Just for a laugh

[officerdibble]

It may sound funny but this incidet could have caused serious injury -be warned.

Confident though I am, flying a x650 quad in my back garden seemed like a not difficult task. Fying in GPS without any problems, I changed the battery after 10 mins or so. Confidence grew, I attached the camera and off I went again, this time upto 40 or 50 feet. Got some great shots. Knowing about the return to base feature of the DJI system, I though, lets try it out. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU ARE IN A VERY LARGE OPEN AREA! I switched off the transmitter!,!!!!!!!! Well f*%& me, at 30kmh my quad plane took offf over my house and very rapidly out of sight. I lost my kit in an instant including the camera - Be WARNED - do this at your peril. The posibilities are frightening. I got away with it by sheer bloody luck, many will not and the concequences will have an impact upon our freedom to use our machines.

I Fear regulation is not too far awy.

 

[Tomstoy2]

I hate to say this,,, but I will for all the new pilots.

Never, ever, ever turn off your transmitter once your bird is powered up, period!

If you want to test the failsafe;

1. Do it only in an open secluded area

2. Do so with a designated failsafe switch on your transmitter.

3. Make sure you thoroughly understand how to establish a home position and that you have gps lock before taking off.


Not preaching at you, you learned a very, very expensive lesson, just want to make all new pilots understand the dangers these things impose.

 

[DucktileMedia]

When you recover it please let us know if something in the software was not set up correctly or if this was a fluke. I dont think many of us trust this feature.

 

[Kilby]

Had you actually set up failsafe and RTH on your craft, or did you just assume it would work?

 

[Emowillcox]

Actually if you recover it please post some footage from the camera

 

[BorisS]

failsafe help me a couple times. When you test it be in an open field like already mentioned. Put it on a switch dont turn off you radio. TX RX can take some time to find each other again. The time you dont have if failsafe goes wrong and directs your copter towards a tree or house etc.

Also consider just because you have full gps lock down doesnt mean that position hold or failsafe will work. If i fly in the garden with several house and trees around i get full gps lock but the copter every second time doesnt hold position do to gps signal being reflected and just not being accurate enough in this surrounding.

So if you test failsafe, make sure that at least position hold works, than try it. You can also have a normal 3 switch taking care of manual attitude and GPS and have a second 2 switch influencing the servo settings for the before mentioned 3 switch to failsafe is trigger, check free mixers for that.

Boris

 

[llbr22]

Personally I only occasionally fly in a wide open field and always keep the rig within line of sight. There are almost always trees, powerlines and other obstacles nearby.

therefore I find almost no value with RTH. Sorry your situation is an example of how bad of an idea it could be.

 

[Macsgrafs]

Officerdibble, I can relate to how you are feeling & if my computer would handle HD editing I would show you what happened to me. 50ft up, tried RTH, my octo went over at 45 degrees & headed for the ground, lucky for me I was wearing my inco' pants at the time!!! Managed to save the girl when about 6ft up!
Since you mention GPS lock, its hard to tell if you have a dome on your ship!

Ross

 

[officerdibble]

Well guys, thanks for the words of comfort and help, much appreciated.

For those that asked:- GPS lock was on. I think I was lulled into a false sense of security after a good successful day of flying - don't know what I was thinking about in hind sight, but a valuable lesson learned the hard way, I hope my experience saves others making the same mistake.

I had a GoPro camera on the thing at the time, so my loss could have been much worse than it was. I managed to put it all back together again after spending about £40 on spare parts. Believe it or not the camera was taking video when it took off and when I retrieved it I could not believe that the battery had run out and stopped recording just before the incident, even bad luck was against me that day, could have been quite spectacular.

Wounds licked and stars thanked, back in the air and doing well.