Incredible Inspire Survival Story, I1 is one tough bird

[Chuggie]

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After 75+ Inspire flights, pilot error struck. Looking up at the mountain I could see this nice gap between the rocks I wanted to fly through, however from the ground looking up you do not see that there is a tree on the opposite side of the gap.

It took several hours to ford the stream and scale up to the cliff where the Inspire crashed. What I found when I got up there was amazing. The Inspire fell out of the tree, and then dropped another 60 feet down the side of the cliff. Where I found the Inspire it had dropped a total of about 80 feet (25M). Amazingly the Inspire was undamaged (other than breaking all four props). The camera was separated from the aircraft, all four of the anti-vibration rubber bushings had popped out of the camera mount frame, and the wires to the camera were disconnected, but all I had to do was put it back together again, and attach some new props and the Inspire still flies perfectly, in fact the only scratches were on the screw on ND filter and there was a scuff on a sticker on the landing leg.

I feel very very lucky.

 

[skylabimaging]

I can atest...I put my inspire in a tree, after 250 flights and 30 some odd hours of use and 1.2million feet of travel. Survived 6days/7nights...high heat for the nw and a couple rain falls and she started up just dandy when she got rescued, no damage done.

 

[huppe]

Yes that tree appeared very suddenly if you watch the video.Glad your Inspire survived.

 

[Alastair]

Gee if you had an X5 camera you might have seen that tree in the shadows. haha. Glad you got it back relatively unscathed!

 

[Chuggie]

I can atest...I put my inspire in a tree, after 250 flights and 30 some odd hours of use and 1.2million feet of travel. Survived 6days/7nights...high heat for the nw and a couple rain falls and she started up just dandy when she got rescued, no damage done.

Yours survived a couple of rain falls, I was very worried about a thunderstorm cropping up during the 8 hours that the inspire was out of my possession.

 

[SultanGris]

thats pretty lucky, mine broke the carbon fiber arm and ripped the camera gimble in half when it crashed and fell 20 feet, I think they are pretty weak, i guess tree branches are a little bit softer, lol