Crash!

[bobmac81]

HELP!
Right so, tonight I set out for a little flight literally round a 1 acre garden, all checks done before flight and did a compass calibration, used my first battery h flew spot on second battery I took off retracted gear and went to fly forwards away from myself when the h suddenly flew to the right in a long sweep no inputs would correct the direction of flight I went straight into panic looked at all the switches to check the positions of them I was in angle, obs off, gear up, throttle right back. I then put it into Home, it said it was in Home mode but kept flying away, the gimble was doing its own thing spinning around kept losing and getting picture to the st16, even trying to drop the altitude would not work. at one point it was a tiny tiny dot in the distance no inputs what so ever would bring it back, knowing the local area well I could sort of see where it was catching split seconds of video when the gimble was pointing down, then lost all contact with it screen froze so drove to when it roughly was (near a friends farm about 1.5miles down the road) at which point walking through field, we hear the beeping of h then connected back to the h, the st16 was telling me the battery level low and down to 5 motors, seen in the distance it was in the hedge row of a field, where it had dropped onto my friends digger and bounced into the hedge, it is a complete write off I should think see pics, need help to know what to do from here, anything would be a massive help, in the uk! Thanks in advance

 

[AeroJ]

Aww dude - i feel your pain my friend - very sorry that happened to you, but glad you managed to recover it at such a distance from your launch site. There are a few threads here on what to do when your flyer crashes, but in summary it goes like this...

1. Get out your phone and record your immediate thoughts about what happened and what you were doing when it did in as much detail as you can remember.
2. Go find the flyer. Review live video on ST-16 to see where it went down.
3. Take photos of the crash scene and the craft where it fell
4. Recover all the wreckage
5. Retrieve the SD card, and if functional make a video about the crash
6. Recover the telemetry and flight logs from the ST-16 , zip them up, post them here, in case some kindly member will diagnose them for you, and also mail them to Yuneec.
7. Yuneec will review the log, decide if it's your fault or not, and if it is they will repair it for you if you send them the wreckage, but will charge you for the work. Or they may decide it isn't your fault, in which case they will sort it for free and either fix yours or give you a new one (at their discretion unfortunately). On the plus side, you are much better asking Yuneec to cover your arse than you would be asking DJI.

Lastly do keep us updated and let us know what Yuneec say is the cause.
Good luck, and hope you are back in the air soon

 

[AH-1G]

@bobmack81
upload your telemetry files for us to look at. It can be deciphered to see what happened.
This is how to upload your data,
Steve Carr from a post mentions how to upload
"Plug the ST16 into your computer using the USB charging cable. Go to internal storage and then the Flightlog Directory, then telemetry. Find the telemetry file with the highest number and copy it to your computer. Add a .txt to the end of the file name and then you can upload it here".

 

[bobmac81]

Ill get onto it first thing in the morning thank you both for your help! Feel so lucky to have found it !

 

[Dustoff]

Are you sure you had good gps coverage before taking off the second time . Sounds like it lost gps .

 

[bobmac81]

Had 13 satellites flown loads before it’s my house like so

 

[Dustoff]

Had 13 satellites flown loads before it’s my house like so

That’s weird I would contact yuneec in the morning

 

[AeroJ]

Had 13 satellites flown loads before it’s my house like so

I probably wouldn't fly on 13 satellites. 9 is the minimum requirement, so that's not much in the way of redundancy. Really I want 18 minimum on the craft before I take off, and if I wait for that before launch, I almost never lose GPS in the air. Still, we don't know what the cause of this is yet, so it's all speculation at this stage... that may equally have nothing to do with it !

 

[PatR]

10 is fine, more than that is insurance.

 

[didouglog]

Which was the temperature ?

 

[biltno]

Which was the temperature ?

There are others on here much more helpful than me but so many seem to loose their H after a battery change and thier explanations seem so similar. I know the answers lie in telemetry but so many have an issue on battery change

 

[FlushVision]

There are others on here much more helpful than me but so many seem to loose their H after a battery change and thier explanations seem so similar. I know the answers lie in telemetry but so many have an issue on battery change

I think it's always a good idea to wait an interval before inserting a fresh battery. Take the depleted battery out, have myself a nice smoke of a role-up, then put a fresh battery in. That way I've let the aircraft have a breather between flights, allowed a bit of air so circulate around the battery compartment and allow things to cool of a tad before the next foray into the skies.

Doing this I've only ever once had an issue which was on the third battery of the day when it had a sudden drop in voltage from 15.0 to 14.3 in the blink of an eye while hovering. Fortunately it bounced back up again to 14.9 just as quickly. Landed immediately and investigated the issue finding no obvious reason for the sudden voltage drop. However, I've never had experience of that issue since.

 

[AeroJ]

I think it's always a good idea to wait an interval before inserting a fresh battery. Take the depleted battery out, have myself a nice smoke of a role-up, then put a fresh battery in. That way I've let the aircraft have a breather between flights, allowed a bit of air so circulate around the battery compartment and allow things to cool of a tad before the next foray into the skies.

Doing this I've only ever once had an issue which was on the third battery of the day when it had a sudden drop in voltage from 15.0 to 14.3 in the blink of an eye while hovering. Fortunately it bounced back up again to 14.9 just as quickly. Landed immediately and investigated the issue finding no obvious reason for the sudden voltage drop. However, I've never had experience of that issue since.

Nice to hear you do this too. yesterday, especially in the hot afternoon sun, and doing long sustained hover in reasonable wind, the H came back really quite hot up top in yesterday's flights. So much so that I actually waited an hour before moving location and doing the next one.

 

[Ranger Bob]

Was this a brand new drone or refurbished?

