Looks like this weekend hasn't gone well for me either.... After fixing up my Tricopter from the previous week, I took it down to a different local park to the one I go to. Good news was I met another guy who walked up as i was setting up, he asked if he could share the airspace. I had no issues and he started setting up.
I took off and all was good - new site is very turbulent but manageable (tri was going bouncing from flat to up to 30 degree lean to the side to hold position on loiter), I flew around for a while without any issues. After around 10mins for some reason as I was flying I had the same problem as last time, the left motor seemed to drop and it rolled upside down and fell 4m to the ground. Almost made it around again but the rear hit the ground first. So I should be able to flip in about 6m, say 10m with a bit of leeway (not that this is an acro platform).
Broke the tail boom this time and the camera tray again, grrrrrr..... So now I have more repairs to make.... I needed to pull it apart to put my new method of attaching the battery tray. I plan to reverse some of the bolts so it's easier to detach parts in the future, just wish I had more time between the last fix and this one.....
Given I've had that same side drop in catastrophic failures twice now, I plan to replace the motor and esc in that location.... I'll have to bench test them to see which one is the guilty culprit....
On a plus I have my airfame and electronics, I feel for you Mandrake, nothing worse than loosing an airframe. Another plus is that I also might have a flying buddy which will be good.
I have abandoned my buying embargo, since it will take a few nights to fix it all up again. So I will start purchasing the quad parts next week, thinking of a small 250 size, but may go one up from there, haven't decided yet.
Chris
