Wednesday, September 9, 2015

380 crash landing!

I was flying the 2nd battery when suddenly the heli lost power and dropped to the ground!  I was only hovering at the time and all I could do was turn the motor off, but I guess it already was off?  The heli flat landed and tipped over!  The tail blades got scuffed up, one main blade had a small hole in it, and the boom had a paint chip. Pretty minor damage. I'll probably replace the main blades to be safe. I was pissed about the failure though. I'm wondering if the motor or ESC overheated? Maybe the battery is bad?  It was pretty hot out and I only waited about 10 minutes to fly again after my 1st pack. The damage was minor enough that I flew my last battery with no issues.



When I got home I tested the suspect battery. It was able to hold a constant 20A load with no problem. It's IR and capacity rating are what I would expect. I downloaded the data logs from the flight where the motor shut off. The esc temp peaked at almost 170F.  There were no drops in the BEC or battery voltage.  The only thing I can think of now is the motor was too hot?  Maybe a loss of the radio signal and it went into fail safe?  Maybe the Vbar governor cut the throttle?

I'm going to attempt to run the suspect battery again, but on the ground and see if it shuts down again. I'll need to pay attention to any error codes from the ESC or satellite receiver.  I'm also bringing my temp gun to get a reading on the motor. 

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