jmtw000
lvl.4
United States
Offline
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I've flown many waypoint missions before, so this wasn't my first rodeo. I usually start them after I'm in the air. But, I wanted to try it from takeoff this time. I figured 20' was enough margin for error, but I was wrong about that I guess. The first waypoint was directly above the home point at 200' in altitude. I figured it would ascend straight up to that waypoint (as I've seen it do many times before on similar missions) and then go on to the others. Instead, the Phantom only barely lifted off the ground (maybe 6" if that) while at the same time heading directly for the fence at full speed. I had 6 satellites locked in at the time. I'm blaming GPS accuracy (maybe, see below) for this one. I think the Phantom just wasn't where it thought it was.
Tweety:
The faulty ESC was not evident in motor behavior as the Phantom wouldn't even power up. It would simply click and the lights on all the ESCs would quickly flash red once and it would shut off. The only way I could tell which ESC was blown was because it smelled like burnt electronics.
Northofthe49th:
Actually, waypoint #2 was in the opposite direction of the fence! It could have been that the ESC was failing at takeoff and that's actually what caused it to head for the fence instead of straight up to waypoint #1. I don't think failsafe would have saved me in this situation, especially if it was a failing ESC causing the behavior and not the result of the behavior. It happened so fast. I did a CSC as soon as I saw it was heading for the fence and not up to the first waypoint and it was still too slow to stop the props from spinning before it hit the fence. I doubt I could have switched off the remote or initiated failsafe with the S1 switch any faster than I did a CSC. If it were higher and not flying the mission as planned, I would have flipped the S2 switch down and back up and taken control as I've done in the past when things went wrong. But, seeing how fast it was heading for the fence and how close to the ground it was I thought a CSC would be the best bet for stopping it before it did any damage. Also, when flying a Ground Station mission, shutting off the remote will have absolutely no effect. In Phantom mode, I don't use NAZA mode so I'm not sure what happens there, if you shut off the remote during a Ground Station mission the Phantom will just go on it's merry way flying the mission...or crashing into fences |
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