I was out flying at dusk yesterday, it was chilly, maybe 32 F. There wasn't much wind at the time, 3-5 mph. I was a few hundred away from the home point & up about 480ft. taking sunset pics. As I was wacthing the camera view on my iPad, I noticed the drone began rapidly moving away from me, even though both sticks were untouched. I didn't know why it was moving, it wasn't a wind issue & I didn't see anything else in the sky around the drone. I had a good signal, 15 sats, Rc/drone both had +80% charge and I'd only been flying for 10 minutes or so. The drone was very sluggish in response to controls, but it was respmding as I was trying to get it down & towards me. I wasn't watchinig the iPad so I don't know how fast it was cominbg down, but I could tell it was definitely faster than usual. As the drone came down, I could hear it wasn't the normal "whizzing" sound it normally makes, it was a much faste & higher pitch. It had recently snowed & we have about 4 inches of snow on the ground, I've never been a fan of snow, until yesterday. When the drone was about 5 meters off the ground I began trying to kill the props, but I guess I wasn't fast enough, the drone hard-landed on a snowbank with the props still spinning.

A second or two after landing I shut the drone down, I immediately saw the cause of my issue...the broken prop. But after looking over the drone there wasn't any else wrong. Everything was intact & after wiping off a little bit of snow everything worked normal after the hard landing. Knock on wood, after all my years of flying, this was my first broken prop and honestly the first emergency I've experienced.


fly safe,
WBK     



*edit*
Added the only pic I was able to take before SHTF.

nice click bait    ;-)

Awesome sunset shot.  Sorry about the broken prop.  I carefully check each prop before every flight.  After a recent flight I did a post flight prop check and found one prop had a hairline crack.  It did not appear to be cracked before the flight and I hit nothing during flight so I guess I'm lucky I didn't experience a prop failure during flight. Decided to replace all props just to be super safe.  

DowntownRDB Posted at 2-23 08:19
Awesome sunset shot.  Sorry about the broken prop.  I carefully check each prop before every flight.  After a recent flight I did a post flight prop check and found one prop had a hairline crack.  It did not appear to be cracked before the flight and I hit nothing during flight so I guess I'm lucky I didn't experience a prop failure during flight. Decided to replace all props just to be super safe.

Thanks.
I usually go over the drone before sending it up, but the sun had just popped out after a few days of crappy weather. Lesson learned & I got lucky this time.  

Hello there WBK. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for reaching out. Since this unfortunate event happened. It would be best to contact our DJI Support Team for further assistance. You may contact or DJI Support Team at : https://repair.dji.com/repair/index or via http://www.dji.com/support to open a case. Again, I am sorry for the trouble and thank you.

Did you upload the log to airdata to check if there was any warning shown?

wow, what a story!

Impressed by the fact that the drone was still sort of 'flyable'....

Your story for me reason to check my props better and more often.

cheers
JJB

Capt. Wild Bill Kelso Posted at 2-23 09:49
Thanks.
I usually go over the drone before sending it up, but the sun had just popped out after a few days of crappy weather. Lesson learned & I got lucky this time.

Nothing wrong with being lucky.  

DJI Stephen Posted at 2-23 18:50
Hello there WBK. I am sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for reaching out. Since this unfortunate event happened. It would be best to contact our DJI Support Team for further assistance. You may contact or DJI Support Team at : https://repair.dji.com/repair/index or via http://www.dji.com/support to open a case. Again, I am sorry for the trouble and thank you.

I'm not reaching out, just sharing something that happened to me. And maybe help someone avoid going thru the same thing in the future. Not sure what DJI would or could do for me, these were aftermarket props.

DAFlys Posted at 2-24 00:31
Did you upload the log to airdata to check if there was any warning shown?

I haven't looked at that yet, but I did not receive any warnings prior to the drone starting to fly off. I'll check that & report back.

Capt. Wild Bill Kelso Posted at 2-24 05:33
I haven't looked at that yet, but I did not receive any warnings prior to the drone starting to fly off. I'll check that & report back.

You'll often see in the log errors/warning that will not appear on the screen.

DAFlys Posted at 2-25 00:38
You'll often see in the log errors/warning that will not appear on the screen.

If its a zoom this log viewer is also available - http://phantomhelp.com/logviewer/