First drone crash

[MavicMapper]

Well... it was bound to happen eventually. Crashed my M2P today while doing road surveys. I was using Pix4DCapture to scan several roadway alignments and knicked the top of a tree while in autonomous flight mode. The drone went down fast and hard from 75ft. It is pretty banged up as you can see in the pics


I bought it at Best Buy so am now in the process of making a geek squad claim. Anyone dealt with them before? I am out of town for work so am hoping to get a new one today so I can finish my scans (at a higher altitude this time [emoji1360]).

Just thought I’d share my first (and hopefully only) drone fail!

FYI there was no property damage or bodily injury (rural area) so no reports to the FAA necessary. Also was using SkyWatch.io insurance for liability only.

 

[BigAl07]

Hopefully you can get it replaced quickly.

You might want to reach out to djidrone Service (Not actually DJI btw)
Family Owned & Operated
Free Inspection & Free Shipping
www.djidroneservice.com

 

[MavicMapper]

Ok I’ll see how it goes w Best Buy and go from there.

Here’s the last pic that the drone took on its way down to destruction

 

[R Martin]

Ok I’ll see how it goes w Best Buy and go from there.

Here’s the last pic that the drone took on its way down to destruction View attachment 1517

Ahhhh...the spiral of death.

 

[R.Perry]

From the looks of that, it may be cheaper to just by a new drone. No telling how much internal damage. Our company had an Inspire 1 drop from 200 feet and it wasn't worth the cost of repairs. Expensive learning curve.
Wish you the best of luck.

 

[AH-1G]

Ok I’ll see how it goes w Best Buy and go from there.

Here’s the last pic that the drone took on its way down to destruction View attachment 1517

Yep, the blue screen of death.

 

[R.Perry]

Another way of looking at it, is if that were an aircraft you were actually flying in, you would be dead.
My point is there is a tendency to take chances with a drone that you would never take if you were flying in the aircraft.

 

[LUIS MARTINEZ]

Well... it was bound to happen eventually. Crashed my M2P today while doing road surveys. I was using Pix4DCapture to scan several roadway alignments and knicked the top of a tree while in autonomous flight mode. The drone went down fast and hard from 75ft. It is pretty banged up as you can see in the pics
View attachment 1513View attachment 1514View attachment 1515View attachment 1516

I bought it at Best Buy so am now in the process of making a geek squad claim. Anyone dealt with them before? I am out of town for work so am hoping to get a new one today so I can finish my scans (at a higher altitude this time [emoji1360]).

Just thought I’d share my first (and hopefully only) drone fail!

FYI there was no property damage or bodily injury (rural area) so no reports to the FAA necessary. Also was using SkyWatch.io insurance for liability only.

Welcome to the club!!! Only two types of drone pilots...those that have crashed and those that will crash. The ones who' believe they will never crash either haven't been at it long enough or are eternal optimists.

I've had two fall out of the sky due to internal issues and one I flew into a tall cactus because my friend distracted me. Expensive lesson. After the first crash one realizes drones are not infallible and why the rules exist...

 

[R.Perry]

Welcome to the club!!! Only two types of drone pilots...those that have crashed and those that will crash. The ones who' believe they will never crash either haven't been at it long enough or are eternal optimists.

I tend to disagree. Drones can crash due to mechanical or electrical failures, and by human error. The problem is lack of experience and training. Anything that flies joins the world of aviation. I have several thousand hours of flight time in various aircraft, no accidents. Now a couple hundred in three different drones and no accidents. I have also been through the Avion UAV school in Huntsville, AL

Reason being is training, then experience. The military puts pilots through extensive training, civilian aviation requires a minimum of forty flight hours to get a pilots license. For civilians it is normally seven to ten hours before they are allowed to solo.

Average person goes down buys drone takes it out and attempts to teach him or herself how to fly it. What if the average person went out and bought and airplane and decided to teach themselves how to fly.

As for the mechanical failures, majority of the time is due to poor preventive maintenance. The company I work for lost an Inspire 1 due to catastrophic battery failure. The pilot had made a comment that he would need some new batteries soon because they were beginning to swell, basically human error.

There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.

 

[LUIS MARTINEZ]

I tend to disagree. Drones can crash due to mechanical or electrical failures, and by human error. The problem is lack of experience and training. Anything that flies joins the world of aviation. I have several thousand hours of flight time in various aircraft, no accidents. Now a couple hundred in three different drones and no accidents. I have also been through the Avion UAV school in Huntsville, AL

Reason being is training, then experience. The military puts pilots through extensive training, civilian aviation requires a minimum of forty flight hours to get a pilots license. For civilians it is normally seven to ten hours before they are allowed to solo.

Average person goes down buys drone takes it out and attempts to teach him or herself how to fly it. What if the average person went out and bought and airplane and decided to teach themselves how to fly.

As for the mechanical failures, majority of the time is due to poor preventive maintenance. The company I work for lost an Inspire 1 due to catastrophic battery failure. The pilot had made a comment that he would need some new batteries soon because they were beginning to swell, basically human error.

There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.

Bovine feces!!!! Don't forget you are talking to a pilot, perhaps one not as good an aviator as you. When a planes crashes we pilots all think it has to be pilot error. It reinforces our belief in our superiority and reassures us we are always in control. "It had to be pilot error, but I am too smart, it can't happen to me!". If we didn't believe it we'd never go up again.

I had a P3 dropped from the sky, motor just stopped (obviously my fault), and a P4 that decided to go on it's own and ignore all my commands (maybe it didn't like me). Eventually came down and crashed. P3 was out of warranty but the dealer replaced the P4, not bad for pilot error...

