so this has been bugging me for a while and I finally decided to post about it. had a pretty rough landing about three weeks ago, nothing catastrophic, just came in a bit fast on a slope and the drone kind of tipped before I could correct. no visible damage, props were fine, gimbal looked okay physically.

but ever since then the horizon slowly drifts to the left during flight, like maybe 2-3 degrees over the course of a minute. I've done the gimbal calibration through the app probably four times now and it corrects it temporarily but then it comes back after a few flights. camera is a Zenmuse X5S if that matters.

my gut says its a motor issue inside the gimbal, maybe something got slightly bent or a bearing is off, but i dont want to send it in for service if its actually just a calibration or IMU thing I can fix myself. anyone dealt with this kind of gradual drift before rather than the sudden lock-up failures you usually hear about.

that slow drift that keeps coming back after calibration is almost always mechanical not software. if calibration held permanently youd be fine but the fact that it degrades over several flights points to something physical. on the X5S the roll motor is pretty suseptible to damage from exactly the kind of impact you described, doesnt have to be dramatic to knock the motor out of true slightly. DJI service isnt that bad honestly, they turned around my X5 repair in about 10 days and the quote was reasonable. i wouldnt keep flying it like that because it'll stress the other axes trying to compensate.

have you checked if the ribbon cable connection is fully seated? asking because I had something vaguely similar once and it turned out to be an intermittent connection causing the IMU to get bad readings, which looked like drift in the footage. probably not your issue given the impact context but worth 5 minutes to check before assuming its the motor.