Crashed into a graveyard from a great height (VIDEO)

[robshaw]

I had an interesting day on Friday just gone. Took my copter for a fly in a field down the road.  Ive been having trouble getting a gps fix since I crashed into a pond and thought it may be just a bad area where I was testing it (back garden).  So I got a fix immediately at this location and all was rosey.  Unfortunately when I applied Loiter is was all over the place.  Something was definitely not right but I continued to fly about as normal stabilised flight was fine and the android app on my phone connected to my 3dr was reporting the location etc correctly.
   
Anyway I flew about a bit with the gopro mounted and got some nice high (ish) altitude shots.  Then disaster struck.  I lost control of it whilst it was directly above my head but pretty high up.  Perhaps around 100m+...?! It wasn';t responding to any transmitter input and clearly my failsafe isn';t set up properly because it flew off erratically until it disappeared over the top of some houses.
I then spent the next hour looking for it with no success and went home pretty gutted that Id lost it with my £280 gopro attached to it. I was also extremely concerned about the possible damage or injury it may have done to people or property.

That evening I studied the GPS log image that the android app had recorded and zoomed into google maps to get a more accurate idea of where the last GPS signal came from.
Next day I headed off to the spot, which was in a massive graveyard, drove up to as close to the place I could, jumped out the car and it was literally a couple of meters away from where I had parked. To say I was happy is an understatement. 

Damage was pretty minimal. GoPro bracket snapped and camera was just sitting detached next to the quad. The LIPO had snapped the velcro strap and pulled the cable off the solder joint on the board (xt60 connector was still connected!) And the point of impact was the end of one of the arms and it destroyed an LED strip and just dented the end of the arm.  And finally one of my carbon fibre props snapped, which you can see flying off in the video.

Lessons learned are to never under estimate the risks with these machines.  Despite the size of the space I was flying it still ended up in a potentially dangerous situation. Dont fly so high. And finally sort out the GPS and get failsafe working properly.

F450 Quadcopter Crash

[neil-liverpool]

lucky lucky lucky! that';s all I can say!

[robshaw]

Yeah I know.  Very lucky indeed.  No more risks for me.  New GPS on its way and will be making certain that its working ok before anymore flights.

[sendtohim]

you cant go wrong with a naza you get what you pay for 

[SimonS]

Given that it only spun clockwise I would suspect either one (or more) of the clockwise turning motors and/or ESC';s.

Another possibility, if you are using 2.4GHz for control is someone in one of those houses having a booster on their wifi.

[dp106]

Wow that was so lucky it didn';t crash into one of those houses!