Your statement that "As for the mechanical failures, majority of the time is due to poor preventive maintenance" is an incredibly naive, uninformed opinion. Machines break for no logical reasons.

"The problem is lack of experience and training. "
Could you explain how the deaths of the three Apollo 1 astronauts were pilot error? Guess Grissom wasn't experienced enough? Shuttles Challenger and Columbia were pilot errors? Anything mans puts up in the sky can drop for a thousand reasons. Happens all the time; were the 737MAX crashes and deaths pilot error?

Funny thing, I used to think the same way about the mythical flyaway...it has to be rookie pilots. Those two crashes changed my mind in a hurry. I sincerely wish your super UAS pilot luck holds forever and your drones stay aloft.

"There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."
And there are no old arrogant pilots, either.

 

[PatR]

For the 737’s it was history repeating itself with a manufacturer covering up issues and putting profit ahead of passenger safety.

As for experience, those that have it tend to crash less or not at all compared to those without. It’s been 5 years since my last “pilot error” multirotor crash, and 3 since the one and only flight controller malfunction.

We will agree the vast majority of multirotors are nowhere close to design and product standards used in full scale aviation. Because of that equipment failures will remain a fact of life until certification standards are developed and implemented. When that happens crashes will almost cease to occur as few will be able to afford a multirotor.

 

[BigAl07]

I don't think it's even remotely reasonable to compare Manned Aviation with sUAS in terms of crashes, maintenance , equipment etc because we're comparing certificated aircraft, procedures, and personnel to off-the-shelf un-certified units. That's comparing apples to pineapples.

I do think that those coming from manned aviation (many in this very forum) have a huge advantage over those who don't. When you're life is on the line you look at things differently and many of us have safety and risk mitigation pounded into our very core. We can't help but treat most everything in our lives as if we are going for that first Test Ride. It drives my wife crazy LOL!

I don't even have a small fraction of the manned hours many of you have... I'm simply a private pilot who flies when I can for fun. My experience in manned aviation is a sliver of what many of you have and I fully understand and respect that. I'm a newbie (in hours not years) in Manned Aviation.

With that being said, other than someone who has flown sUAS or UAS for the military, or some other similar endeavor, there are few people with more total flight hours than I have. I have an excellent record in regards to "Modern" sUAS especially with these stabilized and automated units we call drones. Even with all those hours and a deeply entrenched desire for safety and risk mitigation I have lost (1) sUAS completely due to faulty equipment. I lost a Phantom3P because of a battery error that popped up mid-flight with no previous warnings of any kind. There was absolutely nothing I could do to prevent it from being lost and my only option was to try and make the "forced landing" uneventful for people on the ground (it ended up being a water "landing").

I do think that most all sUAS crashes (at least in the high 90%) are indeed pilot/operator error in some degree I do know for a fact that at least 1 was not. I'm not saying I've not crashed other aircraft that WAS indeed pilot error but I have 1 in my record book that was not LOL.

 

[BigAl07]

@MavicMapper sorry about the long winded reply and OFF TOPIC!!

 

[R.P..R]

Knock on wood, I haven’t crashed a drone. [emoji23] Fear is my homeboy, thus I triple check.

 

[R.Perry]

Bovine feces!!!! Don't forget you are talking to a pilot, perhaps one not as good an aviator as you. When a planes crashes we pilots all think it has to be pilot error. It reinforces our belief in our superiority and reassures us we are always in control. "It had to be pilot error, but I am too smart, it can't happen to me!". If we didn't believe it we'd never go up again.

I'm fully aware that many here are general aviation or commercial pilots. If I come arrogant I apologize. Every pilot knows that they are capable of making mistakes, I have made plenty of them, fortunately none have resulted in an accident. In the Navy we had a distinction between pilots and aviators, and with that brought a element of arrogance and I was guilty of until I finally realized my own vulnerability and imperfections.

Yes, any of us can screw up, any of us can have an accident that is beyond our control. Preventive maintenance only reduces the risk of failure, it doesn't eliminate it. One of the things high time pilots can become guilty of is complacency, and that can be a fatal trap.

My point was probably not well presented, I believe those flying drones should have some level of training prior to venturing off. What was required to get the 107, a written test, and no performance evaluation, to me that is irresponsible on the FAA's part.

Cheers

 

[AH-1G]

My point was probably not well presented, I believe those flying drones should have some level of training prior to venturing off. What was required to get the 107, a written test, and no performance evaluation, to me that is irresponsible on the FAA's part.

TOTALLY AGREE!!

 

[BigAl07]

My point was probably not well presented, I believe those flying drones should have some level of training prior to venturing off. What was required to get the 107, a written test, and no performance evaluation, to me that is irresponsible on the FAA's part.

Cheers

I also TOTALLY agree. I gotta admit I'm ashamed that it's as easy as it is. I literally know people who have never even owned/flown a sUAS who have their Part 107 just in case their company goes that route.

A card/certification with no actual demonstration of ability to do the task isn't worth the paper (or plastic) it's written on IMHO.

 

[R.Perry]

And there are no old arrogant pilots, either.

I'll be 71 this year.

 

[LUIS MARTINEZ]

 

[MavicMapper]

Well I should have made some popcorn before reading these responses.

Truth be told I am not a manned aircraft pilot and have only been flying drones for 8 months (4 months commercially). I am developing the drone program at my company and I’ll be the first to admit that I have a LOT to learn.

On this crash I learned that sacrificing a bit of resolution in my point cloud and orthomosaic is preferable to sacrificing my drone. I am going to buy a handheld elevation finder in order to identify vertical instructions/hazards on future flights and be more conservative about the altitude I define when performing scans.