First Crash Totaled My H !

[Atomic08]

Hello all....
I have been flying my Typhoon H for almost three years now
without any Issues, hundreds of flights, many places in the northeast.
Never a worry about a return to home.
I considered myself a seasoned pilot, having DJI drones also.

Well this Morning I had a bad crash. I have flown three times in the past week or so with no problems. So it was finally a nice spring morning and I took the H out for a local flight. Took off and hovered for a minute then raised it to go to a height above our house. Flew around our back yard to try and get an aerial shot of our Spring blooms. Showed 16.6 Vs when I started it, and noticed 15 Vs when I raised the H.
I brought the H in close to our house, took some shots then flew it back out to the field behind our house to prepare for a landing. I got a low battery warning so I was not going to fly far. Still Flying in angle mode, I raised the H and started to bring it back home.
I started to come back to the landing spot and it kept coming back toward me, then past me. It wouldn't respond to my inputs, so I just let the controls go, thinking it would just stop and hover in place until i could figure out what was happening.
It just kept going past me into two large trees, tumbled down and crashed hard.
It broke all arms off and both legs and of course smashed the camera and gimble.
I fly this same route on take off and landings every time I fly in our back yard, so I am used to my take off and landing proceedures.

Attached is the flight log, and can anyone help me figure out what happened? I was flying the H and not looking at the screen, so I don't know if I got any kind of warning.

Also when I tried to view the Micro SD card, it is not recognized
by the computer. I can understand maybe this flight not showing up, but the last number of flights I have flown and viewed do not load, There is no recognition of the card.

Thanks in advance !

 

[Ty Pilot]

Sorry to hear of your crash. Will take a look and see what we can see.

 

[Mrgs1]

It almost seems like there was still input from the joysticks, I've heard that rapid battery drop can play the copter up, will be interesting to see the results from the telemetry.

 

[Atomic08]

Thanks for Looking...
I looked at the cvs file and I see I lost GPS at 08:19:35:215.....
don't know why as I was not under a tree ever....

 

[NorWiscPilot]

Thanks for Looking...
I looked at the cvs file and I see I lost GPS at 08:19:35:215.....
don't know why as I was not under a tree ever....

Sorry for your mishap.

Keep in mind, loss of GPS could be due to a component failure, or some other interference.

The SD card issue could be due to the video not closed properly before [unplanned] power down.

Hopefully the clues will be forthcoming.

Jeff

 

[Atomic08]

NorWiscPilot....
I couldn't shut down the drone with the red button or the O/F button on the H.
I Had to pull the battery to shut it off...
I could see losing the last video on the domed flight, because of not closing it
but not the previous videos.
I must have shorted the SD card on the crash.
Thanks for the input

 

[Mrgs1]

NorWiscPilot....
I couldn't shut down the drone with the red button or the O/F button on the H.
I Had to pull the battery to shut it off...
I could see losing the last video on the domed flight, because of not closing it
but not the previous videos.
I must have shorted the SD card on the crash.
Thanks for the input

The button on the copter wouldn't work either?

 

[Steve Carr]

It appears to have been flying with GPS off near the end of the flight. That would explain why it kept going past you. It doesn't explain why it wasn't responding to the controls.
I will add this.........reading logs from previous such occurrences, once the voltage gets too low the flight behavior can become erratic and strange things occur. The best practice is to always land before the first battery warning. Nothing good happens after that warning. Batteries degrade over time which reduces the power available. Running the batteries to a low voltage speeds the degrading process.

 

[Mrgs1]

The rapid voltage drop doesn't help and nearly 3 year old batteries possibly. They've done well if so.

 

[FlushVision]

It appears to have been flying with GPS off near the end of the flight. That would explain why it kept going past you. It doesn't explain why it wasn't responding to the controls.
I will add this.........reading logs from previous such occurrences, once the voltage gets too low the flight behavior can become erratic and strange things occur. The best practice is to always land before the first battery warning. Nothing good happens after that warning. Batteries degrade over time which reduces the power available. Running the batteries to a low voltage speeds the degrading process.

On the very rare occasions that I've flown down to first warning in the first few months I owned a TH, I noticed some strange behavior. I quickly learned not to fly the battery down so far. It's called 'experience'.

