My Solo Crashed HARD = Always keep an eye on that battery level, period!

[Raybro]

Thanks man. Well, I do not know how to change that parameter, I'm assuming using MP? To be honest, it sometimes appears Solo takes a little longer to come down in altitude that it does gaining it, or it could be just me. And, don't take a 'dare' from a friend that owns a P3!

Video now on YouTube. You can hear low battery alarm, motors slow down, Solo flips on it's back, then GoPro shuts down. Too bad, wish GoPro had worked all the way down, maybe 3DR can 'fix' that. So... GoPro is truly powered by flight battery only. Anyway, here it is:

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Parachute time!

 

[DodgeP]

I never said Solo will fly with 0% battery!

You ignored every safety feature 3DR built into the system to prevent this kind of accident. You ignored the haptic and audio feedback and had to override RTH once it kicked in at around 5%.

I'm not here to be sympathetic to your admitted stupidity however, when you state,

Lost complete battery power at 0% at altitude and Solo flipped upside down and came spiraling down and landed legs up in a grass ....

and then later state

Solo was in GPS Fly mode ...

You got exactly what you deserve. What did you think would happen when you reached 0% battery? You thought solo would float back to earth like a bird feather, swooping back and forth until you were able to catch it or did you think the little yellow balls would absorb the shock from the fall. I'm so interested in what you were thinking would happen once the battery reached 0%.

You ignored every safety feature 3DR built into the system to prevent this kind of accident. You ignored the haptic and audio feedback and had to override RTH once it kicked in at around 5%.

You're the type of "pilot" that would have his arse handed to him if your Solo would have fell out the sky and struck someone in the head or caused a major accident but because the only thing that happened was if fell to ground just beyond a parked pick up truck, everything is fine and you're receiving these sympathetic responses. I hope you have to come out of pocket for a brand new bird.

You ignored every safety feature 3DR built into the system to prevent this kind of accident. You ignored the haptic and audio feedback and had to override RTH once it kicked in at around 5%.

You need to do more than just put little foam balls on the legs of Solo in order to operate it safely or protect it from crashing. Step 1, listen to what the built in safety features are trying to warn you about. With this type of behavior, I hope you never get an exemption and if you do, I hope you're never flying in a city where my or my family are.

 

[Acroduster]

Just curious - what altitude did you achieve? It's impressive that there wasn't more damage falling from what looks like quite a ways...

 

[Chip Luck]

You ignored every safety feature 3DR built into the system to prevent this kind of accident. You ignored the haptic and audio feedback and had to override RTH once it kicked in at around 5%.

I'm not here to be sympathetic to your admitted stupidity however, when you state, and then later state You got exactly what you deserve. What did you think would happen when you reached 0% battery? You thought solo would float back to earth like a bird feather, swooping back and forth until you were able to catch it or did you think the little yellow balls would absorb the shock from the fall. I'm so interested in what you were thinking would happen once the battery reached 0%.

You ignored every safety feature 3DR built into the system to prevent this kind of accident. You ignored the haptic and audio feedback and had to override RTH once it kicked in at around 5%.

You're the type of "pilot" that would have his arse handed to him if your Solo would have fell out the sky and struck someone in the head or caused a major accident but because the only thing that happened was if fell to ground just beyond a parked pick up truck, everything is fine and you're receiving these sympathetic responses. I hope you have to come out of pocket for a brand new bird.

You ignored every safety feature 3DR built into the system to prevent this kind of accident. You ignored the haptic and audio feedback and had to override RTH once it kicked in at around 5%.

You need to do more than just put little foam balls on the legs of Solo in order to operate it safely or protect it from crashing. Step 1, listen to what the built in safety features are trying to warn you about. With this type of behavior, I hope you never get an exemption and if you do, I hope you're never flying in a city where my or my family are.

You sir are an !@#$. I know everything you mentioned, I'm also a private pilot, 20+ year simulation and design engineer and I know how to safely operate my Solo. I happened to be at a remote airfield and with a waiver in hand. When you are at altitude TRYING to get home, battery drain was quicker than I thought, period.

My 'balls' work great as home made leg extensions - again, you are a jerk.

Your NEGATIVE comments are unwarranted, I am a professional but obviously you are into bashing instead of commenting. Be supportive of fellow Solo owners and quit passing judgement when you don't even know me, or just be gone... go away from here to a galaxy far far away.

