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Tales from a noob... +300 hours

OZPilot

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Joined
Dec 2, 2021
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Age
50
Nearly 1000 flights and 6000km.

I have been amazed at the reliability and still wonder how many hours I can expect before the motors fail.

Most of the hours are pre-set missions to monitor cattle and protect our crop from birds.

I have replaced the propellers twice, bought 4 more batteries, 2 quad-charges and the Smart Controller (V2).
During the first replacement of the propellers, I put the 2 rear props on backwards (I'm an idiot). During take-off, the drone flipped and landed hard. I thought I had broken it....

With a total of 6 batteries, we can keep the drone in the air almost indefinitely.

The Smart Controller was purchased for 2 reasons.
1) I could teach my wife how to operate it without using a mobile phone. She is in charge of all flights now. I do maintenance and updates.
2) Connect the output to a TV.

I purchased a wet-suit from Phantom Rain and have flown 50 hours in very poor conditions. At one stage the drone struggled to return home as winds hit 50km/h with sideways rain. I had to land it in the paddock and manually retrieve it because battery power was below 10%.
We have had 2 floods in the first 3 months of the year and the paddocks are saturated to the point that we cannot get machinery out to work.
The drone is covered in mud-splatter every time it lands. A wipe down and quick check is all we have been doing.

By biggest gripe is mission loss. Randomly, I will lose the entire mission. Most of them have about 40 way-points so it is extremely frustrating to redo them.

Automated return home to take-off point has about a 50% success rate for landing on the pad. Another 30% within 3 meters. Worse case has been 20 meters when it almost hit power lines.

In "ludicrous" mode, I have clocked it at 68km/h, had up to 200 meters vertically and 5km horizontally.

In summary: Absolutely delighted with it.

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Congratulations! Both you and your wife, I remember when you first joined, by golly your trusty Evo 2 has flown almost 4000 miles since then 👍

Your Evo 2 has paid for itself many times over, great tool especially for what you are using it for. Appreciate you sharing your experience, great Evo 2 story.

Congratulations again!
Paul
 
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Cheers Paul. I keep getting told it is the best investment I have made.

Do you have any idea of the longevity of the motors?

All the other farm gear needs maintenance every 50 hours. I feel guilty not do anything to it.... :)

PS: 2 neighbours have bought one. One of them is upgrading to the Enterprise to put onboard speakers to scare the birds
 
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Cheers Paul. I keep getting told it is the best investment I have made.

Do you have any idea of the longevity of the motors?

All the other farm gear needs maintenance every 50 hours. I feel guilty not do anything to it.... :)

PS: 2 neighbours have bought one. One of them is upgrading to the Enterprise to put onboard speakers to scare the birds

Great tales from an EVO II owner. I would not worry about the motors if I were you, they will literally outlast every other part of the drone since they are brushless. The camera, IMU, and other parts are all way more fragile than the motors. IMO the gimbal will probably go first or the airframe may develop stress cracks.

With the DJI drones they were notorious for stress cracks in the airframes. For most RC craft, the ESC is usually the first thing to go due to the heat and constant circuit stress of managing the high currents passing through them.
 
Is that the air-frame or the metal housing of the computer?

Thank you for the info. Any tips for maintenance of the fragile parts beside praying? I have lots of Gaffer tape in the shed. :)

The ESC are the electronic speed controllers, they are the circuit boards that connect to each motor and they control the speed of the rotation of the motors, Complex circuit boards combined with high current don't mix very well so they are usually the first to go. When an ESC does burn out in mid air the motor that it is controlling stops spinning and you can imagine what happens next.

From a maintenance standpoint it seems like you are doing the complete opposite of what keeps these things in the air :) so I think those prayers and gaffer tape are the only thing left. My EVO has never gotten wet, never landed or taken off on anything but a clean surface, never crashed, etc. I am extremely careful with mine which is how I keep mine in the air as long as possible so we are definitely at opposite ends of the use spectrum.

Also, my EVO for a typical project is only in the air for a few min to get some quick aerial footage for a larger project, so it has pretty low hours. I do like hearing about stories like yours though because it gives me hope that mine will last longer.

