I just read Scott's interesting thread on crashes, and it reminded me of some of the crashes I've had in the past. I saved a lot of the footage from those early crashes to learn from. These were all with my first copter, an Okto, and 140 gimbal,... all in the months after assembly, and learning to fly. Fortunately,... knock on some wood, I haven't crashed in over a year, and have not crashed my Cinestar,... and would prefer not to. The learning curve is pretty steep. Brady Brandwood http://www.fototime.com/2C1A8245A71101C/convx264.mp4
You got that right, Brady. As Casey Van Nyhuis said during my flight training: "Never fall in love with anything you fly with radio control because sooner or later you're going to crash it...." Andy.
Andy that reminds me of a running joke my son and I have when we play Modern Warfare 3,... we say "Never bask in your glory, when you're having a good game",... as soon as you do someone drops a predator missile on you. Brady
What a sad sight....but it does make me realize, there really are benefits to landing in trees -- they're like a giant catcher's mitt and cushion the aircraft so much nicer than "terra way too damn firma...." The trick is to land in the tree in such a way that (a) it doesn't trap the copter 50 feet up, and (b) it doesn't drop out of the tree on to said terra firma. You need the copter to arrive just about five feet off the ground resting gently on the lower branches.... Andy.
I have to compliment the design of the CS frame. I had a flip of death and it only broke two booms. Easy repair. I've had a bunch of little tip-overs back in the early days and it took the beating with ease. The CS gimble saved me too, when I ran a battery set way too long and didn't have enough power to land at an "appropriate" speed it came down into some soft sand and since the legs stuck in about 4" the tilt booms were forced up, unbalancing the camera, but didn't cause any damage. I've seen so many of those AV200's crash and the results ain't pretty. It's not really a question of IF, but When. If you haven't crashed yet, you haven't been flying that long.
Fools. Looks like smoke coming from one of the escs almost a minute in. Thank heavens this wasn't recorded in the U.S.