battery life in 'standby' mode?

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yes I am a newbie and I crashed the Phantom 2 in rough terrain. My question is how long can I expect the LED lights to be flashing before the battery dies? I had two bars with a third bar blinking and it crashed just a minute after that. I have been looking for hours and now I am hoping that when it gets dark the lights flashing will help me find it. But I don't want to wait until then if I expect the battery to die. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
 
Ouch, hope you get it back. IIRC the drain with the motors disarmed is about 500-600mw. It's not high for such a big battery but also not significant. It can potentially last a couple of days fully charged. At 50-60% it should last 8 hours, probably a bit less once the ambient temp drops.

IME, it's really hard to notice any of the LEDs in really dense foliage. I parked my Phantom in a VERY SMALL, manicured tree in my yard once. And I knew EXACTLY where it was. And I couldn't see the LEDs through the leaves. My recent LED mod should change that significantly though, it's daylight-bright! But I'm not looking to crash it soon.
 
ElGuano said:
Ouch, hope you get it back. IIRC the drain with the motors disarmed is about 500-600mw. It's not high for such a big battery but also not significant. It can potentially last a couple of days fully charged. At 50-60% it should last 8 hours, probably a bit less once the ambient temp drops.

IME, it's really hard to notice any of the LEDs in really dense foliage. I parked my Phantom in a VERY SMALL, manicured tree in my yard once. And I knew EXACTLY where it was. And I couldn't see the LEDs through the leaves. My recent LED mod should change that significantly though, it's daylight-bright! But I'm not looking to crash it soon.
yes, it is gone. spent 7 hours in blackberrys, nettles, grass, and thistles that were up to 10 feet deep! nothing to show but cut up arms and a wasted day. good times!

its weird, here is what happened: i was flying it, and felt like i knew what i was doing (wrong). i am a pilot of real airplanes and have a lot of time on a stick (as opposed to the yoke). so feeling comfortable (first mistake) i went to 'pull up', and did what i would do in my plane, i pulled the stick back. (holding controller horizontally, pulling stick towards me). I saw it descending, realized my folly, and quickly reversed the stick to 'up'. but it just dropped like a rock, even after this correction. I'll take the blame for pilot error, but it was kind of strange the way it juts kept falling after the correction.
 
syngen smythe said:
ElGuano said:
Ouch, hope you get it back. IIRC the drain with the motors disarmed is about 500-600mw. It's not high for such a big battery but also not significant. It can potentially last a couple of days fully charged. At 50-60% it should last 8 hours, probably a bit less once the ambient temp drops.

IME, it's really hard to notice any of the LEDs in really dense foliage. I parked my Phantom in a VERY SMALL, manicured tree in my yard once. And I knew EXACTLY where it was. And I couldn't see the LEDs through the leaves. My recent LED mod should change that significantly though, it's daylight-bright! But I'm not looking to crash it soon.
yes, it is gone. spent 7 hours in blackberrys, nettles, grass, and thistles that were up to 10 feet deep! nothing to show but cut up arms and a wasted day. good times!

its weird, here is what happened: i was flying it, and felt like i knew what i was doing (wrong). i am a pilot of real airplanes and have a lot of time on a stick (as opposed to the yoke). so feeling comfortable (first mistake) i went to 'pull up', and did what i would do in my plane, i pulled the stick back. (holding controller horizontally, pulling stick towards me). I saw it descending, realized my folly, and quickly reversed the stick to 'up'. but it just dropped like a rock, even after this correction. I'll take the blame for pilot error, but it was kind of strange the way it juts kept falling after the correction.

Ugh, sorry to hear the loss. When I think of the number of Phantoms out there that must be sitting in trees, at the bottom of rivers and oceans, and lost in the tall grass, it really reinforces that "every flight could end catastrophically, so plan accordingly" attitude!

Just guesswork, but I think a think a couple of things could have happened--first is momentum. The Phantom isn't zero-interia, it definitely requires some time and not a small amount of distance to stabilize and correct if you happen to be descending quickly or moving at a clip in any direction. It can take over a hundred feet to recover from a full-tilt plow in manual mode for instance, when all limits are removed. On a full throttle-down descent it could also have been caught in its propwash (VRS). Another possibility is something OI Photography brought up that I wasn't aware of before - apparently if you're at zero throttle for over 3 seconds it enters auto-land mode. You can get out of it by applying throttle, but other stick input is ignored, which may make it seem like it lost control...
 

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