 

[Wingman]

Sorry to hear about your crash.

Something like this happened to me with my h520 though it did not fly away it was very unstable after I plugged a new battery in it.

I guess the problem is after you land to swap a battery you need to reconnect to your camera again after inserting a new battery. it is very likely that without doing it you will be flying on all data collected with the first battery and whatever your ST16(s) is showing is not really fresh one It is more likely just residue data left in your controller from your previous flight.

 

[JulesTEO]

HELP!
Right so, tonight I set out for a little flight literally round a 1 acre garden, all checks done before flight and did a compass calibration, used my first battery h flew spot on second battery I took off retracted gear and went to fly forwards away from myself when the h suddenly flew to the right in a long sweep no inputs would correct the direction of flight I went straight into panic looked at all the switches to check the positions of them I was in angle, obs off, gear up, throttle right back. I then put it into Home, it said it was in Home mode but kept flying away, the gimble was doing its own thing spinning around kept losing and getting picture to the st16, even trying to drop the altitude would not work. at one point it was a tiny tiny dot in the distance no inputs what so ever would bring it back, knowing the local area well I could sort of see where it was catching split seconds of video when the gimble was pointing down, then lost all contact with it screen froze so drove to when it roughly was (near a friends farm about 1.5miles down the road) at which point walking through field, we hear the beeping of h then connected back to the h, the st16 was telling me the battery level low and down to 5 motors, seen in the distance it was in the hedge row of a field, where it had dropped onto my friends digger and bounced into the hedge, it is a complete write off I should think see pics, need help to know what to do from here, anything would be a massive help, in the uk! Thanks in advance
View attachment 10514View attachment 10515View attachment 10516View attachment 10517

Sorry for your incident. It sounds awfuly similar to crash I had back when I first got the H.

After a few successful flights I changed batteries, then took off and hovered for a few seconds and the H started veering to one side in a random direction gradually gaining speed, until it hit a concrete wall.

I found it was some sort of GPS malfunction; the telemetry recorded that the H "thought" it was still hovering in a fixed position, but it was gradually speeding of to one side. I can't tell about controller input as I panicked and didn't do much other than throttle down trying to land.

After a firmware update it has never happened again, but I also changed my preflight steps. I used to turn it on, wait for a GPS lock, then Move it to take-off location. Now I always turn it on after I have set it up on takeoff spot. If I have to move it, then its turn off, move, turn on and wait for GPS lock.

It would be interesting to see the telemetry data and see if this was a similar GPS malfunction.

Good luck!

Greetings!

 

[Kingsley Opoku]

Hi am sorry for your lost and I have been on this forum for a while now and heard about fly away and all sorts of weird behaviors of the H. One thing I personally do when I change battery for a second fly is, I do my calibration again, as if it is my first fly. Why, because, I feel when there is a disconnection between the ST16 and the H, it is almost as if turning on the St16 and turning on the H for the first time. Remember, your St16 may be still on, but your H was disconnected and therefore I do calibration of the accelerometer and the compass again for both the H and the St16 to be in sync. I have heard folks say you do not need a second calibration, but I don't take any chances. Again, it is my habit and my thought.

 

[FlushVision]

Hi am sorry for your lost and I have been on this forum for a while now and heard about fly away and all sorts of weird behaviors of the H. One thing I personally do when I change battery for a second fly is, I do my calibration again, as if it is my first fly. Why, because, I feel when there is a disconnection between the ST16 and the H, it is almost as if turning on the St16 and turning on the H for the first time. Remember, your St16 may be still on, but your H was disconnected and therefore I do calibration of the accelerometer and the compass again for both the H and the St16 to be in sync. I have heard folks say you do not need a second calibration, but I don't take any chances. Again, it is my habit and my thought.

If that's what makes you happy then that's fair enough.

However, as you have heard, you don't need to do a second calibration if flying from the same location on the day, and there is an argument that calibrating you compass, say, too often could allow for a bad calibration to creep in.

 

[KEITH KUHN]

HELP!
Right so, tonight I set out for a little flight literally round a 1 acre garden, all checks done before flight and did a compass calibration, used my first battery h flew spot on second battery I took off retracted gear and went to fly forwards away from myself when the h suddenly flew to the right in a long sweep no inputs would correct the direction of flight I went straight into panic looked at all the switches to check the positions of them I was in angle, obs off, gear up, throttle right back. I then put it into Home, it said it was in Home mode but kept flying away, the gimble was doing its own thing spinning around kept losing and getting picture to the st16, even trying to drop the altitude would not work. at one point it was a tiny tiny dot in the distance no inputs what so ever would bring it back, knowing the local area well I could sort of see where it was catching split seconds of video when the gimble was pointing down, then lost all contact with it screen froze so drove to when it roughly was (near a friends farm about 1.5miles down the road) at which point walking through field, we hear the beeping of h then connected back to the h, the st16 was telling me the battery level low and down to 5 motors, seen in the distance it was in the hedge row of a field, where it had dropped onto my friends digger and bounced into the hedge, it is a complete write off I should think see pics, need help to know what to do from here, anything would be a massive help, in the uk! Thanks in advance
View attachment 10514View attachment 10515View attachment 10516View attachment 10517

what a bummer.
did you say it was under warranty or no ? I had a couple flyaways and they were under warranty and Yuneec.took care of it for me.
if it is under warranty be patient Yuneec will take care of it.

 

[Kingsley Opoku]

If that's what makes you happy then that's fair enough.

However, as you have heard, you don't need to do a second calibration if flying from the same location on the day, and there is an argument that calibrating you compass, say, too often could allow for a bad calibration to creep in.