 

[Chip Luck]

Just curious - what altitude did you achieve? It's impressive that there wasn't more damage falling from what looks like quite a ways...

Got to check the Solo logs, if I can retrieve them. And again, I had a waiver in a remote location. Stay at 400 AGL, always. And fly safe.

 

[Chip Luck]

So, now I turned on the Controller and it appears I have the dreaded Controller blank/white LCD screen. Cannot not even access Solo's logs through SSH, no Solo network available. Controller is dead. A crash, now the controller is fubar? Darn the luck!

 

[KnightRider]

Did you remove battery to do a full reboot of the controller?

 

[J R]

A crash, now the controller is fubar? Darn the luck!

Damned bad luck Chuck! Sorry to hear it. Haven't seen fubar used in a few years. Let's hope not.

Jerry

 

[Marich]

Got to check the Solo logs, if I can retrieve them. And again, I had a waiver in a remote location. Stay at 400 AGL, always. And fly safe.

Chip, I went back and re-read this entire thread from beginning to end.
One question: Why exactly did the battery reach 0% at altitude? Don't think you explained that yet - battery failure, perhaps? Was it a bad connection? Something hardware related?
Reason I ask is that if it wasn't any of those things, from reading your description of events it really does seem as if you were simply tooling around up there until the battery went dead and somehow expected to come through that experience unscathed.
Obviously you should explain in a bit more detail, so we can all benefit by knowing what to do or not do to prevent such an occurance with our own Solos.

 

[Del]

I need someone to shed some light on this...
Iv read somewhere that it takes more power to come down then it is to go up..!! Is this true? And why?

So in theory ..if I fly my Solo UP as high as I can till my battery hits 50% then diside to come down...my battery would be dead before I would even hit the Ground? So you would think that you would want to start coming down at 60 or 70% just to be safe?

I also recommend never to fly that high ...just Saying..

Fly Safe
Fly Smart
Fly 3Dr

 

[Raybro]

I need someone to shed some light on this...
Iv read somewhere that it takes more power to come down then it is to go up..!! Is this true? And why?

So in theory ..if I fly my Solo UP as high as I can till my battery hits 50% then diside to come down...my battery would be dead before I would even hit the Ground? So you would think that you would want to start coming down at 60 or 70% just to be safe?

I also recommend never to fly that high ...just Saying..

Fly Safe
Fly Smart
Fly 3Dr

I guess you'd have to just fly it then run your log through mission planner and look at the numbers and compare the differences between climbing and descent. It makes sense to me you would use more battery climbing, providing lift, rather than coming back down.

 

[Del]

I guess you'd have to just fly it then run your log through mission planner and look at the numbers and compare the differences between climbing and descent. It makes sense to me you would use more battery climbing, providing lift, rather than coming back down.

I also would think going up would take more power..that's why I'm kinda confused...!! But I guess with MP is one way to test this theory out..!! But also I guess in GPS mode that you can't come down as fast as you went up..?

 

[Raybro]

I also would think going up would take more power..that's why I'm kinda confused...!! But I guess with MP is one way to test this theory out..!! But also I guess in GPS mode that you can't come down as fast as you went up..?

And probably by design to prevent Vortex ring state.
Vortex Ring State (The Wobble of Death) | Quadcopter Flight School

 

[Marich]

Going up does tax the battery severely. If you really feel the need to ascend fast, do it like full scale helis do. Fly Solo like an airplane - make large circles flying forwards at a high angle of incidence... a climb, in other words.
Instead of relying on brute force, you'll be able to get up there to the sane height with far less power drain. Takes longer, sure.
But when is the last time you saw a helicopter pilot simply zip straight up! You likely haven't! It's a gradual, controlled climb. The same rules of physics apply to every flying machine whether fixed wing or not.
As for power drain on descent, it really can drain your battery pretty effectively. It's because you're almost always making corrections - slowing the descent, moving a bit left, right, etc..
Slowing a fast descent in a heli - especially a fast, uncontrolled descent - can and does take more power that virtually anything else you could do. Think about it: you're coming down rapidly and decide to slow up a bit. You do. You're now asking the motors (and battery) to expend more energy than it ever did on a climb to both use double the thrust to come to a halt, and another third of thrust to simply counter the inertia of descent.
That adds up to a heck of a lot.
That ain't no way to run a railroad.

