Hello all, Ive been flying for a few months now and I finally feel comfortable flying acro. After a few sessions I had a pretty hard crash for the first time. After rearming and taking off right after the first crash, I lost control of the quad and ended up crashing again and going home. The warnings that popped up on the goggle osd were "runaway" and then "throttle". After getting home and cleaning up the quad I noticed there was a lot of dirt within the 2 front motors. When I would spin them I could feel dirt trapped within, as if I were using a pepper grinder. I managed to clean out all the dirt from both motors and now they spin smoothly like they did before. Could the dirt that was trapped cause the quad to runaway and lose control? The rest of the quad looks fine, no wires torn, no propellers broke so maybe it wasn't as hard as I thought. Any and all help is much appreciated! I do have video from the goggle osd ready to upload but it wont let me as an attachment. Not sure how I can get the video up if it would even help.

Quite possibly. If the motors weren't free to spin and if the motor speed commanded by Betaflight wasn't correcting the attitude of the quad as expected then it may have triggered a potential runaway condition.

The only way to know for sure now that you've cleaned the motors out is to do another flight test to see if the problem persists.

You can't upload videos here because the files are too large and the forum doesn't have enough storage space for them. You need to upload any videos to a dedicated video hosting site (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo or Google photos) and then post a link to them back here.

(14-Mar-2021, 07:13 PM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: Quite possibly. If the motors weren't free to spin and if the motor speed commanded by Betaflight wasn't correcting the attitude of the quad as expected then it may have triggered a potential runaway condition.

The only way to know for sure now that you've cleaned the motors out is to do another flight test to see if the problem persists.

You can't upload videos here because the files are too large and the forum doesn't have enough storage space for them. You need to upload any videos to a dedicated video hosting site (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo or Google photos) and then post a link to them back here.

Ok, might be a couple days till I get to test but I'll update when I do. Thanks!

I have had Runaway warnings a few times after crashing in dirt. Usually the Runaway protection kicks in immediately after arming and throttling up. It has always been the motors causing this.

Remove the motor bells and clean the inside till your motors can spin freely. Also inspect for any damage to the bells, shaft and motor windings. And check the motor to esc connections.

Got in a quick test and everything works fine. Dirty motors were the culprit! Thanks for helping out.