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Sudden altitude drop and hard landing.

Joined
Mar 20, 2016
Messages
47
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Age
74
Location
Crested Butte, CO USA
Well I have had 2 incidents that ended my last 2 sessions. I was on a job and my new Q500 4K was flying fine when it suddenly just dropped out of the sky. Straight down like it lost power. No response to any attempts to control it. It landed right side up but not in a good landing place and so hard that it bounced upside down. 3 props broke and the camera came almost completely separated from the bird (but wires still attached). Also broke off 1 of the landing pads on the skids. Nothing major destroyed but I really need to find out why this is happening.
I think I saw a post with a similar problem and the recommendation was to fly back and forth from side to side. I had time to try this but the craft was totally unresponsive to any transmitter moves and went straight down. Anybody have any advice on what the cause of this is and how to avoid this happening in the future?
 
Sounds like you are having some trouble. Do you have an SD card in your ST10 controller? I learned, too late the first time, that this is essential for knowing and having documentation on what your Q is doing?
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't think the SD card in the ST-10 is mentioned in the manual, but quite a lot isn't mentioned in the manual. I assume that it will record telemetry data. How do you interpret the data when you look at it?
 
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No the card is not mentioned in the manual. The dealer I got mine from didn't tell me about it either. I learned about that and most other things I need to know on forums like this. I'll post you a couple of links that I learned about it from.
 
The same exact thing happened to my Q a few weeks ago. It just lost power and fell from the sky. This was not the first time this happened but all other incidents occurred at a lower altitude and no damage was sustained. However, this time the Q was about as high as my roof peak and it came down on hard ground. It sustained similar damage to you. Like you I had no SD card in the ST10. I've sent mine back to Yuneec. I'm two months out of warranty. No word back on cost, reason for the failure, or return time. I will keep you informed if Yuneec tells me the reason for the failure. As of now they've said they have not heard of this problem. BTW, on one of the occurrences, when no damage was sustained, when the Q hit the ground it regained power and I regained control. Here's a video of the failure and recovery:
 
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Well I did install the SD card in the ST-10 and it was in there the last 2 times the machine dropped out of the sky. So far I have not been able to read the data on my computer. I am setting up a brand new computer so I will see what can be read with that. It seems like this always happens when I am bringing the Q500 back to me to land.
 
A friend of mine, a professional photographer, bought the Q500 because he thought the camera was superior to the DJI Phantom 3. He found the Q500 to be very unstable, unfit for good photography, and returned it. He wound up with the DJI Phantom 4. On a recent trip to Oregon he sent it out to sea two miles to photograph a lighthouse. He did this twice with no problems. I hope I have the same confidence in the Q when it returns. No word from Yuneec on the status of my Q. Let me know when you can read the data from your ST 10.
 
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Same thing happened to me. Descending from 200 ft through 150 ft when I lost total control.

 
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I forgot to mention I did have the SD card in the controller. I have not tried to read it.
 
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I hope you didn't sustain damage like I did. Try contacting Yuneec to see how to read the SD card from the ST 10+. I'm curious if it uncovers the cause of why this is happening. BTW... still no word from Customer Service. All I am told is that a technician has it.
 
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Does the SD card keep a continues stream of all flights until the card is full?

Damage was not to bad. All the blades were lost and one of my prop guards was broken. A little well place super glue will fix that the prop guards. I had it back in the air a few minutes later after putting on the new blades and reattaching gimble. Damaged looked worse than it was.

Can't measure the heart damage as I watch my new drone falling to ground as I tried everything I could think of in those few seconds to stop it.
 
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Your video captures the fall perfectly. Your descent speed looks similar to mine. However I hit uneven ground resulting in more damage. If you look at the video I posted above, from a previous uncontrollable descent, you'll see that once the Q hit the ground it regained power and I was able to fly it safely. Although I haven't watched this YouTube video completely it seems to have some good info on using the SD card in the controller.
 
