Week Old Inspire Fly Away with Documented Flight Record-Need Your Assitance!

[David M Millsaps]

I crashed my Inspire also about 2.5 months ago, and just got it back from DJI repairs. Fortunately, I had (1) a Drone Mods cellular location device on the Inspire (about 56 grams), and also (2) a Marco Polo locating device (12 grams) both Velcroed behind the battery housing. Both were helpful in locating the Inspire about 70 feet up heavily camouflaged in clumps of leaves. I found it within minutes. These will not help prevent a crash, but certainly will help you locate a downed Inspire, particularly helpful in thick forests or on distant fly-always. The cellular unit has charges of $5/month. I look at this as relatively cheap insurance and peace of mind. Unless I go down in water, it is unlikely that I will not find the aircraft. For further details and photos, see: http://www.inspirepilots.com/threads/more-info-on-marco-polo-system.3166/#post-44220

 

[kookjo]

I crashed my Inspire also about 2.5 months ago, and just got it back from DJI repairs. Fortunately, I had (1) a Drone Mods cellular location device on the Inspire (about 56 grams), and also (2) a Marco Polo locating device (12 grams) both Velcroed behind the battery housing. Both were helpful in locating the Inspire about 70 feet up heavily camouflaged in clumps of leaves. I found it within minutes. These will not help prevent a crash, but certainly will help you locate a downed Inspire, particularly helpful in thick forests or on distant fly-always. The cellular unit has charges of $5/month. I look at this as relatively cheap insurance and peace of mind. Unless I go down in water, it is unlikely that I will not find the aircraft. For further details and photos, see: http://www.inspirepilots.com/threads/more-info-on-marco-polo-system.3166/#post-44220

David,

Thank you for your response, I appreciate you taking the time to assist me with my issue. They say "timing is everything", I literally had been looking at a very similar device which would at least give a precise location in which to look. My plan was to buy a "homing" device prior to my next extensive flight. My loss happened in the most benign situation as I took my Inspire up to shoot a picture of my daughter and her friends lying on the ground in a circle in the driveway. Makes it all the more frustrating. If I had the "homing" device I'm not sure how we would have got up a device that reached 120-130 ft to the tops of the trees in the middle of the forest. I guess if I knew it was in the tree I would have literally asked the owner if I could cut the **** tree down.

Thanks again for sharing your information it was very helpful.

Wish I there was a device that could view vegetation differentiate between natural and unnatural elements of the tree. Similar to thermal imagery. I know I am reaching now.

Regards,
Brad

 

[kookjo]

I had a similar issue, fully covered.

Hello Shawn,

Thanks for the response and I am glad to hear you were able to work out a resolution to your issue with DJI. I have a few questions if you wouldn't mind sharing a few more details of your experience that I could leverage to increase my chances of a potential recovery.

1.) Did you have a fly-away and if so were you able to locate so you at least had something to send to DJI? The elephant in the room here is of course I am going to DJI with what I feel is sufficient data to depict a fly-away but I don't have anything to prove I lost my Inspire. They could very easily come back and say yes it was a our issue but who is to say it was not sitting in a tree branch with nothing more than a few broken props that I was able to retrieve and now I am looking to defraud them? My entire objective of sharing the flight data and pictures of the forest that matches precisely to the Flight App was to depict a scenario that would make it highly unlikely that traveling at 40 mph into a tree it would end up without material damage. Damage that would require me to send into DJI to fix which given the serial numbers they would likely figure out what I was hypothetically trying to do.

2.) Did you call or e-mail in your issue and did they assign a representative to assist during your entire process?

3.) Did they provide you with a new inspire or settle on some prorated amount to account for depreciation?

4.) How long did it take from when you sent your first e-mail or made your first call to final disposition to your case and were back in the sky?

5.) Anyone particular at DJI, preferably someone from management whose name and number you would be willing to share that was instrumental in completing the process that you described as "Fully Covered"?

Any assistance would be appreciated Shawn.

Regards,
Brad

 

[itsdrei]

You panicked! As soon as it went haywire you should have went into atti mode by flipping the switch from gps to that mode it would have worked and you would have recovered from this! I thought it would have never happen to me but it did and from all the knowledge gathered from here I didn't panic I flipped it to atti and hello birdie it responded to my inputs and I got it back safely!

From the i1 flyvaway videos I've watched on YouTube the complete loss of control was not recovereable even after switching to atti mode. Its worth a try, but in almost all of the videos the pilot switched to atti yet the i1 continues to fly its own course and in some cases within full view by the pilot until the battery died and it dropped from the sky.

 

[kookjo]

From the i1 flyvaway videos I've watched on YouTube the complete loss of control was not recovereable even after switching to atti mode. Its worth a try, but in almost all of the videos the pilot switched to atti yet the i1 continues to fly its own course and in some cases within full view by the pilot until the battery died and it dropped from the sky.

Thanks for the comment Drei, I agree with your comment although I understand Markus's comment. If the flight controllers were functional and it was strictly a GPS issue I find it very difficult to agree that had I switched to ATTI mode sooner it would have helped the situation as you can see in the video the Inspire was basically flying it's own path with a very pronounced turn then making another turn as opposed to drifting in one direction when you lose GPS. Either way, it is I am not sure if we will ever know for sure. I did ask for the forum to poke holes in my "story" so his point did have at least some merit. I did mention in a previous post that I eventually did go to ATTI and was not able to right the Inspire prior to the likely crash into the forest. The "fly-away" issue was supposed to be materially resolved with the introduction of light bridge and the addition of the Russian GPS satellites. Actually I may be on to something, is it possible that the Russians may have..............just kidding of course.

Thanks for taking your time to respond. I imagine the board is getting tired of my issue by now but this will be an important week as I have spoken at length with the retailer where I purchased my Inspire and advised that I expect them to take accountability in this matter if DJI does not. My analogy to them was if you buy a new car from a dealer and the engine quits working the dealer is not going to send me to GM or Mercedes to deal with my issue, Given that I received my Inspire on 7/5 and the issue occurred on 7/11, I strongly feel the retailer needs to step in and use whatever leverage they have with their DJI Rep to be an advocate for me to make me whole for the faulty product. Seems pretty straight forward to me, I will see how things progress this week. I am not going to name the retailer as the manager has been extremely supportive up to this point. I will update the forum once the issue has been brought to disposition.

Regards,
Brad