Hi. I just pulled a new whoopfly16 RTF out of the box, charged everything up and tried to fly it. This is my first drone, so of course I crashed right away. No surprise. I did do the binding routine by cycling the drone on and off x3 and turning on the transmitter in bind mode.

The problem is after a crash the drone does not respond to the transmitter. The throttle is stuck on not matter what position the gimble is in and it goes crazy and I have to disarm it in order to stop it. When I rearm it everything is fine until I crash it again, then the same thing happens.

Any help would be appreciated.

Just to get a clear picture here, are you expecting the props to stop without disarming?

The controlling firmware in your flight controller is Betaflight. This has various defaults, which may or may not have been altered/tuned by the manufacturer of the quad, and we don't know exactly what they have done without more info.

The basics...................

When you arm the quad before raising the throttle and flying, the props likely start up at a fast idle, yes?  You may then use throttle, fly and land the quad, but likely the props will continue to idle, possibly enough to cause the quad to bounce.   That is by design and settings in Betaflight.

Disarming should stop the props, yes?   So, YOU start and stop the props, that is normal.

For correct use of a quad, you should start the props on arm and then throttle up, and stop the props by disarming it immediately on landing.

After a ground strike incident/crash immediately disarm it, unplug it and inspect it to ensure its safe to continue, correct its position, and only then reconnect, re-arm and fly.

There are all sorts of ways to change that default behavior but for now you should not alter it.  Get used to arming and disarming to start and end a flight.

When landing it is best to disarm when the quad is minimally still in the air so it falls the last few millimeters. That ensures no bounce reaction and uncommanded throttle up.

Thanks so much for the reply. So not responding to the transmitter is normal after a crash? I thought it would stop or idle and let me use turtle mode. The props do not return to idle after a crash. The throttle remains at high speed even when I put the gimble all the way down and the drone bounces around and hits a wall and stays at high throttle until I disarm it. It doesn't seem right.i was expecting the motors to return to idle when I lower the throttle, but it doesn't respond to that.

I've noticed that when I crash and it lands on its side or upside down the props go to high speed even when the gimble is down. If it lands right side up the props return to high idle. If I try to pick it up and move it back to a better launching place the props go to high speed. It seems to know or have sensor that can tell the drone is on its side or upside down or being lifted off the ground.

You need to disarm when you crash.
Ideally, you’d get in the habit of disarming right before a crash, or immediately after impact.

After you disarm, you can put it in turtle mode and rearm if necessary, or if it’s not, you can just rearm and take off.

You shouldn’t ever be picking up a quad when it’s armed, or putting your fingers anywhere near it. The motors increasing their speed when you handle it is because the pid loop is still active and the flight controller is responding to the movement caused by your hand (or if airmode is off and you are in a self leveling mode, it’s trying to self level). This is also the same reasons for it going crazy in and after a crash.

It does have a sensor- that is what your gyro/accelerometer is.

Basically, for safety of yourself, and safety of the esc’s and motors, the only time you should be armed while on the ground is when you’re about to take off. After takeoff, you shouldn’t ever be armed when you’re on the ground (unless you’re using turtle mode), and if you do hit something and crash, you will need to disarm and rearm prior to takeoff, and you want to disarm as quickly as possible after the crash.

Edit- be aware that turtle mode is a great way to kill your motors and electronics. It doesn’t take long for a motor that is stuck due to grass or twigs or clothing or whatnot to burn out, or to burn out an esc. Unless you’re stuck somewhere you can’t easily get to, I’d recommend just walking over to retrieve it, especially with these smaller quads. I don’t usually do this- but I am aware of the risks and can fix anything that burns out. If you can’t say the same, then my recommendation stands.

Thank you so much for your help. Next I realize I need to spend a lot of time on a simulator. I need to learn how to connect the controller that came with it to a Macbook. But I'll ask about that in another post.

Thanks again. That was super helpful!

If for some reason you do want your motors to stop when going to zero throttle, you can disable airmode. However, this is an important feature for maintaining heading with minimum throttle. Without it, you will find that the quad will simply begin to tumble as the only thing left to act on it is air and leftover momentum. When you crash, it doesn't know that it's on the ground, so it's going to do it's absolute best to fight outside influence, and with the props hitting the ground, that's a lot of unexpected movement. It effectively puts itself into a loop of fighting the movements it made in ignorance.