A near loss of my Inspire 1, advice requested from this forums great members

[CCDD]

As many of you already know, I had a catastrophic flight nearly 2 weeks ago with my P3P and went out and purchased a new Inspire 1 Pro. Have flown it a couple of times and have truly enjoyed it. Decided to take it back to the lake where I had that incident with my P3P and during its first flight, I received a compass error after a short time in the air. Turned it around and began to bring it back when suddenly without warning, it kept on flying without me controlling it. I attempted to place it in Atti Mode however, I'm not sure if it ever did in fact make it in. I did regain control, landed it without issue and immediately did another compass calibration. Took off again from same spot and flew 2 batteries without any further issues. Losing a Phantom is one thing, losing a $3900 Inspire, gives one a pretty sick feeling. Anyhow, I've attached the Health Drones file for review. By the way, all FW and software is up to date on craft, RC and iPad. In case any of you are wondering why I'm posting it here well, the Inspire forum is a bit sleepy, lets just leave it at that.
Apr 30th, 2016 3:55PM

 

[With The Birds]

Is this a guessing competition? Lol '-)

Cant engage multiple flight modes? You.may need to enable. in DJI GO app.

 

[CCDD]

That's correct, I believe I didn't have that enabled which would explain why I didn't enter Atti however, I did regain control and was able to land it safely. Wondering why it had begun a "flyaway".

 

[With The Birds]

That's correct, I believe I didn't have that enabled which would explain why I didn't enter Atti however, I did regain control and was able to land it safely. Wondering why it had begun a "flyaway".

Ok.... i can see your commentary on the incident now (I only had the HD link when i first saw your post).

No compass error apparent in HD perhaps upload the log to msingers log viewer tool. It gives a lot more detail.

This is not good! You need an explanation to find comfort, itbwould make me very nervous. Maybe thay location is a bad magnetic environmemt, paryicularily yhe launch point. You could have a massive variance in magnetic feild from that neasured on the ground and up clear of whatever is causing the corruption.

 

[With The Birds]

I meant to say, often when this is the issue you will see that the heading depicted in the little radar screen wont natch the actual AC heading.

 

[CCDD]

FWIW, the take off point is located at a lake, not taking off from a dock or any other spot that I'm aware of that would have an adverse affects such as a bad magnetic environment. The loss I had with my P3P at this location occurred immediately after take off and likely was a motor or controller failure which caused it to immediately flip and slam into the water.

 

[msinger]

CCDD, please upload your log here.

 

[flpholt]

could be something in the ground around that spot high iron content

 

[With The Birds]

Just did, can you see it on your end msinger?

Any chance you can share the link here?

 

[msinger]

can you see it on your end msinger?

Please post a link back here.

 

[CCDD]

Phantom 3 Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

 

[msinger]

The log doesn't indicate the cause of the problem, but there was definitely some kind of issue with your compass (and possibly GPS) on the way out. Perhaps the compass calibration was bad before you took off. It seems that was the issue since a compass calibration fixed the problem.

 

[CCDD]

I appreciate your help and the fact she flew fine after the compass calibration made me feel much more comfortable. The Inspire 1 is an amazing machine, very much different to fly than the P3P however, not a replacement. It's large and can be seen from from well over a 1/2 mile out and certainly makes quite a presence when both taking off and landing. I love to fly both and encourage those that haven't had a chance to fly an Inspire to try and find someone that has one just to try it out. Thanks again to all for making this forum such an invaluable tool with a wealth of information.

 

[MikeyOnline]

Just from a data analysis standpoint, the log brings forth some questions. At 39.7 seconds, the mode says it switched to ATTI mode and you immediately got a yaw error. Later, it says unable to switch to ATTI mode due to that mode not being enabled... yet the log shows ATTI as the flight mode. Not sure what that contradiction means or how it might affect your flight. Is it possible that it detected a compass issue, tried to switch to ATTI mode, and due to a firmware bug (where the code didn't anticipate the possibility of flight modes being disabled), there is a contradiction where the app assumes ATTI mode but the craft didn't successfully switch to ATTI, and the yaw error and flight issue were caused by that contradiction: one part thinking it's in ATTI mode while the other part of the system thinking it's still in P-GPS? That might explain the yaw error if something was "out of sync". Maybe just enabling the flight modes would correct that situation and work around the issue.

