woodielb
 lvl.2
Flight distance : 78061552 ft
United States
Offline
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I must be the luckiest I1 owner around! First off, the update to the latest firmware was quick, smooth, and worked perfectly.
2nd, and the biggest, is that I crashed my bird about an hour ago due to some peculiar behavior programmed into the firmware. BUT, unbelievably, it survived with apparently no damage, just broken props.
Here's what happened. I was flying in the foothills of the mountains, going up and foward, maintaining clearance over the scrub oak, etc. I was just going to go through a battery to make sure everything continued to go smoothly after the upgrade. Had a short flight yesterday & everything was perfect. Maybe placebo, but I think the video looked even better. But today I wasn't even recording, though I had the gimbal on so I could see on my Iphone.
I had knowingly left the 120m height limit in the app turned on. As I approached 400' above me, at launch point, but only about 40' above terrain and about 10' or so above the top of the scrub oak, I got a warning on the app that maximum altitude had been reached. THEN, as I looked back up, the bird started descending vertically. At this time it's 400' vertical feet above me, about 675' away, but only 10' or so above the scrub. Despite full stick up, it continued to descend until it hit the top of the scrub oak. I heard the sickening weedeater sound of props on greenery, and saw it tumble to the ground. SH*T!!!!!
Hiked up & retrieved it, found all the props broken (new quicklocks), with one off. It was laying upside down with the landing gear still up. The battery had released and slid out a couple inches, & couple of the shock absorbers had released on the gimbal plate. I was sure I was going to find multiple broken parts, already going over getting the RMA, sending it off, etc. Hiked back down, got it home & checked it over. Took off the broken props, pushed the batterey back down, started the remote & then the I1, holding it by the back over a table. Lo & behold, the landing gear went down.
Went over it with a fine tooth comb, vacuumed & dusted, strong flashlight, nothing. Not a scratch. Not even on the top cover where it was laying. Put the same battery back in, turned on the remote, then the bird, everything normal. No cracks in the arms, etc. Though one does seem to have a bit more slop than the other. Ran it without props for about 5-10 min, listening to the motors, looking with a flashlight. Since that was my only set of QR props, took off the adapters & put a set of the originals back on w/proplocks. Took it back outside with the same battery (now at 84%) and did an IMU & compass calibration. Everything in the app perfectly normal. With much trepidation, (and recording video) took off and flew back up to 400' (but with more terrain clearance) Got the same message, and the same behavior, a vertical descent of 10-20' that was not stoppable with input. Once it got back into what I guess it considered a safe cushion from max height, flew perfectly normally. Just checked video, it's fine.
There's not a scratch on it. When it descended into the top of the scrub oak, it must have kind of fell down through the boughs and plopped gently to the ground upside down. The gimbal & camera are untouched. One motor has some tiny nicks you have to look with a flashlight to see. Unbelievable!!
SO, keep in mind that when it hits the max height limit, it will descend to stay under it, in this case to about 390'. If you are, like I was, above launch by 400', but only a few feet above trees or terrain, it will crash and you can't stop it. At least I couldn't, but got amazingly lucky that the only damage was broken props.
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