We don't have a thread for this do we - the idea of an almost disaster, narrowly avoided. I've just had one so thought I would share - please add your own :)
Quick background, a magazine asked me to build up this kit and review it. It's called a MattyStunz 5" racing kit from LiftRC - it's quite nice looking with a very low profile.
(https://c7.staticflickr.com/8/7413/27933986342_bc3b980148_c.jpg)
I needed some photos in flight of this for the magazine, so although it's a windy day, I figured we could quickly snap a shot or two of this thing, because I really started thrashing it around and made it all dirty, and potentially broke it.
My daughter snapped this one, which I think is a reasonable little photo
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7228/27755859800_9e5b641cca_c.jpg)
With that one in the bag and the weather holding, I pulled down the FatSharks and took it for an FPV test flight. All was going ok, I'd bombed along under the tree line, and then went up high to check how it was in some flips/rolls - y'know safe up nice and high justin case it was a bit sluggish. Was ok, I made a mental note to up the roll value, and then suddenly no video.
"I've lost video" I shouted, yay - I actually had two spotters this time.
"I see it" my wife says, "you need to go down."
Of course going down gently is a bit of a tricky proposition when you can't see it, and there was a very fine line between go up lots and go down on the throttle. So I pulled up my FatSharks to look, and then remembering that with a -6.25 prescription, unless it was less than 4 inches away I was screwed.
"Glasses quick" I shouted, and my daughter went to fetch them. Meanwhile my wife told me that I just needed to have come down, but now it was too late. Arrgh, what did she mean.
I got my glasses on and looked. I couldn't see it ! Have you ever had someone pointing to something in the distance with you saying "where, where ?" Yep similar thing.
My wife is yelling "there, you blind twat", and I'm following her arm along like a rifle scope shouting "where, where !"
After what seemed like an eternity I saw this black dot of no discernible shape in the sky... way out and way way high. I'm not the greatest los flyer in the world, but the first thing I had done when the video went is flip it to self level. Happily after several stick pushes I was able to work out which way it was reacting and bring it back.
So what happened ? Well, there's just 20mm between the top and bottom frame parts and my x4r-sb and the VTX are on top of one another at the rear of the quad. Having just tried giving the frame a good tap at the back and recreating the problem - what had happened is that the harder flip/roll maneuvers had pressed the channel button, and it had managed to move forward around 4 channels ! So I'm going to reposition everything so it's a bit safer now.
I did have the Mobius recording, so I'll have a look at that later, but it's never going to be as dramatic as what was going through my mind
hahaha, changed video frequency mid flight lol