Last night the Phantom 3 (aka McLeod One) had an equipment failure and fell from 100ft. I’ll have more details of the crash and the repair efforts as we move forward but wanted to share a first look at the dissected quad-copter. From what I can tell a propeller came off one of the engines and that caused the fall. The front right arm was severely damaged but the camera and main board appear to be in good shape.
Post crash – removed the components and did a visual inspection of parts. From what I can tell everything appears to be in at least decent working order. Ordered a new Phantom 3 shell from DJI that should (hopefully) be here soon. Next I’ll reassemble and test to see what else could be broken or damaged. At this point I have no estimate on when we’ll be airborne again.
Here is my first crash on July 15, 2015 a few days after purchasing the machine. I was relatively quiet about it at the time because unlike the current issue this one was very much pilot error – fortunately it didn’t require a massive rebuild.
Bottom line – this is why you should never fly over people. Doesn’t matter your experience or how new or well built your machine is. The possibility of a mistake or a malfunction is high enough to cause damage. I’ll keep everyone updated on the status of the machine as we move forward in the rebuild process.
