Sadly i made the mistake of letting her hover too close to a pine tree branch. i know the drones can drift quite a bit even under perfect weather conditions but i just underestimated how much it actually would drift. Well after it clipped the tree it came spiralling down as the motors were screaming bloody murder (im guessing because the tree was stuck in the motor?). It only fell from lowest part of the tree branches but it was still a good 12-15 feet high. i quickly CSC'd the motors off and turned the drone off and removed the battery. After inspecting it to see if anything broke i tried to turn it on again. The image that came up had multiple faded black lines going left to right across the screen. well my expert (sarcasm) tech knowledge told me to pull the best known tech solution in the world, unplug it and plug it back in. Always works right? well instead of SOME image with black lines, i was shown a DJI logo and a loading screen instead of a live view. No picture at all. Hmm lemme try it again i said. same result after i pulled the battery. Alright! one more time should do it...NOPE. So now im getting nervous that something inside the drone might be fatally broken. So within my desperate attempts to self fix the drone i try one more battery pull. this time though, when i turned the drone on, and it went through the gimabl dance, i saw a puff of smoke! OH GOD! i quickly ( probably stupidly) pulled the battery out without turning it off. I turned off the now external battery and talked it over with my techie uncle who joined me in the diagnosis. He couldnt tell where exatcly the smoke came from so we tried it one....last....time. and i swear this was the final time. THIS time when i turned the drone on, and it did the gimbal dance, there was a tiny flame! alright now im done no more battery pulls! havent turned it on since and its been about two weeks.

upon further inspection, after the fact of course, i noticed the burn was coming from the roll motor on the gimbal. There is a little burn mark right where the motor is. The ribbon looks burnt as well. we assume one of the wires must have contacted the metal ansd shorted which could explain the video issues. once i got home from my trip i did a little more inspecting and noticed that the yaw bracket is actually twisted and in one location cracked! (see pictures)

so here i am, knowing im going to at the very least (best case scenario) need a few new replacement parts. Can i even do this? or will this damage the drone? I have more than enough confidence in myself to work on the drone as ive taken apart computers and rebuilt them before but ive never delt with a drone before. Worst case scenario is i buy a whole new gimbal but im really trying to avoid the 300+ price tag. the camera looks fine itself but HEY what do i know.

So i ask you, can i fix this myself? or should i look into a drone repair center in the NYC area? or is the gimabl screwed and i need to get a new gimbal? Ive attached the pictures thats how the issues. If more are required i will post whatever is needed. PLease help! Thank you

-Joe

They have repair kits on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/272174282157

Sorry for your crash, Joe. I'd suggest you to get in touch with our US tech support and send it in for repairing. Here is the contact information:

You can send it to DJI for a quote of the repair cost, if you don't like it, you can ask DJI to send it back to you.   

Don't know what you will decide to do,  but,  if it is any help,  I can tell you that,  when I suffered a crash,  the gimbal pivot point snapped in half inside the camera base.  After weighing the options,  I bought a new camera/gimbal complete assembly.  The replacement to all of 5 minutes.  Piece of cake.  Trying to replace the ribbon cable would be a real pita all by itself,  never mind the motor.  There are a million tiny screws to deal with if you go that route.  Replacing the whole assembly, you just unplug the cables,  disconnect the plastic dampner pins and the rubber dampners.  Assembly is the reverse of removal.  Easy.

The arm is readily available as 3D printed part from a guy I forgot where. The repair seems fairly easy. However, the smoke must have come from the motor and that must be hard to buy separately unless you can find a cheap damaged gimbal and scavenge the parts.
If you get a new gimbal, make sure you keep this one for parts, and you can even sell some of them ! The camera part is easy to swap, for instance.