My first quad I've ever built/flown...
It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon here in Chattanooga so I thought I'd do some practice flying around the front yard. Past few flights have been just fine but also done at night (only free time lately) and thus rather limiting to range and altitude...
This time I sent it up a ways (about 30 feet or so) to work on keeping my bearings above my head. I started bringing it back down at one point but it got caught in its own rotor wash and began to rock around a lot. Now, thankfully I had watched a video not that long ago on Youtube about this and learned that a good tactic is to not add more throttle but rather to try and fly forward to get out of the turbulent air. This mostly worked. Instead of the clean escape I had planned it ended up coming around and heading for the house. Now, this probably would have been fine and I feel pretty confident that I could have saved it had I been behind the quad rather then to its right which threw off my bearings. All this to say, when it made contact with the gutter drain pipe the flight came to a rather sudden stop. Thankfully no damage to the house or to the motor/prop. Only damage was a broken boom arm which I'll be able to replace next time I stop by the hardware store. Note to self, buy extra square dowels this time...
I did consider using this as an excuse to build a tri-copter instead but I think I'll just fix the arm and stick with the quad for now.
I added the sections of pool noodle so I wasn't just landing straight onto the frame of the quad but then found they weren't thick enough to keep the battery off the ground so I added a little bit more noodle.
It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon here in Chattanooga so I thought I'd do some practice flying around the front yard. Past few flights have been just fine but also done at night (only free time lately) and thus rather limiting to range and altitude...
This time I sent it up a ways (about 30 feet or so) to work on keeping my bearings above my head. I started bringing it back down at one point but it got caught in its own rotor wash and began to rock around a lot. Now, thankfully I had watched a video not that long ago on Youtube about this and learned that a good tactic is to not add more throttle but rather to try and fly forward to get out of the turbulent air. This mostly worked. Instead of the clean escape I had planned it ended up coming around and heading for the house. Now, this probably would have been fine and I feel pretty confident that I could have saved it had I been behind the quad rather then to its right which threw off my bearings. All this to say, when it made contact with the gutter drain pipe the flight came to a rather sudden stop. Thankfully no damage to the house or to the motor/prop. Only damage was a broken boom arm which I'll be able to replace next time I stop by the hardware store. Note to self, buy extra square dowels this time...
I did consider using this as an excuse to build a tri-copter instead but I think I'll just fix the arm and stick with the quad for now.
I added the sections of pool noodle so I wasn't just landing straight onto the frame of the quad but then found they weren't thick enough to keep the battery off the ground so I added a little bit more noodle.
