- Joined
- Sep 21, 2014
- Messages
- 79
- Reaction score
- 3
A few months ago, I had a pretty bad crash where my drone slammed into a guardrail in a parking lot. The impact was so severe that the battery popped out, the camera became crooked and a few other issues I wrote about here: viewtopic.php?t=26655&p=245770
Anyway, I kept the battery from the crash despite the crack on the corner of the bottom plastic and the bruise on the top, using it as a last battery in my rotation.
The other day my phantom was flying a few thousand feet out in a valley along the south coast of Italy where I'm visiting right now (photos below). I took off from atop a hill and was flying down into a large residential valley so my altitude was -150ft.
Suddenly and without warning the battery dropped to 10% (from ~50%) and low battery RTH triggered...so it started to go from -150ft all the way up to 120ft which is my RTH height setting! Ain't nobody got time for that!
I interrupted the RTH and hustled it home as fast as possible (in ATTI mode to gain every last bit of speed I could get!). I watched the telemetry info closely as it raced home and the battery level continued to drop precipitously.
A minute or so later I heard the drone again and was SO relieved to see it zooming right towards my hill. It was already doing that auto-land thing, so I had to fight it to gain altitude to get back uphill to me but it seemed to have enough power to gain a bit of altitude.
Anyways, I hand caught it and thanked my lucky stars that it made it back...with 3% battery left as you can see in the screenshot.
Obviously that's the last time I'm flying with that battery...
Anyway, I kept the battery from the crash despite the crack on the corner of the bottom plastic and the bruise on the top, using it as a last battery in my rotation.
The other day my phantom was flying a few thousand feet out in a valley along the south coast of Italy where I'm visiting right now (photos below). I took off from atop a hill and was flying down into a large residential valley so my altitude was -150ft.
Suddenly and without warning the battery dropped to 10% (from ~50%) and low battery RTH triggered...so it started to go from -150ft all the way up to 120ft which is my RTH height setting! Ain't nobody got time for that!
I interrupted the RTH and hustled it home as fast as possible (in ATTI mode to gain every last bit of speed I could get!). I watched the telemetry info closely as it raced home and the battery level continued to drop precipitously.
A minute or so later I heard the drone again and was SO relieved to see it zooming right towards my hill. It was already doing that auto-land thing, so I had to fight it to gain altitude to get back uphill to me but it seemed to have enough power to gain a bit of altitude.
Anyways, I hand caught it and thanked my lucky stars that it made it back...with 3% battery left as you can see in the screenshot.
Obviously that's the last time I'm flying with that battery...