Crash. What happened

[Ozziepauly]

This crash is very scary from a guy in Canada. Ed Windham of DJI in LA has the craft..
500 meters straight up with no controls. A possible firmware meltdown.
Has anyone experienced anything like that.
If so, what is the best way to get out of it.

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[m00se]

Hmmm, Its hard to say what happened hey? the fact he says its a maiden, could mean its the first time he flew an inspire, in which case we may suspect he did something wrong. He seems to know what he is doing though, and the flight was controlled enough to suggest some experience, plus he says it performed as he "expected"

The fact he did a maiden with the camera on tells me that he isnt too experienced.

Now. He says all link was cut....... okay..... then the drone goes up to 500m, (coincidentally the max alt permitted?) it turns 180 degrees, and then you can see it decend.......... this all looks like a homing routine set to 500m safe altitude to me.

then the inverted flight? No idea.... maybe a lost prop? you can see the drone yawing in the final stages of the video.... perhaps it had also leveled, beacause it didnt seem to be coming down fast enough to be inverted.

all in all very scarey indeed. Either due to pilot error or machiene, either way, I owuldnt want to be in that park when something like that happens.

 

[m00se]

ok I watched it again, it turned 180 before reaching max altitude,

but you do see it yaw just before it flips. and then you only see the left landing foot when the camera glitches.....

 

[Paul Joy]

If you read the comments in the video he says that all the props were still intact after the crash. Weirdly he also says that it was found in somebodies garden and the only damage was a broken prop and the camera separated. Looking at the speed it was dropping I'd have expected it to be buried a few feet down and in 1000 pieces!

 

[lake_flyer]

I recall we already discussed this incident. My guess that time was that it got into VRS while it descended with what looks like 6-10m/sec, which is way too fast. Why it descended that fast, much faster than the firmware permitted, I don't know. The fact the landing gear is down give me the idea the pilot issued RTH, which was a logical reaction. Switching to Atti might have had a better effect. But still, the descend should be like 2m/sec in RTH. The max safe descend rate is 4m/sec.

When the landing gear is down the Inspire is a lot less stable. It's COG is well above the rotors in that state. That's why the adaptive gear lowers only when just above the ground and it raises straight after take off. I can't figure out why it is programmed so that it lowers the gear the moment you press RTH.
Though it could be the pilot himself who lowered the gear, I don't know.

The shaking and rolling in VRS can be extremely aggressive so it might have lost a prop (QR?). Too bad the gimbal eases out all the movement so we can't see much of it.

But why the bird rose up to the ceiling I wouldn't know. Sometimes people just have the stick pushed up all the way without realising, because they are in a panic situation.
And while it was inverted, pushing the stick up would have accelerated the fall even further.

You see the props come into view meaning the landing gear is lowered, even before it starts to descend. It looks like the homepoint was set to 500m high.
So maybe it was just a bad IMU cal. Or a bad/partially successful firmware update.

 

[m00se]

You see the props come into view meaning the landing gear is lowered,

not necessarily, if the camera looks up you can see the props,

 

[lake_flyer]

can't see that the gimbal is moving up, it stays pretty much level.

 

[sirnikolas]

I'm too scared to watch that.

 

[m00se]

I'm too scared to watch that.

rightly so

 

[The Editor]

OK, I have seen this and the OP is correct in that Ed has the the aircraft and the logs.
The pilot concerned was an experienced RC pilot of some years so panic (to a certain degree) can probably ruled out.
What I think is telling in this instance is that it was the Inspired maiden flight. It could just be that it was a faulty flight controller from production - it happens.
The reason the I1 was (mostly) intact when it came down from that height is that it landed in some tall foliage that broke its fall and decelerated it very quickly and gently (Don't know what state the flowers are in though).
Thankfully, nobody was injured and (except for some shrubbery) no property was damaged.