Captain Average
Junior Member
Tricopter crashes in Poppy flowers - folding arms & how it looks five time in a row!
I had one of those days where it kept going wrong. Battery alarm not going off in time to return or not heard, props snapping mid flight, cable ties failing, poor flying and more often than not the arms folding back! I have only just realized that this is what was going wrong on a number of my crashes!
Thought I would share what I've started to learn and how to recognize it.
- A roll starts to happen is the first indication and the throttle response to climb is slower and a dutch roll starts when you slow down
If you keep flying then:
- Speed increases and the nose goes down and back stick has little authority
- Stick response is slow and descent rate increases and instinctively one adds throttle
- Dive fully develops as CofG shifts forward and thrust angle is behind CofG and you are ballistic from here on in so reduce throttle and back stick to cut all motors and stay as flat as possible
- Yaw and momentum is all you have left so pick the soft spots and ride the ballistic arc into the deck!
I have attached a video showing four crashes due to the arms folding to varying degrees and the inverted roll is the motor cable ties going. The last crash along the irrigator went ballistic as soon as I got to the machine and added throttle to climb and all I could do was turn away from the water and just miss the rock pile.
Cable ties, four props and a spare servo fully prepped were the spares I needed to rebuild each time but it wasn't till I got home and reviewed the footage that I saw my shadows and started to join the dots. I did get all the shots but it was embarrassing crashing a dozen times in front of a TV crew but they were impressed by how resilient the machine was!
Cheers
*EDIT*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivae2R-Tjbo Crash vid thanks for pointing out my error thedoble
http://youtu.be/TrxxGqspl0E
I had one of those days where it kept going wrong. Battery alarm not going off in time to return or not heard, props snapping mid flight, cable ties failing, poor flying and more often than not the arms folding back! I have only just realized that this is what was going wrong on a number of my crashes!
Thought I would share what I've started to learn and how to recognize it.
- A roll starts to happen is the first indication and the throttle response to climb is slower and a dutch roll starts when you slow down
If you keep flying then:
- Speed increases and the nose goes down and back stick has little authority
- Stick response is slow and descent rate increases and instinctively one adds throttle
- Dive fully develops as CofG shifts forward and thrust angle is behind CofG and you are ballistic from here on in so reduce throttle and back stick to cut all motors and stay as flat as possible
- Yaw and momentum is all you have left so pick the soft spots and ride the ballistic arc into the deck!
I have attached a video showing four crashes due to the arms folding to varying degrees and the inverted roll is the motor cable ties going. The last crash along the irrigator went ballistic as soon as I got to the machine and added throttle to climb and all I could do was turn away from the water and just miss the rock pile.
Cable ties, four props and a spare servo fully prepped were the spares I needed to rebuild each time but it wasn't till I got home and reviewed the footage that I saw my shadows and started to join the dots. I did get all the shots but it was embarrassing crashing a dozen times in front of a TV crew but they were impressed by how resilient the machine was!
Cheers
*EDIT*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivae2R-Tjbo Crash vid thanks for pointing out my error thedoble
http://youtu.be/TrxxGqspl0E
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