Hello Fellow Yuneec Pilot!
Join our free Yuneec community and remove this annoying banner!
Sign up

My first Fly-Away... was it me or the H?? Help (flight log attached)

Joined
Apr 3, 2020
Messages
40
Reaction score
6
Age
40
Hello everyone,

So I was out getting extra footage of a home I had been hired to do multiple real estate videos for. New mulch and leaves and flowers blooming meant fresh footage. I have never had GPS issues at this property as it is an extremely large property with no trees or obstructions. I put the H up and immediately started setting up a very nice CCC route. Successfully set about 15 waypoints and saved the route... continued on to take some manual footage of the home with the remaining battery juice I had left. Brought H back, changed out the battery, turned it on and waited until I had good GPS lock.
This is where it got "not fun", I took off straight up and at about 15 or 20 ft I noticed the orange LED notification indicating GPS issue. The H started drifting slowly in different directions so I simply tried to control it and lower it to land. That's when it simply started flying one direction at about 50% speed... at this point it was flying towards a neighbors house, so i just remember trying anything to get it to change directions. The H changed directions and took off (what seemed to be) 100% rabbit directly towards subject house. Being that the house is listed at 1.5 million ... I was slightly panicking. I tried my best to just raise it to hopefully get over the roof, nope... smashed directly into the brick home. If I did clear the roof, that drone was on a one way flight far away from me.
If someone could take a look to see if it was operator error (did I not wait for enough satellites to lock?), did it lose all gps signal when it was in the air? Did my ST16 controls jam (if that's possible)? Also, if I would have had my RealSense module on, would that have allowed me to control it if I lost GPS?

Any observations are surely appreciated as I'm lost with this one.

Subject property that took the blunt of the H... I was located in the front lawn. Shot this home 6 times never an issue with GPS :-(
YUN00010.jpg
 

Attachments

  • FlightLog_5-15-2020_flight[1].zip
    13.1 MB · Views: 60
  • Like
Reactions: KEITH KUHN
Hello everyone,

So I was out getting extra footage of a home I had been hired to do multiple real estate videos for. New mulch and leaves and flowers blooming meant fresh footage. I have never had GPS issues at this property as it is an extremely large property with no trees or obstructions. I put the H up and immediately started setting up a very nice CCC route. Successfully set about 15 waypoints and saved the route... continued on to take some manual footage of the home with the remaining battery juice I had left. Brought H back, changed out the battery, turned it on and waited until I had good GPS lock.
This is where it got "not fun", I took off straight up and at about 15 or 20 ft I noticed the orange LED notification indicating GPS issue. The H started drifting slowly in different directions so I simply tried to control it and lower it to land. That's when it simply started flying one direction at about 50% speed... at this point it was flying towards a neighbors house, so i just remember trying anything to get it to change directions. The H changed directions and took off (what seemed to be) 100% rabbit directly towards subject house. Being that the house is listed at 1.5 million ... I was slightly panicking. I tried my best to just raise it to hopefully get over the roof, nope... smashed directly into the brick home. If I did clear the roof, that drone was on a one way flight far away from me.
If someone could take a look to see if it was operator error (did I not wait for enough satellites to lock?), did it lose all gps signal when it was in the air? Did my ST16 controls jam (if that's possible)? Also, if I would have had my RealSense module on, would that have allowed me to control it if I lost GPS?

Any observations are surely appreciated as I'm lost with this one.

Subject property that took the blunt of the H... I was located in the front lawn. Shot this home 6 times never an issue with GPS :-(
View attachment 21912

You will get your answers
my friend.
I too had a flyaway.
Thank goodness it still was under warranty.
fly aways are not cool.
The guys at this site
read my Telem Files.
I love these guys.
Keith Kuhn
 
Any observations are surely appreciated as I'm lost with this one.
@REMedia,
Much to early in the review to make any statement. But an abrupt change in the quality of the recorded radio signal seems to have occurred between the last flight of April 8, and the first flight of April 9. Did anything happen that could explain the change?
 
I just did a quick look, and right off the bat I see that when the Typhoon was booting up and going through the initialization phase, you were right in the Center of that concrete (not asphalt) driveway.

12:16:38 - Motor Start
12:16:46 - This is when you either Lift Off - or it is possibly that you lifted off slightly earlier but stayed close to the surface but as soon as you got about two meters in the air - this is when there was a Compass warning that lasted all the way to impact 14 seconds later.
12:17:01 - Impact - this is very telling as you say it hit the subject house, but look at where the telemetry shows the crash this is the point where motor 4 was first shown as "off" and a few milliseconds later flight status goes to "Emergency" all motors off

I have only looked at the telemetry so there may be other circumstances but it seems very likely that there was magnetic interference from the re-bar in the concrete and as soon as you lifted far enough away from that interference that the compass and GPS were conflicted and gave you a classic scenario for a fly away.
 
Okay I tried to have links to the exact locations the telemetry shows at those point but the pins would not stay in the links so here are screen shots showing where the telemetry had your Those last two locations shown below are shown as occurring 3 seconds apart? Does this match your memory?

1 - Take Off Point
2 - Motor 4 OFF
3 - Emergency All Motors Killed

TOP.jpg

CS1.jpg


CS2.jpg
 
@REMedia , are the gates across the driveway opened and closed manually or do they have a remote control or inductive sensing in the drive?

