Freak accident

[bigMouse]

Flying a couple of the minis today and on one of the landings quite softly in grass it caught fire!, was able to run to it and pull the battery plug. What happened was the 2.4 Rx antenna (the metal bit on the end) was pressed into the bottom plate hole by the grass, just enough to short out the pdb, which is what caught fire!. Will show some more pics once I get around to taking the bottom plate off, no idea of the extent of the damage yet!

[Tecnic]

Bare live pads bM
Not good enough young man

I cover mine with solder just to make sure

[Martink1974]

looks like a lot of current has caused that , is the frame carbon ?

[xxpitt]

looks like a lot of current has caused that , is the frame carbon ?

looks like carbon in the pic but I'd it's the emax I have its not actual carbon. But if it is carbon I would use a loom over a pdb. Or at least voter in hot glue once your finished soldering

[bigMouse]

yea carbon frame! Battery was hot, the resin in the cf plate around the pdb burned leaving the carbon weave behind, Battery lead and both front esc supply wires burnt off, Naze board singed, Cam board showing signs of heat damage, nothing tested yet, here are some more pics.

[bigMouse]

Bare live pads bM
Not good enough young man

I cover mine with solder just to make sure

Probably a good idea to cover the pdb with some thin insulated sheet! Must admit, all my pdb's are exposed

[bigMouse]

Here are a few more pics, surprising how much was affected!
This is the board cam pcb

[bigMouse]

And here the naze top and bottom.

Next will wash everything in IPA see if anything works...

[bigMouse]

This is the rebuild, a cover plate made from 0.5mm paxolin sheet

[xxpitt]

fingers crossed on the naze

[bigMouse]

yay, finished...

[MrBen]

Everything working then? Nothing damaged?

[xxpitt]

Fat boy 4s lipos. I'm running this to and my quad is shifting some. It weighs over 600g too

[bigMouse]

All tested and working except the board cam,  even the battery survive which was quite a surprise as it was hot when I disconnected...

Dave, as you see mine in the last picture, ready to fly (minus vtx and Mobious) is 525 grams

[BIRDS-EYE-VIEW.NL]

Instead of adding plates over the electronic components I would suggest to coat your components with a PU coating. This makes them moisture/ weather resistant to and prevent shorts and you save weight. And for next time always isolate your antennas with heat-shrink. Of course not the standard heat shrink because the carbon and metal additives block the signal. But there is special heat shrink for High frequency applications around. (call farnell or an other supplier they have it on stock)