Sorry for your lose and glad no one was hurt. While watching this video I had several thoughts about the sequence of events and tend to agree with what others have said. I will offer my thoughts and hope this is not seen as criticism but rather as a means by which we can help others see how seemingly insignificant events can be spotted and corrected before they lead to a chain of events that ends up in a crash.
1] The take off location is a poor one and I see that you have done so successfully before but the canopy of trees, rebar in the concrete and near by vehicle make the take off point risky.
2] To take a screen shot of the controller, you need to 'Hold' the button down for about three seconds, a quick tap like you tried several times (2:08 in video) - will not work.
3] At 3;53 in the video you make a comment about the 'Home' altitude as being 114.8 feet and then display a graphic showing 'your' location as 830 ASL. This brings up several points:
a] You were reading the altitude (AGL) that the Typhoon will ascend to when RTL is selected - not the altitude ASL - the drone does not have this capability
b] Once properly booted up, the system will set the take off point (regardless of altitude ASL) - as Zero
4] At 4:40 in the video you enter the hardware monitor but do not seem to understand what you are looking for and just flip the sticks a few times. At 4:46 you finally hit the arm switch but then look away from the hardware monitor to the aircraft and call out 'we are bound'? What is missing is; to see if when you depress the arming button, if it is in fact happening electronically - this is what that monitor is for. You then exit the monitor without ever confirming proper operation of any of the controls.
5] At 5:20 the aircraft starts when the arming button is depressed as it should but seconds later we can see you are applying throttle (
if your in mode 2) but we can't see what is happening on the right stick.
6] From the moment, I saw the first title at :01 seconds in - "A Test Flight To Diagnose Unresponsive Arm Button" I knew this was not going to end well.
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Unfamiliarity with all aspects of the system one is operating is at the heart of nearly every crash of everything man has put into the sky since the very beginning. I know because I have crashed my share of aircraft and when I began to honestly address the problem, things started getting better. ?
I noticed you had some preflight notes on stickers on the ST-16. You will need to add: Check ALL controls with Hardware Monitor. The Hardware Monitor is not well explained by Yuneec and many who may be unfamiliar with it may not realize just what it is for or how to use it - It literally is to do what your title said you were trying to do. It is the last line of defense before you put your aircraft into the air with unresponsive controls which can and will lead to a crash. It is the Drone Pilots 'Walk Around' and it needs to be understood and used properly.
The hardware monitor shows you that the physical movements of your controls are being converted into the corresponding electronic signal; OR that they're not and; if not - that needs to be fixed immediately and definitely before attempting to fly. Each and every control needs to be moved carefully and slowly while we watch that the indicators are moving in a corresponding manner. When each and every switch it moved, it must have a correlating indicator and when the arm button is depressed it should show on it's indicator. This is the last 'GO' or 'NO GO' check before committing to flight and in the video we could not see any evidence of a 'GO' anywhere.
Compounding the problem of unfamiliarity and not recognizing that if things are not adding up, we must stop and do not continue. Imagine if you got into an airplane, and while the pilot was getting ready he kept saying '
gosh, that's not right - it shouldn't do that' but he kept going and then started the engine - would you still be in the plane with him? The minute something doesn't add up, we need to slow down and find out why before proceeding. You were noticing things were not right but kept plodding forward until it did lift off and from that point forward you were along for the ride.
I suspect that one or more of the controls is faulty or needs cleaning. The low sat count and lack of a white light is due to the trees and surrounding buildings. Is there a chance you got into the controller and accidentally changed the Control Mode? After all, we can clearly see you banging the throttle stick around with no results to the running aircraft but we can't see if your right stick was moved, so is it possible you were in a different mode? Possibly but not likely. My guess is that your controller had one or more faulty controls, I have seen how a faulty stick at center position can give a positive command so it is likely that what you were experiencing was the stick, while at center was giving an input to climb thus; when it was in Angle or Smart it climbed but when flipped to home it stayed - as it is programmed to do.
At the end when you tilt the camera down we can see the aircraft is falling in a controlled manner - camera pointing down and losing altitude fast. I cannot see the voltage on the screen so is it possible that the arm switch; which we could clearly see was faulty at the beginning of the video - the reason for motors stop all by itself? I think there is a very good chance.