Recovering from a Devastating Crash

[SeanArenas]

My craft took on a mind of its own today and crashed into a ceiling 25 feet up. No one was hurt, the crash happened at least 50 feet away from humans and horses.

It decided to go in to "return home" mode and ignored my attempts to control it; returning home requires going to 10m height and that is higher than the ceiling. (The problem is that I didn't calibrate the battery sensor correctly, it thinks the battery is low when it's at 4500mah on a 5000mah battery, I needed to calibrate it so it thinks 1500 is low, my bad).

Since I was recording a reenactment of a Roman arena gladitor games, I said that my bird went home on its shield.

So now I have a severely damaged craft. One arm is broken. The gimbal and landing gear have some serious damage. I don't know about the two batteries, how can I tell if they are damaged before I plug them in to recharge them? A prop is bent, others may be damaged, I will have to balance them. Several parts on the main body of the frame have cracks or broken pieces. The compass fell off of the compass arm and is scuffed up.

What is the best way for me to assess my total damage and pieces that must be replaced? Should I consider replacing the whole frame/gimbal/landing gear? (I was already considering replacing the gimbal and landing gear as I think it's too small for this frame).

Provided nothing else is damaged (electronics, motors, etc.), what frame and landing gear/gimbal combination can I get to achieve my goal of aerial videography?

Here's what I originally bought:
CarbonCore 950mm Hexacopter, 1.5mm Carbon Fibre
Wookong-M Flight Controller
AG550-NX Camera Gimbal
6-Turnigy Plush 40a ESC's
6-Rc Tiger Motors MT3515-15 Motors
2-Power Distribution Boards
6-Graupner 14" Propellers
6-Graupner Spacers
DEVO-10 Transmitter
GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition

As far as I can tell, the only severely damaged pieces are the frame, landing gear, gimbal. There's some dirt in the motors, but I'm hoping a can of air will take it out. I'm waiting for it to try all the way before trying that, though.

Thanks for your help. It's a sad day for me

 

[mmurfitt]

Ah man! I feel your pain, I've had a couple of crashes and its a heart stopping moment when you realise you don't have control of your craft.

Regarding trying to figure out what can be saved and what needs to be replaced, personally I'd replace anything which I suspect of being broken. You just can't take the risk of flying your craft again with a suspect prop/motor etc. Then when testing it afterwards I'd strip as much off the hexa as i can, keeping it as simple as possible to enable you to have a clear picture of what's what. Then once you're happy the basic craft is sound start adding the other bits back one by one, testing heavily each and every time.
It's going to be time and labour intensive, but at least you'll be sure it's all sound and airworthy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jforkner]

http://www.multirotorforums.com/sho...-event-rehearsal&p=78781&viewfull=1#post78781

 

[Kilby]

If your ultimate goal is to rebuild so you can continue to fly at a crowded indoor arena, do us all a favor and just hang it up now. Seriously. How much experience do you have, yet you feel comfortable enough to put other people's lives at risk with your improperly set up copter? In all seriousness, you really could have killed someone and shouldn't be flying any where even remotely close to other people.