Yesterday I was flying until I had to use the rescue due to orientation confusion. That immediately pulled the 450 straight but shot it with full neg. into the ground. Damage is the quite high, the complete head and tail, canopy and skids.
What could have lead to this?
The piro opt. was set right, the heli saved already twice in the flight normally and perfectly straight skywards.
There were no heavy 3D figures involved. One thing which was pointed out to me in another forum was that I had to land for safety reasons because a dog was free in the distance in the middle of the battery.
Also I did a vibration test with no big vibration levels. Only tiny bumps at the rpms of the turning parts.


Some flights ago I already had a similar problem. The heli suddenly dived over roll to the ground but I managed to catch it but had to land with full roll applied to the other side. This happened with the nomal fbl function no stabilisation active.

What was that? Until yesterday the Spirit had no hard bumpy crashes.

Oh, that is very sad.

If you see anything strange (for example rescue in the angle) it is very important to find the reason as fast as possible.
I believe that we can find explanation.

With versions 1.3.2 and earlier it was needed to setup Pirouette Optimization parameter. When you pilot configure the helicopter for the first time, everything can be good.
But later, he will change for example rudder servo and he have to reverse rudder compensation. Unfortunately in this case he can forget to verify optimization. So the direction is not correct anymore and can cause what you are describing.

From your description it looks like it could be two possibilities:
a) wrong pirouette optimization settings
b) helicopter was initialized while laying on the side or it was in such angle later (before the flight) for a longer time.

Excess vibrations are rather excluded since you have measured it. Especially if you are not flying hard 3d and you are observing such problems, there must be definitively something wrong.

Do you think it could be one of these options?

At least for version 2.X pirouette optimization and other things is configured automatically so a) can't happen anymore.

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Spirit System developer

Well I had tested it at home directly after I disassembled the bent parts. It clearly turns the Swashplate in the right direction. I also tested it with the other setting than and that was wrong so at the crash piro was right.
I took off from a flat road. There I also connected the battery and let it sit until the swash moved.

Just for interest, does a wrong piro opt. really make the calculations think it is upside down.
Btw. it is 1.3.2 software.

Also it confuses me that it saved multiple times out of many different rotations and angles.

Thank you for the info.

Yes, Rescue can work with wrong pirouette optimization for a long time. But with increasing flight time the chance for such issue is increasing linearly.
First you should start see something like rescue with angle and then it can end with inverted.
So the parameter is really important - it affects flying precision as well (especially pirouette maneuvers).

If you are not 100% sure it is correct, you can take a video of checking Pirouette Optimization. Unfortunately there are cases when pilots are thinking it is perfectly correct, but it isn't. Even an expert can do the mistake sometimes in a basic things. So if we can verify everything it can't be worse.

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Spirit System developer

Well it always rescued perfectly straight up. And as I already wrote that at home I changed the setting after the chrash to verify it. After changing the angle of the swash turned with the heli. So I reset it to the backup settings which were the ones from the crash flight and it stayed like the compass desribed in the manual.

Collective direction still ok in the diagnose menu?

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[b]-TT E700 V2-Spirit Pro-mks950-980-Kontronik Kosmik 160 HV -Pyro 700 rewound by PD / Voodoo 600 -PD-MX700-470kv--BLS255hv-VBAR 5.3+- Gaui X3+ Spirit Pro

What do you mean by that? It still behaves like it should. It tilts the swash to the correct side when tilting the whole helicopter and also the stick movements fit.

Thank you for the info.

Was the helicopter tilted to some side after the initialization?
When you landed the helicopter because of the interruption, did you took the helicopter somewhere or it was still on the place?

Do you have some fan on the helicopter?

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Spirit System developer

I landed it and started it from the same spot.
After init. I only put the canopy on it.
No fan on it.

Why did you ask this? Before upgrading one of my Spirits to V2.0.0, I noticed that the Pitch direction was reversed on the Diagnostics tab. I never did figure out why this happened. I am using a Jeti EX-Bus connection in case that is a factor. After the V2.0.0 upgrade, everything worked as expected.