The day (17/10/18) I lost the Inspire

Soooo glad you got her back but oooh the suspense is killing me to hear about it.

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Thats great that you found it. Hope it has video footage you can share

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Phew !, bet thatā€™s a load off your mind that the ā€œBaby is back in the pramā€, so to speak !.
Come on put us out of our misery, what do you think happened !

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Hold onā€¦ So had you already found the inspire when you made this post?

Iā€™m confused.

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Yes, I didnā€™t say I hadnā€™t found it, that wouldnā€™t have added to the suspense :rofl:
I found it about an hour later, I will get on with the story soon.

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Aaaawrgh the suspense is worthy of a penny a week instalment by Charles Dickens

Iā€™m a slow typer with a lot of distractions :rofl:

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Sorry for the delay, have been busy with one thing or another and trying to save the flight logs was proving difficult, the reason I couldnā€™t save them is that I didnā€™t have the iTunes window maximised, as soon as I did the buttons appeared at the bottom right, how stupid is that?
Anyway, back to it.
After pressing RTH and it didnā€™t come back I did try Go4 to see if it would connect, obviously it never.
I left the controller beeping away on the roof of the car and got the Phantom 4 Pro out, I took it up for a 10-minute flight in the hope we might see something in the treetops maybe.
This is a photo from @Imleon Mavic Air before I went missing, you can see why we were searching for a needle in a haystack.

I got Find My Aircraft up on Litchi but that is just a plain map and with no data connection on the iPad we were stuffed there, we could see a stream/brook on that map so we got Google maps up on out phones and put a drop pin at where we thought it might be.

We then followed our maps to these locations through the dense forest, I wasnā€™t hopeful.
These were taken by @Imleon on the way down.

You can see why I was losing hope.
Iā€™m not sure how tall these were but they were bloody high, I thought at the best if we do see it there is no way we are going to climb these to get at it.
After what seemed like ages from going up and down muddy ditches we got to our drop pins on the map, we were both with 10m of each other but had no clue as to where the Inspire was or if it had dropped down into the trees or if it had carried on flying.

I then thought I saw some debris but when I got closer it was an empty beer can, remember it is now 5pm and the light is slowly fading, these photos make it look quite light in there but it was darker than this.

This was going to be a long post but Iā€™ve already let on that I found it already so Iā€™ll cut it short, Iā€™ve already shortened it as it is :laughing:

Our locations were still moving about in the trees on the maps probably because of the little signal.
After a couple of minutes of looking in the worst place we could have been so far I thought I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye, when I turned back to look I couldnā€™t see anything, I took a step back and yes, there it was 10m or so away on the other side of a deep ditch, the trees must have been in the way when I took a second glance and there is no way I would have seen it without the strobes.

I donā€™t know how the hell it did it but it had found a bit of a clearing with fewer trees, about 5m maybe and it was on the floor amongst brambles and branches.
The battery was still on so the strobes on each leg were working as well, it had one broken prop and the camera was hanging on by one rubber.
I thought the cables had just pulled out of the carrier but when inspecting last night both plugs are broken.

When we got back to the car I tried another battery in it and it started up and ran okay, I didnā€™t try to take off though.
I tried the sd card in the computer when I got home and had the same thing as I did with the MP the other week telling me to format the card, I did the recovery thing and it recovered everything on the card (including the stuff that was on it before the format at the flight start yesterday) apart from the video up to and including the crash.

I donā€™t know what I need to share for the experts to look at the data from Litchi.
I do know it was 273.4m or 897ft away from the Home Point and it was last recorded at a height of 87.5m or 287.1ft.
I remember seeing 47% battery when I lost connection.

Sorry it has been a long drawn out thread, I planned on doing it in one last night but I was shattered and have been busy doing life today.
I would recommend to anyone that doesnā€™t have the strobes to get them.
Iā€™m sure there was more I meant to add but Iā€™ve bored you all enough.
Any help with what I need to do with Airdata and sharing whatever I need to try and see if there is any more I can find out would be appreciated.

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I did lift this from the one video I recovered though, at least I came away with something after the recovery of the file and Inspire.
Ironically this is the area it went down on the second pass.
BTW, I got lucky as I have plenty of props and the two cables I found on Heliguy for Ā£3.

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Wow. Glad thereā€™s no bears or wolves about these days, it looks pretty spooky in those woods.
If you copy the airdata file to a file sharing app such as ā€˜drop boxā€™ then click on the file to copy a link, then post the link on here. That should work. There maybe other ways but Iā€™ve not found one yet.

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Thanks Richard for the information
I take it you will never use Litchi againā€¦
As a suggestion if you did use Litchi would you screen record as well to be on the safe side?
I think that is something I will do in future when using Litchi following your incident

Regards
Jeff

Since you have the Inspire, you can use the onboard log files that will have all the data for the flight - before and after disconnection.

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Sorry to here.

Sorry you lost it, glad you found it :smiley:

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Thank you Brian, which file is it I need to copy?

I canā€™t honestly say to be honest Jeff, not sure if it was pilot error, the Inspire had issues or if Litchi was to blame, Iā€™m thinking Litchi is last on the list with me at the top.
Iā€™ll maybe do a few more test missions with Litchi first and if they go well then just use it for missions only.

Thank you Dave, where would I find them? Connect to Assistant 2 is it?

No worries, I got it back is the main thing.

Thank you @Paul_M
Iā€™m glad I found it too :grinning:

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The one thing I havenā€™t said which I should do is the biggest thank you to my mate @Imleon for his help and time looking for it, itā€™s very much appreciated :+1:

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Probably - I donā€™t have an Inspire.
A quick Google gives me ā€¦

But no idea if that method is Mac compatible or if itā€™s up-to-date with current software/firmware.
I just Googled ā€œinspire 1 flight log viewerā€

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Okay, thank you, Iā€™ll look into it.

You can retrieve the .DAT file using this method.

https://datfile.net/DatCon/retrieve.html

You can then use CSV viewer which is available on that site.

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Sync your flight records when youā€™ve got Airdata, believe it or not I do it on my phone.
Iā€™ve highlighted on the photos what you need to click on to make it easier.
Open up Airdata and click on ā€˜my logsā€™ at the top of the page.
This will give you a list on the left side of ALL your flights, click on the one you want, mine has a box ticked at 0652hrs.
Go across to just above the google earth map and click on Notifications, this will the show a small blue box with ā€˜hdplayerā€™
Click on this and it will replay the entire flight with warnings etc.
If you then click on copy & copy this to a Dropbox or ā€˜we shareā€™ app, you can then post the link onto here.
Phew.

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