 

[Del]

And probably by design to prevent Vortex ring state.
Vortex Ring State (The Wobble of Death) | Quadcopter Flight School

Now I know why the descent is made to go slow!!
Thanks for the link Raybro... Very informative !

 

[LuvMyTJ]

And probably by design to prevent Vortex ring state.
Vortex Ring State (The Wobble of Death) | Quadcopter Flight School

Thats exactly why it takes longer to come down than to go up. If you come down to fast, especially straight down you run the risk of VRS. Come down at an angle to help avoid that.

 

[Chip Luck]

Chip, I went back and re-read this entire thread from beginning to end.
One question: Why exactly did the battery reach 0% at altitude? Don't think you explained that yet - battery failure, perhaps? Was it a bad connection? Something hardware related?
Reason I ask is that if it wasn't any of those things, from reading your description of events it really does seem as if you were simply tooling around up there until the battery went dead and somehow expected to come through that experience unscathed.
Obviously you should explain in a bit more detail, so we can all benefit by knowing what to do or not do to prevent such an occurance with our own Solos.

OK, here we go, the best I can remember because things happened fast!

First: !!!WARNING!!! - do NOT fly above 400 ft AGL unless you have proper contact and approval with your local ATC center! Again, I'm a pilot and I do not want to hit a UAS in mid-air myself.

I was with a friend that had a P3, we were in a very remote location and so we contacted the local ATC and told them we were going to do some altitude test with some UAS's, the nearest airport was 10 miles away and was military. We gave them the flight test times and they said there was no issue as long as we stayed within that time period, in fact the 4 days we camped there at the private airfield I did not see nor hear a single aircraft overhead.

So, off we go. We both stood in the middle of the airstrip and went vertical, full throttle. The P3 made it to ~3,200 ft AGL and Solo made it to about ~4,300 AGL so at least I won the bet. I had 60% battery once I got up there and figured it was a good time to head the heck HOME. Hit Home and waited for Solo to come back and everything was looking good, for a while...

Well, I keep a keen eye on the tablet telemetry data and the controller waiting for Solo to descend. Solo was directly overhead if you look at the video and I had several spotters watching. Now, it just appeared Solo was awful slow coming down and I was definitely getting nervous!

First thing that got weird is the Controller display locked up with an orange back-light display showing 999 ft AGL while Solo was at least 2,000 AGL, meanwhile tablet data display was still showing a decent. Believe me, I was very nervous about the controller 'locking up', (it still said 999 ft after the crash). I swear it took forever for Solo to loose altitude and I was now getting very worried. What to do, hit Home again? I held the Fly button down for Land Now to maybe speed up the decent and waited and waited. Well you know the rest.

Moral of the story, either the decent rate is really slower than accent rate or decent really eats the battery. Until I can retrieve the logs, I'll never know until I can review the actual data. Why Solo would not have enough battery to return is beyond me.

Solo boots fine, but now get a weird tone sequence, I called 3DR they said its GPS module failure. Visual inspection of module and cable shows no damage. I cannot access Solo and the Controller is hosed for now, so I'm stuck. Will try another battery pull and reset on the Controller and let you know how it goes. Again, no log files = no real data.

 

[Chip Luck]

And probably by design to prevent Vortex ring state.
Vortex Ring State (The Wobble of Death) | Quadcopter Flight School

Ditto on the link, thanks.

 

[Chip Luck]

Chip, I went back and re-read this entire thread from beginning to end.
One question: Why exactly did the battery reach 0% at altitude? Don't think you explained that yet - battery failure, perhaps? Was it a bad connection? Something hardware related?
Reason I ask is that if it wasn't any of those things, from reading your description of events it really does seem as if you were simply tooling around up there until the battery went dead and somehow expected to come through that experience unscathed.
Obviously you should explain in a bit more detail, so we can all benefit by knowing what to do or not do to prevent such an occurance with our own Solos.

Marich, see my post from last night... I'm working on getting log files now. The Controller failure during decent _may_ had something to do with it, not sure yet until I review the data.

 

[mcneely19]

Is return to home speed fixed or does it correspond to your speed settings in the app. I always decend manually because it seems to go faster and never directly down like rth does. If you're going to do high altitude testing maybe some battery consumption calcs would be in order. MP should have most of the data needed for this.