Last week my nephew came for a visit with his Phantom 2 Vision+, so I joined him with my Inspire 1 for some flying. It's a big sky but, of course, we ended up colliding. I was coming down from a higher altitude to take a look at his Phantom when he decided to head up to see me. My one prop ended up clipping his landing gear. His craft was undamaged but about 25% of my prop was sheared off.
The cool thing was that we both got clear video of the incident. His Phantom barely even moved but the Inspire started cartwheeling in the sky. My heart jumped but it righted itself in about three seconds and hovered perfectly, even with the damaged prop. The gimbal tried its best to maintain a steady shot, so the footage masks how violent it actually was. If you look frame-by-frame, you can see from the landing gear that the Inspire was nearly inverted at one point. I was so, so impressed by the control software!
The Inspire was perfectly steady for the rest of the flight and landed with no problems. I replaced the prop and it's as good as new.
Here's some video of the collision from both vantage points.
The cool thing was that we both got clear video of the incident. His Phantom barely even moved but the Inspire started cartwheeling in the sky. My heart jumped but it righted itself in about three seconds and hovered perfectly, even with the damaged prop. The gimbal tried its best to maintain a steady shot, so the footage masks how violent it actually was. If you look frame-by-frame, you can see from the landing gear that the Inspire was nearly inverted at one point. I was so, so impressed by the control software!
The Inspire was perfectly steady for the rest of the flight and landed with no problems. I replaced the prop and it's as good as new.
Here's some video of the collision from both vantage points.