had a proper one yesterday, was flying a gap and misjudged it, hit a wooden fence post at probably 60-70kph. drone came down in pieces basically. somehow the FC and ESC stack survived (i think) and motors look okay but im not confident i know everything i should be checking before i put it back together and fly again.

ive been flying for about two years but ive mostly just replaced obvious stuff like props and frame pieces and called it good. this crash feels different though and i dont want to rebuild it and have something fail mid flight. whats your process when you have a serious one?

honestly the stuff people miss most often is frame stress fractures that arent obvious cracks. run your fingers along every arm and look for whitening in the carbon fiber weave, thats where its starting to delaminate. flex each arm gently and feel for any soft spots. carbon that looks fine can be completely cooked internally after a hard impact.

beyond that id check every solder joint on the stack under a bright light or magnifying glass. impact vibration can crack joints that were borderline before. wiggle all the motor wires at the solder points and check the ESC pads too. then spin each motor by hand and feel for grinding or any wobble in the bell. also check your motor screws, they back out from vibration and a hard crash often loosens them.

if the VTX or receiver took any physical hit i'd be suspicious of those too, electronics can have hairline cracks on PCB traces that cause intermittent issues and thats really annoying to chase down later.

i always do a props off bench test after anything serious just to verify all four motors spin the right direction and nothing sounds crunchy. had a crash once where a motor sounded totally fine by hand but under load it was clearly dying, bearing must have gotten damaged. only found it because i ran it on the bench for a few minutes before trusting it in the air again. also check your prop nuts arent stripped, easy to overlook and then your prop decides to leave mid flight which is its own whole problem