Trying to determine why you got the compass error at about 2 meters off the ground. and the resultant marginal control of the aircraft.
 
Last edited:
@REMedia , are the gates across the driveway opened and closed manually or do they have a remote control or inductive sensing in the drive?

Trying to determine why you got the compass error at about 2 meters off the ground. and the resultant marginal control of the aircraft.
I know that they are powered gates and have been in the open position for past 7 months since homeowner vacated. I did inquire if they were working to try to get gate opening video footage, but never got a response. I'll look further into it, although i have taken off from this location over 10 times without an issue
 
These pics are especially useful. They show us that drone GPS was not recording accurate location. We are still discussing the loss of compass, which seems to be the primary driver of the event, and some questions about how much control was reaching the drone. Knowing GPS was this much off is an added peculiarity.
And solves the mystery of why you went behind the house after the crash, instead of where we THOUGHT the crash occurred. ( near the tree in the next yard)

Is this the same drone that had problems with compass calibration about a month ago?
 
@REMedia,
Much to early in the review to make any statement. But an abrupt change in the quality of the recorded radio signal seems to have occurred between the last flight of April 8, and the first flight of April 9. Did anything happen that could explain the change?
I apologize but I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "quality of recorded radio signal".... still learning the tech part of it, can you explain exactly what you are asking? Thanks again for the help
 
These pics are especially useful. They show us that drone GPS was not recording accurate location. We are still discussing the loss of compass, which seems to be the primary driver of the event, and some questions about how much control was reaching the drone. Knowing GPS was this much off is an added peculiarity.
And solves the mystery of why you went behind the house after the crash, instead of where we THOUGHT the crash occurred. ( near the tree in the next yard)

Is this the same drone that had problems with compass calibration about a month ago?
it is the same drone, although I installed a GPS unit from prior shell and it seemed to have fix the issue. Not that it means anything, but when installing the GPS module, the back of it was perfectly clean/shiny, I looked at GPS module after this wreck and it has what look like burn or heat marks on it.

I have used the drone multiple times since that last issue and haven't had issues.
 
I apologize but I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "quality of recorded radio signal".... still learning the tech part of it, can you explain exactly what you are asking? Thanks again for the help
It was a dumb question anyway. I think you probably did a firmware update.
The earlier traces are consistent with systems that have only 2.4Ghz control. Traces after that date are consistent with the newer firmware, which has both 2.4Ghz and 5.8Ghz control as backup. (Thanks to @h-elsner for clarifying that for me.)
 
it is the same drone, although I installed a GPS unit from prior shell and it seemed to have fix the issue. Not that it means anything, but when installing the GPS module, the back of it was perfectly clean/shiny, I looked at GPS module after this wreck and it has what look like burn or heat marks on it.

I have used the drone multiple times since that last issue and haven't had issues.
Can you upload a picture of the marks on the GPS? It might help answer the question of why three control related parameters changed between two flights that seem seperated by only 5 minutes and a battery change.

Did anything other than a battery change happen between the two flights?
 
I know that they are powered gates and have been in the open position for past 7 months since homeowner vacated. I did inquire if they were working to try to get gate opening video footage, but never got a response. I'll look further into it, although i have taken off from this location over 10 times without an issue
@DoomMeister got information on the gates, they are operated with a remote control, although the power has been off to them for over 3 years because they were just a pain to open and shut. No sensors in the concrete
 
  • Like
Reactions: WTFDproject
@DoomMeister got information on the gates, they are operated with a remote control, although the power has been off to them for over 3 years because they were just a pain to open and shut. No sensors in the concrete
Thanks, that puts an end to that possibility. We know the compass failure right after takeoff was the cause of this and just looking for clues as to why it flaked out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ty Pilot
@REMedia your account does now line up with much of the telemetry. The question of 'what' happened in this event is looking very much like a compass/GPS conflict possibly brought on by magnetic interference from the steel in the driveway. It is possible that the Compass is/was damaged in a prior incident which; may or may not have aggravated the situation.

I see you were having problems with this drone in the past as it was having compass warnings on a regular basis. While compass warnings can be somewhat regular in certain situations - prolonged and repetitious warnings are symptoms that need to be addressed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Marcasscarcass
Thanks, that puts an end to that possibility. We know the compass failure right after takeoff was the cause of this and just looking for clues as to why it flaked out.
I plotted like 16 way points for CCC just before this takeoff. The waypoints should all be around the subject house and not in neighboring yards. is it possible to see if those way points plotted correctly ?
 
@REMedia your account does now line up with much of the telemetry. The question of 'what' happened in this event is looking very much like a compass/GPS conflict possibly brought on by magnetic interference from the steel in the driveway. It is possible that the Compass is/was damaged in a prior incident which; may or may not have aggravated the situation.

I see you were having problems with this drone in the past as it was having compass warnings on a regular basis. While compass warnings can be somewhat regular in certain situations - prolonged and repetitious warnings are symptoms that need to be addressed.
I really haven't had any compass errors (that i noticed) since I changed out the GPS module (over a month or two ago)
 
The waypoints were not the problem, a flyaway occurs when the instruments (GPS and Compass) used for positioning do not agree. You had not started a CC Mission so those way points were not a consideration in this crash
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
20,954
Messages
241,586
Members
27,284
Latest member
csandoval