My first crash

djdusk · Sep 22, 2016

First post on here! When I received my brand new Solo, I was excited. With no experience, I spent hours on the simulator until I felt comfortable. I read through this forum's FAQ and pre-flight check (well done btw) then began my first flight. It was super easy, albeit nervous. I did a couple of flights around the island. Then, of course, in my last flight I encountered a fault on the gimbal where it seemed to shutdown momentarily. Wind speeds were around 15mph according to Solo. What do you folk think I should do?

Then came the hard part, landing. That same flight, I autolanded and the wind must've pushed it sideways. The only damage I can see is the minor scratches on two props.

Since then, I went back home and tested it. I did notice it wasn't stable on the replaced props, so I ordered myself a balancer (thanks again to this forum) and 4 new props. Of course, I crashed again it flipped over on my grass lawn only flying 3ft off the ground (all props scratched).

My question is this: from your experience, can the 3DR Solo handle such small crashes without causing too much damage to fly again? The manual did say the motors should be replaced after 150hrs of flight time. Now I'm concerned about motors.

User Name · Sep 22, 2016

Wow, brave man taking it out over water so soon, it still cringe any time I'm over water, and I've only flown over fresh water.

On the gimbal, have you updated the firmware? The initial firmware for the gimbal/Solo had that exact issue - you'd be flying and all of the sudden, it'd just loose power and flop over, then come back a little while later. A subsequent firmware update fixed it.

On Solo taking some punishment, while I've fortunately not had any mishaps yet, there's been numerous cases of people crashing their Solo's pretty hard and not suffered more than cosmetic damage. Of course, all it takes is hitting it "just right" and all bets are off. The gimbal is a bit vulnerable on the bottom there.

If you do tip/flip over, it's important to make sure it gets disarmed ASAP. The flight controller should detect the crash and automatically disarm, but there are cases where it won't. You just don't want the motor(s) to be powered but unable to turn. You'll burn out the controller on the motor pod pretty quick. Aside from that, just check to make sure no sand got into the motor and bearings.

A word of advice - get a lot more practice, in a big open field (a grass field, not an ocean!

), and on a calm day. If it's windy like that, you really don't want to be using auto-land. Bring it in in Fly mode and be decisive - when you get it down, just keep holding the left stick all the way down so it doesn't jump back up into the air. I've never let mine bounce back up - when it's on the ground, I want it to stay there. On a windy day like that, there's only so much auto-land can handle, and if you're skimming the ground, it's going to catch a leg and tip over.

Mike Shortness · Sep 22, 2016

I have had one weird experience like that, where you land but it seems like Solo doesn't want to land. My mistake was that i was still in a smart shot and forgot to hit DONE. you didn't do this by chance did you?

djdusk · Sep 23, 2016

User Name,

This was my sixth flight (each flight being a full battery discharge) and 3rd time over water. I've yet to try a waterfall

I did the preflight check which included checking updates before even leaving the house. There were no updates for firmware.

Yes, when it flipped on my lawn I was going to shut it off but it detected automatically before my own shock wore off to disable it. I was actually doing a manual landing that time (not auto-land) by just holding down the joystick and then it sorta bounced

I will be doing more practice over at the neighborhood park and with calm winds when I get the new props and balancer sorted out. I'd like to evaluate its performance again before venturing out into the wilderness.

Mike, I wasn't doing a smartshot (didn't have time and really wanted it to come back home safely). It was just an auto-land (holding down the button until it was triggered).