First Serious Malfunction... What to do?

[Casey Scalf]

Hello,

I really am not stoked to have this be my first post on the forum but I have had a serious mishap with my drone and there is no support for the rest of the weekend so I wanted to check here.

Essentially, literally, I was flying and the drone and the system lost control. There were no obstructions, wind, trees, etc. I tried to land and literally there was no response. Then it started flying away really fast. It was near the ground and fast approaching populated area. It went from annoying, to bad, to really possibly very bad.

My controller said something like "lost control" or "no GPS" - I was in the zone so I am sorry if this isn't verbatim.

I ran it down and literally high kicked it out of the air. Then I had to pin it down - still zero response - and undo to battery. I ended up cutting my hand and needing stitches.

I have a few questions to ask...

1) Is there a black box*? How do I save this data? Will flying it more lose or corrupt this? I want to report this properly.

2) Does this happen, random flyaway? I have had it for 3 days and this is the first time this has happened (I have calibrated it like 3 times previously)

3) How do you disable GPS? This may be off thread but it has been seriously the bane of my existence. I am not stoked on waiting 5-10 minutes before each flight OR not being able to fly in some areas at all because of GPS reception (indoors anyone?). It's kind of like not being able to start your laptop without 4G service. Is this common or does everyone deal with it?

Thank you for all of the help!

 

[SteveReno]

Sorry to hear about your hand! bad deal for sure.
You should have sent in a ticket via your controller ASAP. 3DR has 24/7 support.

The answer 1 of your questions "Does this happen, random flyaway?" I been reading these forums for almost a year, I maybe 2 or 3?

Most get GPS lock in under 5 min. Depends a lot on your location. I always got locked in under 3 min, most of the time 2 min.
The controller has complete copy of everything you ever done with Solo "at least the last 7 times"
So any malfunctions will be easy to find & if found, then replacement will be issued.

Please make for sure your hand is ok first, ten proceed to send a ticket with 3DR ASAP.

Hope this helps

 

[Casey Scalf]

Thank you,

I will reboot the controller and see what happens.

I have wrapped the hand in enough gaff tape to prevent further bleeding until the hospital, despite awkward typing.

I will confirm when sent...

I just didn't want to erase this crucial data by firing it up again.

I have also found the support to be 9-5 Mon-Fri. Which line do you speak of?

 

[Casey Scalf]

I submitted the report, I will confirm upon any conversation with 3DR

 

[Jubalr]

Hello Casey, Sorry to hear of this and hope your hand will be OK. Please follow these instructions to retrieve the log from that flight and post here so we can get you some answers over the weekend.

 

[nuggetz]

Sorry to hear about your mishap but most of these issues are caused by pilot error. Don't take this too personally as we all start out as noobs but keep the following in perspective:

You mentioned nothing about what your GPS signal was and how many satellites you locked into. I'm sure that Solo told you it was safe to fly so in that respect I can't really blame you. I do not rely on GPS unless I'm locked onto at least 10 satellites. If you think about it locking on to anything less than 10 might indicate a problem location and perhaps GPS signal Integrity could be spotty. So that wouldn't be a location where I would have full confidence in the solo.You inquired how to disable GPS which also points to you being unfamiliar with one of the most basic safety precautions you can enable prior to flying - manual mode.

As you're painfully aware now this thing is not a toy. It is extremely dangerous to just "Wing it".

Post your logs and I'm sure we can look at them. In the meantime you need to ensure you know the ins and outs of the Solo. I partly blame 3DR for marketing this as something your grandmother could fly. Their attempts at marketing the safety precautions have gotten better but not where they need to be. Please do more research and understand everything that the Solo is capable of in it's different flight modes and how to set up basic failsafes. Always anticipate a problem and be prepared to intervene.


Sent from my SM-T237P using Tapatalk

 

[Casey Scalf]

Hey there,

Thanks for the advice.

I will get at the logs after the caucus this morning.

As far as the satellites go, I am never able to fly with less than 10 so that's where I started.

It took off great but experienced the loss of control after about 15 feet.

When I was running after it I looked down and saw that it had "lost connection" or "lost GPS" (in the moment once again) - hopefully the logs can tell us something.

The thing that worries me is that there was no control to just stop everything. There was no button combination, that I am aware of, that will immediately and effectively cause everything to stop spinning. I had to physically remove the battery.

Is there an actual method for an emergency stop? The throttle and pause button weren't doing anything.

And about the GPS mode, yes, It was difficult to navigate the menu and get to that point. I've even had some conversation with them and the advice was just, "yeah, disable GPS, there you go". I don't think being unaware of an exact setting within the menu sub structure led to this necessarily.

 

[Rusty Jones]

As fare as "kill Switch" buttons A+B+Pause, but you need to actually have a connection to Solo for that to work.

 

[Casey Scalf]

As fare as "kill Switch" buttons A+B+Pause, but you need to actually have a connection to Solo for that to work.

What are the conditions in which the wifi signal can become corrupted?
Things to stay away from?

 

[Casey Scalf]

Hello Casey, Sorry to hear of this and hope your hand will be OK. Please follow these instructions to retrieve the log from that flight and post here so we can get you some answers over the weekend.

Unfortunately I do not have access to an Android or a Windows machine.

Is there a workaround for Mac or Linux?

Thanks

 

[Acroduster]

Did you set your A and/or B button to Fly:manual? If so, did you try to engage them? This may have alleviated the emergency.

When you get back to flying, do this and practice in manual mode.

 

[Casey Scalf]

I have set them to those modes now.

Knowing the kill switch is also helpful -> A + B + Pause.

In any case I heard back from 3DR. It does sound like there was some sort of sever magnetic interference going on which caused it to lose control. Still pending more exact details... Why is it hard to get your own logs now anyways?

Moreover, is there anyway to do a systems check on my drone? I feel it may have been damaged and I want to make sure it is good to go before flying again. Visually it looks okay. It doesn't give me any warnings. But I am not sure if I can trust that.

In any case I don't think I'll be using that feature again, the GPS part. I feel that it is susceptible to environmental noise and also takes forever to connect.

Thinking towards the future, I am now wondering how long it will be until the wifi gets jammed one day and I lose complete control? Has this happened to other pilots?

Does anyone use any sort of boosters to strengthen the wifi signal? Are all hobby/model RC UAS's controlled over the 2.4Ghz range?

I have experienced severe distortion in this spectrum from large events where we stream live video (I wont be flying them in these situations). We then setup our own 5Ghz router or dual band setup to get around this. Anyone ponder this for the Solo?

 

[Acroduster]

Caution on A+B+Pause - all blades will shut down after a second or two delay. This means that wherever it is, it turns from a drone into a rock and will act accordingly.