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3rd flight - Loss of power - It Crashed hard! What happened?

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Well this was interesting.

So here I am, a seasoned drone pilot with hundreds of hours of flying time, my own YouTube drone channel and a regular on the drone forums.

I Received my Typhoon H yesterday afternoon. I had posted on the forum that I was surprised that the battery that came with my Typhoon was fully charged. I thought the charger was mistaken but It actually was because I was able to fly for almost 20 minutes yesterday without a problem.

The only issue I had with the Typhoon H (as seen in photos I posted yesterday) was with the camera. It was placing white and blue dots across the video. I tried a camera reset and thought it was fixed. I flew today for a full 20 minutes and everything was perfect - I really love this drone! Only negative again was that my video ended up with white and blue spots.

Called Yuneec Support and they asked me to send them pictures of the problem <done>. They also mentioned to ensure I had a fast micro SD which I had, but thought I'd try other ones.

So with a fully charged battery I went for my 3rd flight. Flew the Typhoon H directly overhead and had the gimbal do a 360 at different resolutions to see if that was the problem with the camera quality.

In less than 10 mins of flight time my controller gives the low power warning. I lower the landing gear to bring it down nice and slow and suddenly it's drifting away from me.... I no longer have control of the craft. The only input working is DOWN. It seems to have insufficient power to move in any direction. It keeps drifting away so I hit RTH and it seems to work, however it does not bring the craft back to me but instead just brings it down while drifting. It's now drifting towards a house with people outside. I switch back to Angle mode to take control (nothing other than making it spin slowly in place). I switch it fully up to Smart mode (again nothing other than making it spin slowly in place). There is no wind but it continues to drift over the house and the only landing area now is a road. As I'm trying to get it to go down onto the road it suddenly does come down... like a rock! It hits the pavement on an angle and smashes into a few pieces (gimbal, camera, landing gear, arms, props).

I called back Yuneec to advise that there was another problem (the camera is now lying 10 feet away from the drone). The customer service rep at Yuneec was very helpful. I asked if others had had this problem and so far it appears I'm the only one. So this means to everyone out there... DON'T PANIC. I may be the guy who received the lemon (camera, battery, loss of control).

I've been asked to kindly put it back in it's box and ship it back to them for review.

So I had two days with the Typhoon H and other than a bad camera and loss of power it was a good two days. I have a few more drones at home, so I won't be lonely while the Typhoon H is getting analyzed and operated on. But I will miss it!
 
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Dang! Sorry to hear that!!! I'm just ready for the maiden flight of my replacement and I'm anxious!
 
Do you have a multimeter so that you can take a power reading on your battery just to give an idea of what it's putting out?
 
Dang that sucks Capt.D :(. Luckily you have some backups to tide you over.

Wonder if a bad battery is a possibility? Keep us posted.
 
wow that really sucks.....very curious to see what caused that to happen....you being an experienced pilot makes me a bit leary now....keep us posted....sorry man....but you seem to be taking it quite well
 
That settles it for me, I'm buying a Phantom 4. There was another thread about it taking off and flying right into a tree, out of control. **** I had really high hopes for this drone. Sorry about your crash.
 
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That settles it for me, I'm buying a Phantom 4. There was another thread about it taking off and flying right into a tree, out of control. **** I had really high hopes for this drone. Sorry about your crash.
DJI is not any better P3Pro's were falling out of the sky by numbers not long ago. But anyways Good luck with your P4.;)
 
Do you have a multimeter so that you can take a power reading on your battery just to give an idea of what it's putting out?
I do. The battery came out fine from The crash (pretty much the only thing that did). I stuck it in the charger and it appears to be charging. I thought it may have been 100% dead and useless.
 
Sorry to hear. Now I'm afraid to maiden mine. Just curious, was the OA enabled when the malfunction occurred?
No... no obstacle avoidance. I actually only tried the OA once on my second flight while flying near trees along the water. I really like the fact that you can turn it on and off with a switch vice leaving it on all the time.
 
wow that really sucks.....very curious to see what caused that to happen....you being an experienced pilot makes me a bit leary now....keep us posted....sorry man....but you seem to be taking it quite well

Yuneec said that I was the first to report the camera issues and loss of control so I would take that to mean that I'm in the minority and it should be rare that others have the same issue.
 
That settles it for me, I'm buying a Phantom 4. There was another thread about it taking off and flying right into a tree, out of control. **** I had really high hopes for this drone. Sorry about your crash.

Since I also fly Phantoms, I'm a member of the Phantom forums. Believe me, my incident here has also happened to owners of Phantoms. Drones are flying boxes of technology & they're not always perfect. Unfortunately "**** happens".
 
Yuneec said that I was the first to report the camera issues and loss of control so I would take that to mean that I'm in the minority and it should be rare that others have the same issue.

I just hope they send you out a new one..ASAP that certainly wasn't your fault..

On a non realted manner i was flying my q500 4k the other night and all of a sudden i lost gps.. Like you my DJI ATTI mode kicked in and i stayed in control. It re-aquired and life was good.. I never left angle mode. That was a first for me i've never had that happen with any drone before that! Ghosts in the machine at times i guess
 
Since I also fly Phantoms, I'm a member of the Phantom forums. Believe me, my incident here has also happened to owners of Phantoms. Drones are flying boxes of technology & they're not always perfect. Unfortunately "**** happens".

P3Pro's were dropping like flies not long ago..
 
I just hope they send you out a new one..ASAP that certainly wasn't your fault..

On a non realted manner i was flying my q500 4k the other night and all of a sudden i lost gps.. Like you my DJI ATTI mode kicked in and i stayed in control. It re-aquired and life was good.. I never left angle mode. That was a first for me i've never had that happen with any drone before that! Ghosts in the machine at times i guess
Yikes! That could have been an unhappy ending. Good recovery.
 
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