I think the best you can do is dry it when it gets wet, keep undamaged props on the motors, and try to protect it from the elements. Also, the quickest way to shake a drone apart is to fly with damaged props; sure it will get off of the ground and appear to fly fine, even the camera may look fine, but the vibrations from damaged props can do a lot of damage to a drone. So if the props have even the slightest knick in them I would recommend replacing them.
 
When an ESC does burn out in mid air the motor that it is controlling stops spinning and you can imagine what happens next.

I just pictured that visual in my mind. I usually fly it at 10 meters and it would either hit wet pasture or cow ****. None of them are good. :) Thanks for $3000 nightmare!

I really appreciate your input and will keep the forum informed. Good or Bad. I am an old "techie" (since 1976) so I expect ridged hardware and dodgy software. :)

At the moment, it's ROI is 3 months. As it stands, every minute in the air since March 2022 has brought financial and emotional profit.
 
Cheers Paul. I keep getting told it is the best investment I have made.

Do you have any idea of the longevity of the motors?

All the other farm gear needs maintenance every 50 hours. I feel guilty not do anything to it.... :)

PS: 2 neighbours have bought one. One of them is upgrading to the Enterprise to put onboard speakers to scare the birds
Hello OZ Pilot,

hereis2021 gives excellent advice, especially with motors. I wouldn’t worry too much on the brushless motors, unless you’re continuously carrying heavy loads then I would be concerned.

I have lost one drone motor in flight, but with another brand and that probably was an ESC issue had I looked into it further. Also fly RC planes, never lost a motor on an RC plane but have had several ESC go out in flight. Will post a picture of several RC motors with an ESC attached, RC ESC are very reliable and seldom go bad.

One way to pervert an RC plane ESC failure accident from happening, Connect two separate batteries one for receiver the other for ESC. This way, if ESC has a failure during flight the second battery connected to receiver will continue to power servos and user can still glide in the plane from controller.

RC plane ESC failure is rare, so most of the time we don’t run with two batteries. If it was a very expensive RC plane or jet, second battery a must at least user can glide in his/her plane or land in a safe area near the runway.

Great hobby, both drone or RC planes. Enjoyed hearing the success both you and your wife are having, please share more in the future 🙂

All the best,
Paul

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Hello OZ Pilot,

hereis2021 gives excellent advice, especially with motors. I wouldn’t worry too much on the brushless motors, unless you’re continuously carrying heavy loads then I would be concerned.

I have lost one drone motor in flight, but with another brand and that probably was an ESC issue had I looked into it further. Also fly RC planes, never lost a motor on an RC plane but have had several ESC go out in flight. Will post a picture of several RC motors with an ESC attached, RC ESC are very reliable and seldom go bad.

One way to pervert an RC plane ESC failure accident from happening, Connect two separate batteries one for receiver the other for ESC. This way, if ESC has a failure during flight the second battery connected to receiver will continue to power servos and user can still glide in the plane from controller.

RC plane ESC failure is rare, so most of the time we don’t run with two batteries. If it was a very expensive RC plane or jet, second battery a must at least user can glide in his/her plane or land in a safe area near the runway.

Great hobby, both drone or RC planes. Enjoyed hearing the success both you and your wife are having, please share more in the future 🙂

All the best,
Paul

View attachment 14287

That is a pretty interesting setup, I flew RC helicopters before drones came out and so there was no backup for the ESC. If the ESC went out the heli was coming straight down since there was no wings to control the fall.
 
I lost a motor (or ESC?) once in my 6-rotor Typhoon H. It flew almost normally on 5 rotors while I brought it safely back down to me. That's the problem with 4 or less rotors; you need them all to fly. None the less, I love my Evo 2 Pro and have never had a failure (other than icing up once...not the drone's fault).
 
I lost a motor (or ESC?) once in my 6-rotor Typhoon H. It flew almost normally on 5 rotors while I brought it safely back down to me. That's the problem with 4 or less rotors; you need them all to fly. None the less, I love my Evo 2 Pro and have never had a failure (other than icing up once...not the drone's fault).

I agree 100%, that is a big weakness with 4 motors. Some of my favorite designs are the over/under designs where they have true redundancy in everything (IMU, ESCs, Motors, GPS, Compass, etc). but needless to say, they are cost and size prohibitive for most people, me included.

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