lost my quad today while flying with RCB7X,reason-signal loss,searched for an hour but no hope,i was flying at eye level i was bringing towards myself at half the power and then turned to right,then it loses signal.And then it doesnt responds to my stick.moves sideways at pretty speed at an inclined angle over 3 story building doesnt hit any tree which is shocking, after about 10sec it becomes a dot and then disappears.
dont know what to do tomorrow i am going to find it again and really confused what to do???about 14k dissapeared into thin air.

Well...... when I was a kid..... (early 1980s)... we did not have radios in India.... I used to fly free flight models... and lost a Y Bar which just flew away with my Mills .74 cc engine.  We had cycles then... cycled my heart out to get the model but it kept flying away.... ultimately was stopped by a big wall and I could not take my cycle across.  That was the time I decided no more model losses due to not being able to catch up.  I started to run.  Daily and in 4-5 months was doing about 5-6 kms.  Soon it was deliberately increased to 10kms a day.  I was in 10th standard that time.  Thereafter I never had any problems... could run after the model.. jump walls etc etc.... and yes never lost any other model.

Moral of the story is... yes models can be lost.  One must be ready for that.  Flying in built up areas has it perils as signal loss can take place due to reflections / blockage of signals from anything (big trees, building, high tensions power lines, TV / Mob towers etc etc....).

We all need to be careful for such a thing.

Usually one puts a sticker with one's phone number so that the finder calls up [ it has happened ]

wat Flight controller ??

felt good reading your experience,in my case i coudn't run because model sped away at about 60kmph,and trees bolcked it and took just a moment before it became invisible.

it was kk2.1

those days.... it was more of Gliders and Free Flight models which had a simple one minute engine run and then they would glide...... You had no way to control the glide other than the Auto Rudder.... the wind would do the rest.

Quote from: Shyam Hembram on August 23, 2014, 08:02:03 PM
lost my quad today while flying
dont know what to do tomorrow i am going to find it again and really confused what to do???about 14k dissapeared into thin air.

Feeling bad for the loss..

What was the capacity of battery? Area in which you were flying residential or else?

Didnt you program any failsafes? Like throttle cut when throttle signal is lost? Or no inputs for half a second or more and the quad will slowly power down?

Sorry for the loss hoping you will find it. Shouldnt have let go kept on searching, now even if anyone does find it they cant contact you.

i was flying in a large field and battery was 2600mah.when i started flying it was 11.2v out of total 12.5v,not fully charged which was a good thing though. i only flew it 2-3minutes before it went out of control and with remaining charge it would have flown about more 3-4 minutes which means it could have travelled too far

Not only that but if you are saying it was gaining altitude then in 3-4 minutes it could have gone pretty far up before running out of juice. RCB7X lost signal in an open ground Is quite peculiar.

here are a few suggestions

look up the flight path on google earth and search along that line
be systematic , get three or four friends start at your point of loss and fan out along the presumed flight path.
a quad can realistically travel max about a km without input and then it will crash - so limit your arc of search to one km.
also kk 2.1 has self level. ... when you were flying did you have it enabled ?

yeh @rcneil you are correct it was gaining a constant altitude before it became too small and invisible.i think the culprit was the RX.every time i fly i often encounter signal loss.every time.TX must be fine

@shyam hembram
I usually never fly my battery down to below 11.4, or 3.8 per cell.
Occasionally down to 11.1 or 3x3.7
I would never take off at 11.2!
The problem is that sometimes at 11.1, the cells will be 3.85+3.85+3.4

My considered suggestion is never take off below 11.4, even for a circuit and bumps (ie, one circuit and landing)

I know there is a big debate on RCG/RCU about this. But my experience is that battery dependability is drastically reduced if you run it below 3.7 per cell or store for over 4 weeks at above 3.85. The battery will still work, but reliability is doubtful, as you will find out when you fly a model / motor combo that needs full throttle. Happened to a co-flyer last sunday, when one cell went to 2.8. Fortunately i was able to save his battery (hopefully) by cycling it. Will know fate tomorrow.

Trust you have set failsafe (at least low throttle) for such contingencies.
With failsafe there is no excuse for losing a model due to radio link failure.
Incidentally my FRSKY telemetry RX makes the Tx beep if reception is weak.

Sorry. Noticed that I'm talking about airplanes in a Quad flyaway thread. May be similar.

"Started Flying at 11.2 volts"
Hmm, that's the voltage to land a model

Well, since you did flew it for 2-3 mins even that too after staring at 11.2 volts, it shouldn't have been able to fly for any more than a couple of minutes extra.
Quads eats up power a lot faster since there are 4 motors eating up the power at the same time.
Also you did mentioned that the quad flew away at pretty high speed which means the voltage drop would have significantly accelerated.

Just a positive heads up for you for the morning

BTW, I hope that you did had a LiPo Alarm on board.
LiPo alarms are not just essentials for regular flights but also quite helpful in scenarios like these.

yep saikat self level was on.if you are saying it could only go upto 1km,i better not lose hope

that was my bad @Iyer sir.I never fly at 11.2v,i dint intend to fly today as i knew,it was not fully charged as there was no supply. but one of my friend insisted me to teach him so i took it out

What usually happens in flysky radios is that when the signal is lost, the receiver holds the last received position, till it regains signal. Thats probably why your quad kept its last position and sped away irrespective of any flight mode on kk2. Just had first hand experience last week(broken antenna wire).

I dont know about kk2.xx but multiwii has failsafe, which atleast makes sure copter doesnt behave in the way it happened in your case. I had lost my copter too some time ago for 3 days, but we found it because it wasnt a flyaway but a crash during FPV for reasons yet unknown. So we had an idea where it was.

And as Saikat said, take a couple of guys,perform search in some appropriate pattern. I did the same thing and it worked. Hope you find your quad back.

so @sidewinder what could be the reason for signal loss- broken antenna wire??? and yes we will go in a group of 7-8

Rx's from rcb are sometimes glitchy, be sure to replace it if it is glitchy.

Really feeling bad for your loss. Hope you get your quad ASAP. Just don't leave any place in a radius of 1km or whatever. A suggestion for all your other models and also for all of us is to have some sticker or something that has our name and contact no. on it in English as well as any other regularly spoken language. Atleast it could give some ray of hope.

this is a pretty old google map pic,and as it is rainy season the place is filled with trees and bushes and there is a small stream,which makes it a lot difficult to search.

Any update?

If there was battery cutoff at 11.1 it wouldnt have flown for more than a minute.
So you might find it in a 1km radius. But if there was no cutoff then it could have taken the battery to fully drained point, till it cant deliver enough amps to run motors, ppssible 2min flight time. In traffic on my moped i cover 2km in 2-4min, the quad doesnt have any obstacles it could have gotten much further. Searching in 1km radius could be pointless. But search in 1km radius with 8 friends then increase search area if you dont find.