Before Santa came...............

[Bad Raven]

A little tale from Christmas Eve while the rest of the house wakes up...................

Yesterday I was flying my new "quick" build Martian 95 brushed indoors (really must get on and finish the brushless one!) and I clipped a chair leg brace going under it with the aerial.

Normally no biggie, but to gain space for the Rx over CG I';d had to invert the battery mount, so the Cam was sitting on top rather than in a restraining slot.  Again no Biggie as the two loom bands tensioned it up pretty tight and its wider both ways stance than normal (its a Quanum unit that does not fit the usual holder style) made it pretty stable.

EXCEPT as the cam sprung back out of the way, it got over centre and folded back.

Hey, normally still no Biggie, Eh?   Well, this time it was as the RHCP head managed to slot a "point" right through all the obstacles like wiring, etc and straight down onto the incoming power connection to the FC. Now as I was flying LOS round the Dining Room, testing PIDs, what I saw was a sudden Red Arrows smoke trail!! 

Snatching the quad up off the (carpeted) floor, I rapidly pulled the battery connection apart.

I lifted the camera back to position, (soldered wiring, no connector) and with great trepidation plugged the battery back in ready to snatch it apart again.............

And all the normal lights and sounds came from the FC........................ 

And the relatively quite expensive Camera bought before they became cheaper and smaller was stone dead.......................................................... 

Up to the workshop and under the mag lamp, and no visible damage to FC, OR to camera.  So I went to remove the camera to fly the quad, and at that point felt rather than saw what had happened.  Roughly half way down the black small gauge camera feed wire the silicone insulation was springing apart when pulled!

The neutral supply wire had acted like a fuse, and failed inside its undamaged looking insulation!   

SO, I rewired the camera feed and with even more trepidation, put the headset on the bench wedged so I could see the screen, then plugged the camera into a 150mAh battery. 

And up it came working perfectly!      Left it on for a soak test, and its fine.

Flew the Quad sans camera, it works as before. 

Next job, build a better camera holder for it and reconnct it!! 

FINALLY, put a small dob of insulating hot glue over the main battery wire connections

Happy Christmas !!

[DarkButterfly]

Bloody lucky

The smoke trail must have looked impressive, apart from having a smoking quadcopter on the carpet.
Good thing it';s still working

Merry Christmas

[Paul01]

use conformal coating, its like nail varnish and water proofs your quad at the same time, and the best bit is it glows under UV light so you can see which bits you missed :-)

Glad you had a lucky escape.