Hi all,

So I screwed up big time today. I was flying my company's Inspire 1 drone about 15 ft in the air when a sudden wind gust picked up and I panicked and couldn't control it right. The craft hit a tree, which wrecked three of the propellers, but didn't look like it affected the body all that much.

I tried flying it again (in a completely open field) right after the fact, and everything appeared fine initially except that the "return to home" function didn't work--it just tried to land where it was. I flew a few more times. All seemed well except that same issue, but then the imagery suddenly cut out during one of the flights and none of the commands would work on the app, so I landed manually. We restarted the craft, recalibrated the compass several times, and it all seemed to work again until I landed after the last flight. But then, after I took the camera off, the craft suddenly began making a strange noise. I turned it off and turned it back on, and tried to put it into travel mode, but now when I go to the status bar, it asks whether I want to EXIT travel mode rather than ENTER it. If I press "exit travel mode," it makes the same bizarre noise and "freaks out" so to speak. The landing gear does nothing at all. I had to take it back to the office still not in travel mode. I tried putting on the gimbal just now, and I'm suddenly not getting any imagery at all, even though it was working just a few hours ago. Also, there is a solid blue light on the craft. I know that can mean update firmware, but we just updated pretty recently, so I think it's a mechanical failure. I really, really don't know what to do. Does anyone have any advice? I would be so SO obliged. I feel like an awful person for having screwed this up so badly

default setting of the RTH limit are 20M away, closer then that it will just land, don't playing around with that function unless you really need it.

If the I1 is 20m away or less when you hit RTH it will land where it is, this is normal. After a knock or hard landing, it is advisable to do an IMU calibration. Check all the cables are connected properly and check the connections between the camera and gimbal.
Can you post a video of it "freaking out", somebody on the forum will know about this. It may be the landing gear just needs a hand to get moving, there is a small screw underneath the bird that turns the worm drive, you could try giving this half a turn.
I hope this helps. Keep us posted.

Mark G.

Sorry to hear about that.
If there is no improvement after trying some troubleshooting, to ensure the safety and performance, we do suggest you to send it in.
You can submit here for a case number and apply for pickup: https://repair.dji.com/en/SelfRepair/Area

Thank you guys for all of your suggestions. I'm thinking I'm just going to send it to DJI to repair because I don't feel like I know enough about the mechanics to fix it. Does anyone know what kind of costs are associated with this? I know it varies a lot based on what's actually wrong, but if any of you have used DJI's repair service before, can you tell me ballpark what it cost?