Battery #1 - Manual flying in various modes. Practiced landings. A little FPV flying. Battery very hot after landing.
Battery #2 - Took it up to 120 meters (393 feet) in Loiter. Quad did great and seemed to hold a fixed position. Never been this high before (about 90 meters was old max). Tower/DP3 warnings sounded as I got close to 400 foot limit. At apogee, I slowly did a 360 to take-in the view.
I started my way down. At about 60 meters, LowVoltageAlarm starts to sound even though I was only about 6 minutes into flight, so I slightly accelerated my descent. At about 30 meters, the quad started to wobble. Apparently I was descending too fast and the Nova had entered a Vortex Ring State (VRS). I gave it more power but the VRS seemed to be affecting the thrust and it was falling too fast. The Tower/DP3 "Imminent Ground Collision Warning" was going off now even though I had the throttle at max now.
The Nova bounced off the ground pretty hard. The gimbal and Mobius got slammed into the ground. I could see part of the landing gear had broken off (laying on ground) but quad was still flying, gimbal was still working, and camera still recording. I flew it a few more seconds to get my bearings and landed it (remember, LVA was going off this whole time).
Edit: After flight analysis reveals I made at least 2 piloting mistakes.
1. Descending too quickly (for a quad with this payload and so little net thrust).
2. After entering VRS, I continued to descend straight down.
So far, it looks like the damage is just:
- Broken landing gear.
- Gimbal lower aluminum plate bent at 45-degree angle. Not sure how gimbal is still working and board didn't short-out.
- Quick MP check (getting logs) reveals Nova's accel/gyro calib. is now way off (severely lilted).
Not really a crash, but 2nd most damage done in an afternoon.
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