminiers 6600 mAh (the shape works better for me also, as they fit better with the gimbal and balance the copter nicely) but I never adjusted MP with the new battery settings... And I forgot to start my timer when I took off and was gessing how much power I had left (was not even using a MavLink connection, as I just wanted to drain the battery to prepare it for storage charging, and its faster to do that on the copter), so that's a big part of the problem... Pilot error, anyone?
In any case, I will give 3DR a call Monday morning and see if I can get new legs. Hopefully, I will be up and flying soon. I do want to check everything first, though, as it was a hard hit...
Hi Felipe,
I also had this problem, about 3 weeks ago. My battery gave out during RTL while the Y6 was still about 20m off the ground. It came down hard and snapped all 3 legs. They all snapped at exactly the same place your leg did. Like Craig, I couldn't find the replacement legs short of buying a whole kit, which I wasn't prepared to do.
I decided to do a quad conversion, and now I'm on an Alien 560 frame, build complete except one missing piece which is in the mail. I'm looking forward to not having to deal with having half my motors in the downwash of other motors, unavoidable yaw when climbing, not enough space for electronics, and a tiny landing gear footprint.
I'll miss having a drone that can do 90km/h, though... ;)
Hi @Felipe,
I had this exact same issue with my Y6, however mine are the smaller legs from the previous model.
One pair had snapped in half while the screws broke on the other legs.
I couldn't find any replacement legs with the exception of having the buy the complete replacement kit.
One option could be to find a carbon fibre plate (0.050 or 0.052inch) i believe is the thickness and simple just trace and cut your own legs out. Working with the material is actually pretty easy if you take time.
I couldn't find an readily available supply for carbon plating so for the time being I opted for a temporary material, using Lexan (polycarbonate or a strong form of plexy glass), however for the rear leg I used both original legs, but for the front ones each leg was 1/2 original leg and the other 1/2 a Lexan (0.082inch) leg traced and cut. I'm not positive how this would work in ur case (longer legs, gimbal ect...) as the lexan has slightly more flex to them then that or the carbon plate. Also my gimbal is simply a anti vibration mount with a go pro which makes it relatively solid in comparison to a 2d or 3d gimbal, so the extra flex could absorb more or flex to much and risk the gimbal.
I do know of a Canadian Retailer ( I deal with them often and they're great) that is listing X8 Landing Gear https://www.greathobbies.com/productinfo/?prod_id=3DR0047 which is virtually the same legs except you'd have an extra one, unfortunately though they have yet to receive any Quad or X8 parts, instead focusing heavily on Iris+ parts, but I have requested the legs and other parts, so perhaps if you sent in a request also they may be more willing to stock them as the demand we be greater.
Hope this helps, and sorry to hear about your crash,
Craig P.
There are other options if you are up for a small challenge. I replaced my landing struts with skids.
If you're interested, I can send you the link to where I bought my kits and you can swap them out. I will say, that I've had much better luck with my replacement and increased ground clearance of the gimbal system.
Doug, how do those attach to the copter? That could be an interesting option...
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