been flying for about two years now and honestly i feel like i only ever touch my quads when something breaks or after a crash. never really had a routine for like checking things proactively. my buddy was telling me he goes through his whole fleet every like 10 packs or something and re-tightens everything, checks motors, looks at the frame for hairline cracks etc. i kind of laughed at him but then i had a motor bell come loose mid flight last month and that was a bad time.

so now im wondering what people actually do as far as routine stuff goes. is there a real standard for this or is it kind of just vibes and experience. i fly mostly freestyle, 5inch, nothing crazy like long range or anything where a failure would be catastrophic but still losing a quad sucks

your buddy is right and you already learned the hard way lol. i do a quick once-over before every single session, just spin each motor by hand, check the props are on solid, give the frame a little flex to feel for anything loose. takes maybe 3 minutes. then every 20 packs or so i'll pull the stack cover if i have one and look at solder joints, check all the motor screws with a driver not just by feel, look at the arms. after any hard crash it's a full teardown basically regardless of how it looks. motor bells backing off is usually a sign the thread locker has given up, blue loctite on those screws is not optional imo

honestly i probably dont do it enough either. i try to check props and motor screws before flying but i definitely forget sometimes. the one thing ive gotten religious about is looking at the fc and esc solder joints if i notice anything weird in betaflight logs, like if motor outputs look off or theres erratic behavior. caught a cold solder joint that way before it turned into a real problem. but full preventative teardowns... nah not really unless something feels off