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Your video captures the fall perfectly. Your descent speed looks similar to mine. However I hit uneven ground resulting in more damage. If you look at the video I posted above, from a previous uncontrollable descent, you'll see that once the Q hit the ground it regained power and I was able to fly it safely. Although I haven't watched this YouTube video completely it seems to have some good info on using the SD card in the controller.

My crashes have resulted in major structural damage (cracks) to the plastic body and the camera cover. Now I have a lot of JB weld epoxy all over it. I really wish I had known about the SD card in the ST-10 before all these hard landings (crashes). I did install the card but haven't been able to read any data probably because I never knew about connecting the ST-10 to a computer and setting up the drivers until I saw this! After watching the tutorial I now see why I can't read the card. It hasn't been recording any data! Thanks for posting this tutorial. I am going to follow the procedure in the video and see if that works.
I am pretty angry that Yuneec never told me about the ST-10 SD card, the altitude limit, and the fact that the machine is so unreliable. Starting to look like a $1,000 mistake.
 
My crashes have resulted in major structural damage (cracks) to the plastic body and the camera cover. Now I have a lot of JB weld epoxy all over it. I really wish I had known about the SD card in the ST-10 before all these hard landings (crashes). I did install the card but haven't been able to read any data probably because I never knew about connecting the ST-10 to a computer and setting up the drivers until I saw this! After watching the tutorial I now see why I can't read the card. It hasn't been recording any data! Thanks for posting this tutorial. I am going to follow the procedure in the video and see if that works.
I am pretty angry that Yuneec never told me about the ST-10 SD card, the altitude limit, and the fact that the machine is so unreliable. Starting to look like a $1,000 mistake.


To be fair, Yuneec tells about the Altitude limit (and how to adjust it) right in the Introduction/Specifictations, and later in the Flight Controls section of the User Manual.

The manual also mentions the SD Card in ST10+ but fails to tell why you should use one.
 
To be fair, Yuneec tells about the Altitude limit (and how to adjust it) right in the Introduction/Specifictations, and later in the Flight Controls section of the User Manual.

The manual also mentions the SD Card in ST10+ but fails to tell why you should use one.

I'm talking about the 8,000 ft altitude limit. NOT mentioned anywhere. I wasn't able to access the manual before I bought the machine anyway. I was finally able to download firmware update to fix that, since I live at 9,000 ft. And yes, now I see the mention "SD card compatible" in the Specs for the ST-10 but I didn't know what that meant. My computer will not install the drivers for the ST-10 so I guess I will have to upgrade my computer. But it's been a lot of hassles that I didn't expect and the bottom line is presently I can't trust the machine to perform adequately for commercial use.
 
I'm talking about the 8,000 ft altitude limit. NOT mentioned anywhere. I wasn't able to access the manual before I bought the machine anyway. I was finally able to download firmware update to fix that, since I live at 9,000 ft. And yes, now I see the mention "SD card compatible" in the Specs for the ST-10 but I didn't know what that meant. My computer will not install the drivers for the ST-10 so I guess I will have to upgrade my computer. But it's been a lot of hassles that I didn't expect and the bottom line is presently I can't trust the machine to perform adequately for commercial use.

I am not arguing with you, just pointing out what is or is not mentioned in the manual. I scowered the internet for all the info I could find about the Q500 -including the user manuals - long before I purchased one, which was very recently mind you. I'm a noob. ;)

Typhoon Q500 4k- User Manual, page 4, General Safety Precautions And Warnings:

THE MAXIMUM FLYING
ALTITUDE FOR THIS AIRCRAFT
IS 8000FT ABOVE SEA LEVEL!
 
I don't think my initial ignorance of all the machine's shortcomings is an excuse for the fact that it sometimes loses all control and crashes. Like I said, with a problem like that, it's not reliable. I too, did some research before I bought it and now I really feel like I wasted my money.
 

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