The fun stuff starts around 1.30 ..
This is what can easily happen when too confident and not enough prepared, when you get caught in some unexpected altitude windstream, even a little one
To sum it up .. suicide mission ; Had no fpv, no lights, no simple or rtl mode programmed
The panasonic was found split in two, but amazingly , the copter only bent one arm; i repaired since then . Am now waiting for a brand new gopro hero2 and a brand new 5.8gzhvideo rx/tx ; The one i had refused to start (old 1.3ghz ), made me loose patience and take off anyways there up .. will not do again :)
dCopter just before flight, complete payload
Comments
Not that I think anything should be hidden, mind you! Just that we should be careful.
I'm with Grips, I'm afraid.... Ever since I nearly cut an old lady's face up with my AR.Drone, I've been pretty frickin' hypersensitive to civilian collateral damage, considering the worst-case-outcomes. I saw someone's vid of a crashlanding right in a footpath, the other day. Even had the KMZ 3D images of it crossing the road and plummeting into a thankfully empty footpath. It just takes one reasonably serious injury to one annoyed, persistent person and suddenly we're all pariahs in the parks. The tabloids would love it and people would eye all passing RC craft with hatred. Imagine one crashing through a windscreen. I don't wanna be a killjoy, and Anis' example is a fairly tepid one, but wanted to say I don't think Grips is just being a wowser.
I favor transparency and sharing; I do not see anything you did as irresponsible. If results are the measure, you flew in a sufficiently large area such that the crash did not put others at risk. Your experimental device, during a flight test, suffered instability and crashed. I did not observe any risks (other than to the aircraft) that you took and I think we can all learn from and improve. In fact, it helps to remind others to maintain a similar safety margin when this is a possibility. Perhaps someone will wisely chose not to punch in some altitude in a lightly populated park because they have seen this (safe) crash?
@Grips I understand your point and am willing to pull the video from public view if the community deems it'd better
However my first intent was sincerly for what SwordfishBob pointed out
Also Its an old dilema for every experimental field, what do you guys think ? should we selfcensor or ask the community first.. or just keep going on sharing experience ?
Grips makes a good point, but by the same token the community probably needs occasional reminders to diligently manage such risks.
I am sort of perturbed by two of these sort of videos within the last month or so, where someone who did not know the limits of their copter nearly crashed it in to a commercial area.. I really do not think its a good idea for these videos to be shown or have DIYDRONES associated with such 'near misses', because that is exactly what it is. Sentimentalization of the media would take one of these videos and run with it to demonstrate how they should be outlawed.
Beauty crash. Can't understand any of the writing, but this is what keeps the diydrones store in business.
@Anis - Thankfully I live next to vacant land. I thought if it got lost, I could just go out at night and look for the leds and noise from the motor. Problem is that the battery is the heaviest part and always disconnects first, leaving the no leds or beeping. I've started putting a low voltage screamer attached to the balance port and the battery itself as a sort of failsafe.
I have xbee telemetry, but rarely setup the laptop ground station for stability/endurance testing. I am starting to fly over a mile from home (over vacant, private land) and use it every time just for the lat/long incase it goes down.
There are inexpensive radio frequency beacons that I have thought about using for fixed wing stuff, but I never thought I would need it for a quad. There is a guy from Israel on rcgroups who makes some neat beacons and has them for sale. You can just use an inexpensive FRS handheld radio and your body as a attenuator to find the beacon.
Aaah she's a beauty on lower picture.. Glad that you did not loose it. But yeah we know that frame is rather strong and can handle big bangs really well. Anyways if you ever need spare parts, I know from where to get ;)
lolololol I too have experienced similar results. On one auto mode flight, my quad started climbing and instead of bringing it down, I waited to see if it corrects the alt... no way, when I tryied to bring it down, I could not understand how fast it was coming down, and add the downdraft effect to that, you get a quad-meteor :) i was lucky too, only one broken arm, one broken motor support and a fully bend landing gear wich I managed to repair. The carbon center structure survived with no scratches, motors and ESCs were ok and the electronics... it cost me an oilpan (that hurts) :)
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