Just throwing out ideas.

Mike

 

[With The Birds]

Happy flying! Hope that was a once only and all is smooth from here on.

You probably know the Olympus 14-42 works perfectly on the X5. Cool being able to zoom.

 

[m0j0]

Holy crap.. That is bad ***... Micro 4/3 on the inspire huh... Wow! Never really ever considered inspire just too much $$$ but that is awesome. Huge difference between that and a Phantom/GoPro. Lol


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[hawkeye62]

As many of you already know, I had a catastrophic flight nearly 2 weeks ago with my P3P and went out and purchased a new Inspire 1 Pro. Have flown it a couple of times and have truly enjoyed it. Decided to take it back to the lake where I had that incident with my P3P and during its first flight, I received a compass error after a short time in the air. Turned it around and began to bring it back when suddenly without warning, it kept on flying without me controlling it. I attempted to place it in Atti Mode however, I'm not sure if it ever did in fact make it in. I did regain control, landed it without issue and immediately did another compass calibration. Took off again from same spot and flew 2 batteries without any further issues. Losing a Phantom is one thing, losing a $3900 Inspire, gives one a pretty sick feeling. Anyhow, I've attached the Health Drones file for review. By the way, all FW and software is up to date on craft, RC and iPad. In case any of you are wondering why I'm posting it here well, the Inspire forum is a bit sleepy, lets just leave it at that.
Apr 30th, 2016 3:55PM

WOW! You have bigger b.... than me to fly again from the same spot. I would have had to go home and change my shorts!

Regards, Jim

 

[Helijoc]

That's correct, I believe I didn't have that enabled which would explain why I didn't enter Atti however, I did regain control and was able to land it safely. Wondering why it had begun a "flyaway".

When you have a compass error it will automatically drop into ATTI mode. I would suspect it would do that whether advanced flight modes is enabled or not.

I think the contradictions is probably a bug. You were in ATTI mode based on the compass error. When you tried to enable it manually you got the enable message although it was already in ATTI mode. Could it be the fly away you felt you were experiencing was in fact the aircraft's normal behavior in ATTI....ie sliding along like it is on ice when you stop?

 

[CCDD]

WOW! You have bigger b.... than me to fly again from the same spot. I would have had to go home and change my shorts!
I'm not overly concerned and certainly not co
Regards, Jim

WOW! You have bigger b.... than me to fly again from the same spot. I would have had to go home and change my shorts!

Regards, Jim

Jim,
Although I was a bit apprehensive about flying from this spot again I reminder myself of several things.
1) I've had more than 50 successful flights from exact location, by far the most often flown area for me
2) Although 90% of these flights are over water, if the bird was to fall from that height I typically fly (approx 200ft or more) it isn't going to be salvageable whether it hits a hard surface or the water
3) Lastly, my soiled shorts are easily washable

Fingers crossed this doesn't repeat itself.

Steven

 

[Meta4]

1) I've had more than 50 successful flights from exact location, by far the most often flown area for me
2) Although 90% of these flights are over water, if the bird was to fall from that height I typically fly (approx 200ft or more) it isn't going to be salvageable whether it hits a hard surface or the water

It looks like most of the issue has been worked out - a compass error caused the Phantom to switch to atti mode to deal with the conflict between compass and GPS data.
The big question is .. why did you get a compass error?
And the obvious question that follows is: Where and when did you do the compass calibration?

What happened appears to be the kind of result that can come from calibrating in a bad location and adjusting the compass to compensate for local magnetic interference.
When the drone gets away from that interference and into a clear magnetic environment, it now gets screwy data form the compass that is still compensating for something that isn't there.