I just helplessly watched my Inspire crash into the dirt. First, quick background on me, I have been flying collective pitch RC helicopters on and off for 15 years. I have been flying a FPV Flip quad for the last couple of years as well.
I only received the Inspire yesterday from Coptershop, but I have been all over the forums learning all I can about the Inspire for several weeks. I have read about the accidents and about the possible reasons for those losses. I felt that with careful calibration and decent pilot skills the Inspire would be fine. So, in short Yes, the quad was calibrated all of the data IMU, compass, were in line. Props were triple checked because I have spent a prop before and I am very concerned with it.
First flight went fine, no issues what so ever. I was 10 minutes into the second flight when the inspire completly failed. The quad was hovering around 10 feet in front of me with an altitude of maybe 15 feet It had been there for around 15 to 30 seconds. When it failed, my hands were not even on the sticks. The Inspire did a complete 360 end over end and fell to the ground. Something not possible in GPS or ATTI mode. I did try to correct but there was not time.
Surprisingly the physical damage was very minor. all Props broke (But still nice and tight on the shaft), camera came off of the mount but did not break and both arms are tilted maybe 5 degrees outwards. The mental damage is severe. I no longer trust this thing. I have already contacted DJI and am sending the unit to them so that they can review the flight logs.
I can't warn you fellow pilots enough, something is still not right with these Inspires. I believed the issue was people buying these things that had little to no experience with RC aircraft in general. Im telling you that its more than that. I do not believe that I was recording at the time of the crash but if I was, I will upload the video later tonight.
I just posted this on inspire 1 group on Facebook
Ok so my excitement of getting my new inspire 1 Thursday ended fast!! I update the firmware on the unit with the original battery and the controller all went fine! Brought it up in the air for a test run in the backyard and everything looked great traveled 87m and landed perfect. Decide to take it to the local park to do a little longer test around the park thinking everything would be fine until it happened. The nightmare of anyone who owns a drone!
The inspire one went nuts and started to go crazy just after 700meters/2:19min into the flight. So I brought it over top of me hoping to land it and it was continuing to fly away from me in one direction to another with no control. I continued to fight with it for over 2min more trying to land it down on the school yard field. I was in "P-GPS" mode, but couldn't manage to lower it down smooth enough with out crashing hard. So I then reverted finally to the auto land feature and as soon as I did that it continued out of control and flew away and crashed hard on top of the public school roof next to the park hitting the air condition unit. It landed hard.
Lucky it was 7:30pm and no kids where around in the school yard.
I normally go where there is more of a open area but didn't think I would run into this issue and was only doing a quick test run. The unit is totally smashed up as you can see in the pictures. I still don't know what the hell happen. The app was green and ready to fly after I calibrated it twice. After thinking about all my steps I did do a couple of things that I'm still not sure if it was the cause or not. That's why I'm posting this for your ideas and to warn everyone what could happen.
BTW I thought I pushed record on the camera but I guess I didn't with everything new I must have forgot. Before leaving I did change the battery to my spare that I didn't update the firmware on cause it was brand new and I just didn't think of it. And I did change the SD card that had the firmware bin on it to a larger 64 gb so I would have enough space for videos. If the battery needed to be update I cannot tell now cause its smashed. But when I think about this and when I used that second battery with out updating the firmware the app should have told me not to fly. But it didn't and it was green saying ok to fly.
I did talk to the supplier who I purchased it from and they use these all the time for production and he also said it should have told me on the app if the battery would require an update. He said they follow the app too and if the app says its ok to fly then it is. There is no way for me to know now what the firmware was on the battery since the battery is damage now. And if it was a battery firmware issue, I'm thinking it would have just fell out of the sky or something not try and fly away.
The last thing I wonder about is if I should have received the locking clips for the props. During the flight it looked like all 4 props were attached, but can't say for sure. The pieces I got back the next day included only 1.5 props. The other ones are either broken on the roof or elsewhere. I know for a fact they were connect and locked before I took off cause I verified.
The only last idea I have that could have caused this would have been interference in power lines or something. How ever there was no power lines around and I have flown my phantom 2 there at least 3 times in the past with no issues.
These are all the ideas I could think of as to why this fly away happened other than the firmware update that could have caused this. Any thoughts on why this could of happened and the best way to get DJI to replace this unit immediately. I did email them not call. They replied and gave me a ref. number and said someone will be working on my case. That's where I am now. Luckily the school was very relaxed over what happen thank god and nothing was damaged!!! Don't think I will be flying in that area anymore. Pictures coming.
Thank you
Shane