 

[Mrgs1]

Showed 16.6 Vs when I started it, and noticed 15 Vs when I raised the H. Did your experience not alarm with that rapid voltage drop, personally I would of aborted the flight.

 

[h-elsner]

The battery is not one of the best. It breaks down from 95% to 40% too fast at the begin of the flight.
But to tell more about the behaviour we need the flight log, not only telemetry. Remote_00330.csv would be intresting to check if copter responds to the stick movement or not.

be HE

 

[Atomic08]

The button on the copter wouldn't work either?

No... that's why I had to pull the battery.

 

[Atomic08]

Showed 16.6 Vs when I started it, and noticed 15 Vs when I raised the H. Did your experience not alarm with that rapid voltage drop, personally I would of aborted the flight.

Sometimes yes, but i have noticed in the past that if I give it full up and full forward the battery level drops quite a bit, but when I level off and slow down it goes back up to close to its starting level, so when that happened, it didn't concern me. I guess since I never experienced unresponsive behavior, I thought a rapid battery drop was no concern. BTW...this battery was a two years old Yuneec battery purchased from B&H 5-18-17. I label and date my batteries. I charged it up just before the flight.

 

[Atomic08]

The battery is not one of the best. It breaks down from 95% to 40% too fast at the begin of the flight.
But to tell more about the behaviour we need the flight log, not only telemetry. Remote_00330.csv would be intresting to check if copter responds to the stick movement or not.

be HE

I up loaded the file as Telemetry_00330.csv.txt I just added dot txt to the origional file. If you download the file and just remove the txt extension, would you not have the origional cvs file?
Here is a screenshot from your program of when I lost GPS .
I like using it to make kmz file from Google earth !

 

[DoomMeister]

What Helmut is saying is that just reading the telemetry file we cannot see what was happening on the ST-16. We also need the remote file he mentioned.

As he mentioned, the battery is also very suspect with the rapid voltage drop at the beginning. Do you have a third party charger so you can put the batteries at storage charge or are you just using the OEM charger?

Flying that long after a level 2 battery warning is very risky. With the rapid voltage drop at the start and then the length of time you flew where the voltage hovered around 14.6 to 14.5 volts, I would venture to guess that there is a cell with a very high IR that depleted quickly and stresses the other cells.

 

[Mrgs1]

Showed 16.6 Vs when I started it, and noticed 15 Vs when I raised the H. Did your experience not alarm with that rapid voltage drop, personally I would of aborted the flight.

Yes concerning the battery it will recover somewhat, but it seems from what you say, everything happened quickly and the sitration quickly got out of hand. The battery maybe a major factor, like others have said what's your care regime with them, storage, charge, etc?

 

[Mrgs1]

What Helmut is saying is that just reading the telemetry file we cannot see what was happening on the ST-16. We also need the remote file he mentioned.

As he mentioned, the battery is also very suspect with the rapid voltage drop at the beginning. Do you have a third party charger so you can put the batteries at storage charge or are you just using the OEM charger?

Flying that long after a level 2 battery warning is very risky. With the rapid voltage drop at the start and then the length of time you flew where the voltage hovered around 14.6 to 14.5 volts, I would venture to guess that there is a cell with a very high IR that depleted quickly and stresses the other cells.

I've read some users have had it drop out of the sky after second warning, hopefully I'll never experience that.

 

[Atomic08]

Yes concerning the battery it will recover somewhat, but it seems from what you say, everything happened quickly and the sitration quickly got out of hand. The battery maybe a major factor, like others have said what's your care regime with them, storage, charge, etc?

I fly the drone and watch the voltage and shut down when it gets to 15-15.2 before storage longer than two weeks.
I test using a GLEO battery tester. I have two Yuneec OEM battery chargers that I use when I charge. I never got around to buying a multi charger.

 

[DoomMeister]

I've read some users have had it drop out of the sky after second warning, hopefully I'll never experience that.

I have seen that type of telemetry, but from a battery that was declining at a normal steady rate and the person just tried to fly too long.

I’m in the group that try to be on the ground before the first battery warning that triggers at 14.3V.

I am baffled by the telemetry and would really like to see the matching remote file. Even with loss of GPS the reaction should have been different, unless there was about a 20mph wind blowing toward the house.