Big hexacopter grounded until further notice

After a great flight which produced the best video quality yet, I noticed motor #5 was crooked on my big hexacopter.  Having just tweaked the motors and reset them to check their level, I figured maybe I didn’t tighten the motor mount screws tight enough.  Not the case.  The whole arm turned in place.

This is VERY bad.  If that arm twists far enough the rotor would be pointing the wrong direction and the flight controller would try to compensate.  Could mean a huge crash.

So tonight I bit the bullet, grounded the bird, and ripped the arm out.  I had to desolder the ESC and motor, as well as the wire for the LED lights.  What a pain but will be even more of a pain fishing the wires back through and resoldering the seven tiny connections.

I epoxied the arm and will do a small screw in the side to keep it from slipping.   I almost decided to do the other four foldable arms, but that might have meant ripping the WHOLE unit apart.  So I’ll be keeping an eye on the other three foldable arms and hopefully this first one will give me a blueprint on how to do the rest as needed.