My First (And Last) Two Drone Flights

Alright, so here it is; the story of my first drone / miniquad flights. But before I get into it I want to thank everyone for the support on my post from yesterday (https://steemit.com/drone/@tadejgasparovic/my-first-miniquad-drone-build). I can't believe my post was trending again (and it still is at the time of writing this). I really appreciate all the support. I never even imagined my post would be trending.

Ok, so here's what happened. My first flight happened in the evening since I didn't have the time to go fly earlier and I didn't want to wait another day to go fly during the day. This in itself was a bad decision since it was my first time flying a quadcopter and I was barely able to see it while it was in the air. Luckily there were street lights nearby so I could at least see the general direction in which it was pointing. So, I set the quad on the ground, armed it and gave it some throttle. The quad ascended a couple of meters and the feeling was amazing. Something I made actually flies! I was excited and I felt a rush of adrenaline. But obviously because this quad doesn't have GPS position locking nor was I flying in angle or horizon mode (I went straight for ACRO) the quad started to drift. I tried my best to keep it in place, but that only made it worse. On one occasion I almost hit myself in the head at about 20-30 km/h!! Luckily I was able to disarm and duck down before the quad hit me. Definitely not a toy! Of course I just laughed it off and continued to fly. A couple crashes later and I still haven't broken a single propeller! As a matter of fact none of them were even bent! Something else did break though. The C clip that holds the motor bell (the top part that spins) and the motor stator (the part that's bolted to the frame). I assumed that the clips need to be replaced (obviously), but since the quad seemed to still fly even without the clips on (the magnets were strong enough) I continued to fly the whole battery having to put the motor bells back on almost every time I crashed. In hindsight, I should've just called it a night and ordered new C clips. Later I've also tried flying in FPV, but that ended with a drop from about 10m since my video signal completely cut out right after punch-out (when I was about 5-10m away from myself).

So a couple of days later when it finally stopped raining I went out to fly again. This time it was daytime so I was able to see a lot better and I was able to keep the quad in a relatively stable hover. There were also some kids nearby and they all came to see the quad. Since I had bystanders watching and because I was confident enough hovering I decided to take it a step further and try turning; BAD IDEA! I pushed forward on the stick to get it moving, it accelerated to probably about 30-40 km/h, and when I tried turning I wasn't adding enough yaw so the turn was very sloppy to the point where you couldn't even call it a turn anymore. I was somehow able to get it back above the grass and crashed. I only bent a prop or two and the motor bells fell off, but beside that the quad was fine. At this point I should've known I wasn't ready to take it that far just yet; but stupid me decided to do it again! And so I did; I took off, pushed forward on the pitch and started accelerating. I added some roll and yaw to make the turn better this time, but instead of just adding more yaw I also added more roll and flipped upside down. THAT'S BAD! I was somehow able to roll it back up, but it was too late. I wasn't able to regain control in time and I crashed from about 10m straight into the ground. And if that wasn't bad enough, the ground was sand and I'm not talking about a sandy beach or something like that; this was a construction site so the sand was pretty rough. Nonetheless I took the walk of shame to the crash site and found the quad completely fine to my surprise! I couldn't believe it! It took the crash like a champ! So I took it back to the grass, straightened out the propellers, plugged in the battery, armed it and gave it a shake to check if everything was working. Unfortunately, when I armed it only 3 motors spun up and even when I shook it the PID loop only corrected with 3 motors. OH NO! I pulled the motor bell off of the motor that wasn't spinning up and upon closer inspection I found that because the motor bell fell off during the crash, the sand was sharp enough to cut one of the motor coils. So again, in hindsight, I should've just ordered new C clips for the motors before flying again and also, I shouldn't have pushed my skills so far. It was a stupid move to do so.

With that said though, I'm definitely not giving up on the hobby. It was a really fun experience and I'll definitely be getting some replacement motors as well as a new VTX relatively soon. I'll also get myself a brushless micro drone to fly indoors since winter is coming and I probably wont be able to fly outside much.

If you like what you've read and want more similar content please upvote, follow, comment, resteem, and thank you again for all the support on my previous post!