Hi everone, I'm new to drones and had an incident and wanted to see if anyone had any insight to this. I was flying about 300m high and about 250m away in clear, open skies over empty desert terrain when the drone suddenly fell from the sky and was distroyed when it hit the ground. The flight records indicate an impact in the sky with something, but nothing was viable, and there are no powerlines or other drones or anything i could have hit. I'm baffled as to what i could have impacted that high. This also happened the instant I hit the record button on the RC. Could that have caused a software problem? If I don't understand the reason for the crash I can't prevent it from happening again. Any insight into this is appreciated.

I am sorry for your loss. My Spark fell out of the sky today as well. Like you, I don't know what could have caused the failure. I will monitor this forum and the internet if there are other people out there with the same issue.

Sorry for the accident. Any error message from your app when your drone went wrong? Please contact our support first and start a case: http://www.dji.com/support. I would recommend you send it back for check and provide the flight record for analysis.

Thanks for the response. I have started a case and the response is that an impact caused the accident. I can also see that in the flight record, however, there was nothing in the air for the drone to hit. Since it happened right when I triggered the record button makes me wonder if those two events are connected. Support did not address that question so I am still at a loss as to what caused the accident since there was nothing else in the area.

djiuser_RQw0szo Posted at 2017-11-20 20:42
Thanks for the response. I have started a case and the response is that an impact caused the accident. I can also see that in the flight record, however, there was nothing in the air for the drone to hit. Since it happened right when I triggered the record button makes me wonder if those two events are connected. Support did not address that question so I am still at a loss as to what caused the accident since there was nothing else in the area.

Impact?
Is there a population of eagles or other raptors around?

Haha my thought, too, but no, I was close enough to have seen that

Can you upload your flight log to link below might give you a better understanding of what happened.
Just click on link and link below and follow instructions come back here and post link.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

Thanks for the help. As I've said, I had a clear view of the flight path and could not see any objects that could hit the drone. Here's the link to the flight logs:
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/72TY4V1K2DNO2LMBOAA2/

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/72TY4V1K2DNO2LMBOAA2/

It almost certainly looks like a hardware problem , at 3.6 seconds you got speed error you were still pushing throttle stick full forward and your spark was only maintaining height or just slightly over 1000 ft, but you either lost or broke a prop or at worst had a motor problem, but if it was motor problem you would have received warnings, that’s why I think it was prop problem. You could easily hit a bird or he hit you causing prop to break .
As soon as you stopped pushing sticks your Aircraft descended at almost sport speed reaching 30mph during descent so I’m fairly certain this was a prop problem caused by hitting something.

Did you find your Aircraft?

Where you videoing at the time, if you were and you have found your Aircraft this would show a lot, your Aircraft hit the ground at 28mph so unless it landed in a bush I would imagine there is some damage.

djiuser_RQw0szo Posted at 2017-11-21 10:59
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/72TY4V1K2DNO2LMBOAA2/

        34.70231578        -118.83561914

If you haven’t found your Aircraft these are coordinates and it’s almost certainly in this spot. It was almost 1000ft from the homepoint.

Thanks, I was able to find the drone, unfortunately it was destroyed. The flight logs shows an impact, but how easy is it to hit a bird? I thought it might somehow be related to the RC record button which I triggered at the same moment the drone fell. Just a guess

djiuser_RQw0szo Posted at 2017-11-21 11:52
Thanks, I was able to find the drone, unfortunately it was destroyed. The flight logs shows an impact, but how easy is it to hit a bird? I thought it might somehow be related to the RC record button which I triggered at the same moment the drone fell. Just a guess

It’s difficult to hit a bird but not difficult for the bird to attack your drone, what was condition of props I.e. were they all on where any broke etc.?

Also this height only certain birds fly at that altitude you probably could easily find out what birds inhabit that area. Where you recording.?

We do have hawks and falcons, but I would have thought I would see that. I was recording up until the last moment. When I triggered the RC record button was the moment the drone fell, so I don't have a recording of the fall itself, up until then everything looked normal and nothing in the camera view that could impact the drone. That's why I'm so baffled by this

Some props were missing

Bird strike or prop failure due to previous damage.  Or an improperly installed blade.  The spinning prop suddenly throwing a blade might show as an impact.

Thanks, throwing a prop could explain it

Gunship9 Posted at 2017-11-21 12:41
Bird strike or prop failure due to previous damage.  Or an improperly installed blade.  The spinning prop suddenly throwing a blade might show as an impact.

Very hard to improperly fit props and if you do it usually shows up pretty quickly, you could have a cracked prop if not checked before flight vibrations could cause it to break off , I was thinking that some part of prop had broken maybe by impact, because if a prop came off I think spark would turn over causing spark to power off and it doesn’t look like this happened , simply because flight log was recorded right it to crash.

This was my 4th flight or so of the day without issues, so I think the props were fitted correctly, but they could have been worn.

djiuser_RQw0szo Posted at 2017-11-21 13:27
This was my 4th flight or so of the day without issues, so I think the props were fitted correctly, but they could have been worn.

You know that’s the thing if there was a crack in your prop it should have shown up on other flights with a lot on unstable flying and you can clearly see from your last flight up until your problem your spark was flying just fine.

I wouldn’t rule out hardware problem with motors, but dji will be able to see this in your dat file, I do think you have a good chance of warranty here and hope you get it.

Good luck.

Thanks, DJI has already said it was due to an external impact and won't cover it. I just didn't know how an impact could happen at that altitude without me being able to see something like a large bird or other object

Don't Falcons attack other birds in flight? I'm no bird expert, but if that's true, it would seem a reasonable explanation. Sorry about your drone though - that sucks. My spark was hit by a Starling (big cloud of them came ripping around the corner of my apartment complex and the drone was right there taking a picture of my girlfriend on our 4th floor balcony as soon as they made the turn. All but one avoided it, but one of the last ones in the cloud hit it dead center between the left side front and rear props. Luckily, it recovered after floundering a bit as it never tipped to an angle that shut the motors off. Killed the bird, and cracked two props though).

djiuser_RQw0szo Posted at 2017-11-21 12:40
We do have hawks and falcons, but I would have thought I would see that. I was recording up until the last moment. When I triggered the RC record button was the moment the drone fell, so I don't have a recording of the fall itself, up until then everything looked normal and nothing in the camera view that could impact the drone. That's why I'm so baffled by this

You wont see the bird on the screen, unless you would have had the sun right behind and on top of your drone, raptors coming from the back.
And than it would have been a shadow at most.
Have you watched your drone or the device?
I was lucky, the other day, that I watched my drone doing the Sphere and that the eagle came not from behind me. And it was very interested to find out about this noisy thing, that didnt really move in the air.

Burdman44 Posted at 2017-11-22 08:53
Don't Falcons attack other birds in flight? I'm no bird expert, but if that's true, it would seem a reasonable explanation. Sorry about your drone though - that sucks. My spark was hit by a Starling (big cloud of them came ripping around the corner of my apartment complex and the drone was right there taking a picture of my girlfriend on our 4th floor balcony as soon as they made the turn. All but one avoided it, but one of the last ones in the cloud hit it dead center between the left side front and rear props. Luckily, it recovered after floundering a bit as it never tipped to an angle that shut the motors off. Killed the bird, and cracked two props though).

Yep they do.
I saw even in the past days a really big eagle, got attacked by a smaller one. Surprising the bigger one , by coming from behind. After that, there was for a while a lot of wild flying in the sky. Territory "catfight"  methinks