$140 OF DRONE DAMAGE IN A SINGLE HIT
- Thread starter War Chest
- Start date
evranch
Well-known member
Nice flying until the pole strike. Total writeoff, eh?
My worst crash was while tuning the autopilot on my Maja UAV. It stalled a wing in a turn and entered a spiral dive. By the time I got in control and stabilized it, I was too close to the ground and too fast to pull up gently, so I pulled up hard and crossed my fingers. Snapped the wing spars and then tore the wing from the fuselage. The fuselage hit the ground like a ton of bricks and broke up, the wing came fluttering down after. Definitely a sinking feeling in my stomach as I took the truck over to gather the debris field.
Despite having ~$700 of equipment in the crash, the camera and autopilot survived the landing, and it took awhile, but I was able to reassemble the chunks of fuselage, reattach the tail surfaces, and extract and replace the spars with new carbon fiber rods. It still flies today, though she is a little fragile. I like foamboard, but EPP puts almost everything else to shame for durability.
I must have been really lucky that day, the only thing I had to write off was the $100 battery. The balance lead tore off, shorting one cell for awhile before the lead burned off. No fire, but the internal resistance of that cell was shot forever. I installed a new balance lead and it now runs my goggles! So, terrible crash, but only my time really was lost.
My worst crash was while tuning the autopilot on my Maja UAV. It stalled a wing in a turn and entered a spiral dive. By the time I got in control and stabilized it, I was too close to the ground and too fast to pull up gently, so I pulled up hard and crossed my fingers. Snapped the wing spars and then tore the wing from the fuselage. The fuselage hit the ground like a ton of bricks and broke up, the wing came fluttering down after. Definitely a sinking feeling in my stomach as I took the truck over to gather the debris field.
Despite having ~$700 of equipment in the crash, the camera and autopilot survived the landing, and it took awhile, but I was able to reassemble the chunks of fuselage, reattach the tail surfaces, and extract and replace the spars with new carbon fiber rods. It still flies today, though she is a little fragile. I like foamboard, but EPP puts almost everything else to shame for durability.
I must have been really lucky that day, the only thing I had to write off was the $100 battery. The balance lead tore off, shorting one cell for awhile before the lead burned off. No fire, but the internal resistance of that cell was shot forever. I installed a new balance lead and it now runs my goggles! So, terrible crash, but only my time really was lost.
OliverW
Legendary member
My worst crash was with my 50cc redwing extra 330sc. I pulled up gently at about 3/4 throttle, snapping the right wing. I limped it around, maybe was 300ft from the end of the runway, started to come out if a turn and it snapped and spun in. On first look,the damage wasn't that bad. Then we picked it up and everything on the inside was destroyed! Probably were out over a 1,000 dollars. We hated that plane.
War Chest
Member
This is the truist truism. I've never had that happen personally but I've seen it happen and it's painful to watch.
