...
Causes of every crash (including duplicates):
Weather caused tipping on landings (environmental )
Misjudged landing (controls pilot)
Motor Order (controls software)
Wingspare mechanical integrity (mechanical)
Aircraft stuck in mud (environmental)
Signal wire soldering (electrical)
Accidental disarm (controls pilot)
Mechanical Control Authority (mechanical)
Motor Mount Broke (mechanical)
Signal wire soldering (electrical)
Weather caused lack of control (environmental)
Controller configuration (controls software)
Electronic component failure (electrical)
Loose Motor Mount (mechanical)
Categorizing Even More (removing duplicates):
Environmental (3)
Controls (4)
Mechanical (4)
Electrical (3)
Total (14)
Fairly even split here I guess lol
Total Number of flight tests
I’m not removing the unknown ones. Only includes ones with confluence pages
Total 56
Percent Crashes
25% (14/56) crash percentage for flight tests, but in reality it’s a bit higher because some of these FTs didn’t happen or we just don’t have data.
We should use this number when evaluating if what we have to test is worth the risk?
We should be careful about a few cognitive biases when reviewing this data
sampling bias
we don’t have a lot of data here.
differences in airframe have a large impact on likely failure modes.
survivorship bias
Just because something doesn’t appear in the list doesn't mean it’s not a concern.
In my opinion we’ve had so many close calls because of motor order and poor soldering concerns, however, these are underrepresented in the failure modes observed