Caution Compass Calibration Danger! Motors Started Turning!

[Kirk Pleasant]

DJI has sent me an Analysis form which I completed and I have sent them my logs.

Cheers

 

[The Editor]

DJI has sent me an Analysis form which I completed and I have sent them my logs.

Cheers

Was it Autumn that sent them to you - She will look after you

 

[Mani]

Mani,
It is absolutely real.
I know The Editor says it can't happen but fly-ways, voltage drops and loss of controls are not supposed to happen but they do.
I will send an email this morning to DJI and the flight logs once I figure out how to download them. I checked my Ipad flight records and there is nothing there. It didn't register it as a flight even though this lasted a few minutes.
Maybe temperature was a factor. I had flown for 42 minutes (over 5 batteries, taking them down to about 60% so I could check them and then give them a full charge for a shoot today) with a temperature of about 38 - 40 deg C.

Cheers

Well, I'm looking forward to see what DJI has to say about this incident, as I am pretty sure a lot of people reading this thread are not dancing very closely with their Inspire these days...
The good thing is you still have both of your arms and your Inspire in one piece, so it looks like a happy end for me
Hope you'll have your answer soon, I'm a liitle bit curious about your flight zone, as we share the same local time, but defintely not the weather, as you were mentioning 38-40 degrees ( I assume Celsius).
Middle East, Turkey ?

 

[Kirk Pleasant]

Middle East... that is why the picture is a camel

 

[wellysm]

The reason the I1 started is because of that wind gust you had mentioned. There have been several reports of quads (including i1) starting when there is enough wind to turn the props (the motors generate enough energy to signal the ecs to start)

 

[huppe]

Power up everything, go to advanced settings in the app, enter flight recorder mode, connect a computer to the USB port in the tail of the Inspire and grab the files there. There is one file each time you power up.

And leave your props off

 

[Kirk Pleasant]

The reason the I1 started is because of that wind gust you had mentioned. There have been several reports of quads (including i1) starting when there is enough wind to turn the props (the motors generate enough energy to signal the ecs to start)

The reason the I1 started is because of that wind gust you had mentioned. There have been several reports of quads (including i1) starting when there is enough wind to turn the props (the motors generate enough energy to signal the ecs to start)

Wellysm- Thanks for your info.
I thought that the props being spun by the wind might have had something to do with it.
As a matter of practice now...I do leave off the props if I have to calibrate the compass.

Cheers

 

[Kilrah]

Good lead. My colleague has actually been out on a shoot on a lake recently, and it was incredibly windy... the I1 handled beautifully in flight as always, but 2 people injured themselves while handling the unpowered beast after flying and the props started turning through windmilling. With 30km/h of wind the large, small pitch props will basically turn as fast as if the bird was in flight. Even without electric power they sure have the energy to do a serious cut/snap.

 

[Tahoe Ed]

11MB is not a valid flight data log. I am not sure that we can get anything off of it. The temperature should not have been a factor.

 

[The Editor]

@Kirk Pleasant - please dont think I'm saying you are imagining what happened as you obviously suffered what could have been a very serious injury but as someone who has designed and built many multirotors and used multiple flight controllers over the years I'm not seeing how, props spinning in the wind generating some back emf into the esc FETS can then somehow translate into logic data stream into the flight controller to tell the motors to fire up?
In order for the esc's to arm, the receiver and therefore the flight controller has to 'see' full stick throw in four axis.
Without this logic being true the FC will not give the motor start command and thus the esc will not initiate.

There must be some other influencing factor here to cause this incident.

I will monitor this one with interest.......

 

[Kilrah]

Or just confusion, and not understanding the windmilling problem. If you don't consider that the only reason for props to turn is "the motors have started", hence the report.

I'd personally think nothing actually went wrong, the props just started turning in the wind (he does mention high winds, and they "strangely" started turning when the craft was nose down i.e. wind goes through props). Will be very hard to know for sure though.

 

[Demented1]

I always have that thought it would do just that with my luck (bad one). Kirk, with that happened to you, I now will put the props on after compass cal. Thanks for letting us know that happened.

Great Idea.
I'm adjusting my pre flight check list to reflect this.

 

[SimonMW]

I NEVER calibrate with the props on for this very reason. I have also seen power going to the Inspire from wind. I once flew from a hill top and decided to land as the wind was starting to pick up quite a bit. I powered everything down and carried the rig to a more sheltered area to pack up. As I was walking along the wind started turning the propellors enough for the battery to power itself up along with the power on beeping sound!