david.p.mann
Captain
Flight distance : 18669501 ft
United States
Offline
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Well - it finally happened. I thought I would be able to continue to fly and enjoy my Inspire 1 for many months, maybe years. But a momentary error in flight control this past weekend in a tense situation and I crashed my Inspire 1 into a street light that I was intentionally flying over to video a closeup of the unique pattern formed by years of peeling paint and bird droppings. In retrospect, probably not a good use of a $3000 precision aircraft to capture one somewhat interesting photo. The picture below shows what my Inspire 1 looks like after the crash. A very sad day.
It was a beautiful day. I had made two 17-minute flights and was going to go home, but decided to take one more flight out to a street light at the edge of the model aircraft park where I routinely fly. This time I wanted to use the new iPad Mini 3 that I recently purchased instead of the iPad Air 2 I had been using for all previous flights with my I1 since purchasing it a month ago. I started up the DJI Pilot app, calibrated the compass again, checked my position on the satellite view map, took off, checked to make sure the I1 aircraft and camera were responding well to all controls, then flew off to the light pole 1000 feet away. I noticed that the live video blanked out or froze a couple times for a split second during the flight to the light pole. When I got to the light pole I hovered over the street lamp and VERY SLOWLY descended from about 10 feet above it to 3 feet above it.
But the video image kept freezing and then updating a split second later. This made it difficult to judge my exact position and distance from the street lamp accurately. So I held altitude and tried adjusting video settings. Enable Hardware Decode was already turned on, so I tried turning it off, but the video breakup issue got even worse. So, I turned Enable Hardware Decode back on. But video breakup was still a problem. I had never had this video problem in the dozens of flights using my iPad Air 2 with the DJI Pilot app. As I continued hovering, the aircraft drifted about 6 inches to the right causing the Vision system to sense the street lamp directly under it triggering the automatic lowering of the landing gear and the audible announcement "Landing gear is lowering." This startled me and I decided I was getting too close to the street lamp, and that's when I made a fatal error. I intended to ascend, but, instead, I went 100% down on the throttle for a split second. Immediately realizing my error, I went 100% up on the throttle to ascend up and out of danger. Ironically, I somehow missed the street lamp when I mistakenly descended about 3 feet below it, but clipped it going back up a split second later. I watched helplessly from 1000 feet away as my I1 tumbled and spiraled to the ground below.
I was devastated. How could I be so stupid to make a rookie error like that. I have actually practiced the rapid ascent maneuver many times my first five weekends flying the I1 and I used it successfully in the past when getting too close to a tree top or when low level flying and seeing my I1 take a sudden dip toward the ground when the ground elevation I was flying over changed. But not this time.
The result - carbon fiber aircraft propeller arms are broken in two places, gimbal and camera are both damaged. Back home I cautiously reinserted the battery and was able to get the I1 back into transport mode with no problems or strange sounds. Thus, the transform arms and motor are at least still functional.
So, learn from my mistakes fellow pilots. Ask yourself if the video or photo you are going for is worth risking your $3000 aircraft. Do NOT fly excessively close to trees, buildings, street lamps, people or other objects. And if you are having ANY issues with your aircraft controls or live video system during a shoot - STOP, MOVE AIRCRAFT AWAY TO SAFE DISTANCE OR RETURN HOME, and troubleshoot/resolve problem before continuing.
This was a very expensive, humbling lesson for me. I'm just glad there were no people or property damaged other than my own aircraft. BE CAREFUL. BE SMART. FLY SAFE.
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