First and very catestrophic crash

[mrchris]

So I picked up a barely used Typhooh H back in November. I've had roughly 30 flights, from short to 10/12 minutes all successful other than clipping a single prop on the edge of a shrub in the front yard trying to fly too close to it early on.

Beautiful sunny day today, winds are perfectly calm and 55 degrees out. Not typical March weather for Seattle but darned nice.

Fired up the H, everything looked normal and hit the left joystick up to take off. It immediately pitched over forward about 30 degrees and took off fast right about a foot off the ground into a fence. Doubled checked the controller and it was in mode 2, angle mode and speed set to turtle. right joystick was centered and fingers not even on it. I let go of the left stick soon as it pointed the wrong way and it continued on as if someone else was controlling it.

Damnedest thing I've seen.

Looks like she is totaled or close to it. At least 2 or 3 motor arms broken, camera gimbal came off, housing on the camera came apart. Lost all 6 propellers.

Even if I can fix it, I can't trust something that does something unpredictable like that.

I know there have been some fly aways others have experienced but anything like this?

And I can probably go search for it but how do I pull the logs/telemetry and try and sort out what she did?

 

[AH-1G]

Upload the telemetry here for us to evaluate what happened.
You can get that off the ST16 controller.

 

[daved20319]

So I picked up a barely used Typhooh H back in November. I've had roughly 30 flights, from short to 10/12 minutes all successful other than clipping a single prop on the edge of a shrub in the front yard trying to fly too close to it early on.

Beautiful sunny day today, winds are perfectly calm and 55 degrees out. Not typical March weather for Seattle but darned nice.

Fired up the H, everything looked normal and hit the left joystick up to take off. It immediately pitched over forward about 30 degrees and took off fast right about a foot off the ground into a fence. Doubled checked the controller and it was in mode 2, angle mode and speed set to turtle. right joystick was centered and fingers not even on it. I let go of the left stick soon as it pointed the wrong way and it continued on as if someone else was controlling it.

Damnedest thing I've seen.

Looks like she is totaled or close to it. At least 2 or 3 motor arms broken, camera gimbal came off, housing on the camera came apart. Lost all 6 propellers.

Even if I can fix it, I can't trust something that does something unpredictable like that.

I know there have been some fly aways others have experienced but anything like this?

And I can probably go search for it but how do I pull the logs/telemetry and try and sort out what she did?

Serious bummer, had sun on this side today, too, but only got up to freezing, and then had a breeze sucking it back down. Don't really have any suggestions for you, but I can answer your last question, log and telemetry files are saved in the controllers internal memory, can't remember exactly how to get to them, but the process is here somewhere. Good luck.

Dave

Here it is: how-to-access-telemetry-data-on-st16.1389

 

[mrchris]

Here it is.

 

[DoomMeister]

Insert an SD card into the ST-16, turn on the ST-16 and go to Pad, press the circle with 6 dots, and open FileManager. Select the down arrow for the FlightLog folder and Compress. Name it adding today’s date on the end. Now scroll to the bottom of Internal Storage, press the down arrow on the zip file you just created and select Copy. In the upper left of the FileManager tap the icon that looks like SD Cards to switch to external storage. Now select Paste at the bottom.

Use the back arrow to return to the app menu and select Settings. Now select Storage and scroll down to SD card and select Unmount. Return to the Home screen and power off the ST-16.

Remove the SD card and load it on your computer. Now reply to the thread and use the Attach files button to upload the zip file.

 

[AH-1G]

Insert an SD card into the ST-16, turn on the ST-16 and go to Pad, press the circle with 6 dots, and open FileManager. Select the down arrow for the FlightLog folder and Compress. Name it adding today’s date on the end. Now scroll to the bottom of Internal Storage, press the down arrow on the zip file you just created and select Copy. In the upper left of the FileManager tap the icon that looks like SD Cards to switch to external storage. Now select Paste at the bottom.

Use the back arrow to return to the app menu and select Settings. Now select Storage and scroll down to SD card and select Unmount. Return to the Home screen and power off the ST-16.

Remove the SD card and load it on your computer. Now reply to the thread and use the Attach files button to upload the zip file.

You are so wonderful to have around!

 

[DoomMeister]

You are so wonderful to have around!

Don’t cha just love it??

My method gets all the data and not just the telemetry. We can see most of what is going on between the aircraft and the controller and have a much better understanding of the whole flight scenario.

 

[DoomMeister]

@mrchris,

How long had it been since your last flight?

How long was the TH powered on and sitting before the motors were armed and you attempted takeoff?

What position was your rate slider in? Turtle, Rabbit, or somewhere in between?

Were there any magnetic interference warnings?

When was the last time you used the hardware monitor on the ST-16?

 

[mrchris]

@mrchris,

How long had it been since your last flight?

How long was the TH powered on and sitting before the motors were armed and you attempted takeoff?

What position was your rate slider in? Turtle, Rabbit, or somewhere in between?

Were there any magnetic interference warnings?

When was the last time you used the hardware monitor on the ST-16?

Last flight was last Saturday, 6 days ago.

Powered up about 3 or 4 minutes before motors were armed, it has always been a little slow to acquire GPS.

Rate slider was at turtle.

I had gotten a compass warning a few times at another location about 6 flights ago. But not recently nor today.

