KillerB
lvl.1
Flight distance : 308360 ft
Australia
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Allow me to preface this entire thread with the understanding of how much of an idiot I am. I already know this haha
Okay so let me start this by saying this is both a question and a PSA:
I think I have royally screwed myself, and others should hopefully find this thread before making the same mistakes.
So about a week ago I was flying my drone in sport mode, just messing around. I had a lapse in concentration and in not accounting for momentum, no matter how hard I pulled back, and much to my heart-stopping terror, my drone flew straight into a tree. It crashed to the ground and its arm was slightly cracked (enough that the props on that arm had bent so they were scraping the cover of the spark).
I'm very disappointed at this stage. Absolutely gutted. Money is extremely tight at the moment so I was racking my brain for any solution. I naturally thought about glue but thought it'd be better to get the arm fixed (big mistake, glue would've been a better option at least temporarily haha). So I looked up the going rate for repairing a Spark's arm. From what I could see, anywhere between $150-200 AUD, which was just too expensive for me (plus the wait). I decided to look on ebay for a replacement body. Found one for $25 AUD. Perfect, I thought. WRONG.
Fast forward to last night. I took apart the Spark no problem, very easy device to get around (props to DJI for some solid engineering in this bad boy). I worked at removing all the motors, the motherboard etc and put them all into the new body (I used to work with electrical engineers, so I wasn't scared at all by the disassembly and assembly process). All was going very well (aside from the fact I soldered the motors into the opposing corners, meaning the drone when trying to take off actually pushes itself into the ground :facepalm. But then when I went to test the drone, disappointment reached whole new levels. No GPS signal indoors or outdoors and errors galore surrounding the front and bottom facing sensors. I don't think this was because of my repair, I was very careful, but rather from the crash itself that I didn't look into and just assumed it was the arm.
So now to the point of this thread: I am screwed. I didn't buy DJI care refresh because I just couldn't afford it, and now I've basically destroyed in the most obvious way any warranty I had. What is left for me to do now? I'm anticipating any repairs from DJI (if they even want to deal with me anymore) to be in the neighbourhood of at least the cost of a new drone. D:
Please please please do not repair your own drones. Or at the very least, make sure everything else is functional before even considering the undertaking.
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