I had looked at the hardware monitor a few flights ago as it was drifting slightly when hands were off the sticks, found trim was one click off and discovered that via hardware monitor (still a little new to this).

 

[mrchris]

Something I noticed after I uploaded the flight to UAV Toolbox, the actual flight is the portion in red. Where the arrow is in the image below is where it started from and the other end of the red line is where it hit the fence. It was never where the rest of the green line is.

I never had those discrepencies on any other flight.

 

[DoomMeister]

Use my instructions for getting the flight logs so we can also see what is going on with the ST-16.

There was a transient compass calibration warning during the first tenth of a second. It appeared that the TH was only powered up about 1:30 minutes before you armed the motors and attempted takeoff. As you said it tipped forward violently then veered to the side and motor 4 was the first to impact and caused an emergency shutdown, but at 9 meters/sec tas the momentum finished the other props and arms.

Rule of thumb for takeoffs is to have the rate slider forward in full rabbit mode to get the aircraft in the air. When you have not flown for several days you should sit on the ground powered up for at least 12 minutes to let the GPS almanac update from the satellites.

 

[DoomMeister]

The lines near the arrow are the GPS wanderings before a good fix was obtained. The green line after the fence was hit is because the GPS module felt like a boxer that got KO'ed.

 

[WTFDproject]

I also notice the fsk-rssi reading (Received Signal Strength from Copters Receiver) was going from normal to zero and back an awful lot. For all I know, that’s normal on an ST-16 /TH, but it at least looks interesting. Were you aware of anything that could be creating a bad link between your controller and the drone?

 

[DoomMeister]

If mrchris uploads the FlightLogs I'll take another look in the morning. Been up since 5AM so I'm getting ready to hit the hay.

 

[Photo]

So I picked up a barely used Typhooh H back in November. I've had roughly 30 flights, from short to 10/12 minutes all successful other than clipping a single prop on the edge of a shrub in the front yard trying to fly too close to it early on.

Beautiful sunny day today, winds are perfectly calm and 55 degrees out. Not typical March weather for Seattle but darned nice.

Fired up the H, everything looked normal and hit the left joystick up to take off. It immediately pitched over forward about 30 degrees and took off fast right about a foot off the ground into a fence. Doubled checked the controller and it was in mode 2, angle mode and speed set to turtle. right joystick was centered and fingers not even on it. I let go of the left stick soon as it pointed the wrong way and it continued on as if someone else was controlling it.

Damnedest thing I've seen.

Looks like she is totaled or close to it. At least 2 or 3 motor arms broken, camera gimbal came off, housing on the camera came apart. Lost all 6 propellers.

Even if I can fix it, I can't trust something that does something unpredictable like that.

I know there have been some fly aways others have experienced but anything like this?

And I can probably go search for it but how do I pull the logs/telemetry and try and sort out what she did?

If I haven't been in the air or even switched on my H for more than 3-4 Days I ALWAYS let it stay idling (no props spinning) on the ground for at least 14 minutes.

 

[mrchris]

Here is the full flight log folder. It was my understanding regarding rebuilding the GPS almanac that waiting that long only applied if you were flying in a new location that was a significant distance away? It's last flight, a successful flight, was from within 3 feet of the same starting point.

 

[Fred Garvin]

........only applied if you were flying in a new location that was a significant distance away?.......

That’s compass calibration.

The GPS satellites move....so you need to get the most recent information from them.

 

[Truely Yuneec]

So I picked up a barely used Typhooh H back in November. I've had roughly 30 flights, from short to 10/12 minutes all successful other than clipping a single prop on the edge of a shrub in the front yard trying to fly too close to it early on.

Beautiful sunny day today, winds are perfectly calm and 55 degrees out. Not typical March weather for Seattle but darned nice.

Fired up the H, everything looked normal and hit the left joystick up to take off. It immediately pitched over forward about 30 degrees and took off fast right about a foot off the ground into a fence. Doubled checked the controller and it was in mode 2, angle mode and speed set to turtle. right joystick was centered and fingers not even on it. I let go of the left stick soon as it pointed the wrong way and it continued on as if someone else was controlling it.

Damnedest thing I've seen.

Looks like she is totaled or close to it. At least 2 or 3 motor arms broken, camera gimbal came off, housing on the camera came apart. Lost all 6 propellers.

Even if I can fix it, I can't trust something that does something unpredictable like that.

I know there have been some fly aways others have experienced but anything like this?

And I can probably go search for it but how do I pull the logs/telemetry and try and sort out what she did?

I used to own a DJI Phantom 4 and a similar thing happened to that as well. Except mine happened at about 70 ft, and fell to the pavement below. I don't have that drone any more : ) There are many stories of these drones going rogue, regardless of brand. It would be neat to see a failure rate for each brand and model, so we could all pick the most reliable, like airlines having crash records to review...

 

[Fred Garvin]

.........It would be neat to see a failure rate for each brand and model, so we could all pick the most reliable, like airlines having crash records to review...

You would first have to have accurate data. I have no hard data to back this up, but I “feel” that a very significant percentage of reported fly aways and falling out of the sky incidents are actually operator error.

 

[Ty Pilot]

No one wants to own up to a crash if they can get away with blaming the manufacturer and likewise; a manufacturer would ideally always like to blame the pilot. There will never be any reliable information as to any brands' reliability. But one thing is for sure; the reliability factor of ANY brand soars when flown by a competent and experienced pilot.