Crash!!!! ????? What went wrong

I activated RTH at about 100 meters to show how it works as it got closer to me I noticed the bird acting odd and spinning. I attempted to cancel RTH and manually land but as soon as I moved left stick to bring bird down it fell out of the sky. Motors were still running and would not shut off with controller. I had to pick up bird and shut off battery to stop 2 running engines other 2 were not running and had been in the snow

This is brand new bird purchased 2 weeks ago. So I assume new

Sorry not sure bird is boxed up and ready for shipping. I would guess the new ones though
 
If you could get the Dat files from that day would be interesting to check.
 
I had nearly an identical crash with mine.... Compass values went crazy after pressing RTH (which I never use anymore). DJI repaired my aircraft at no charge. Question, was there anything that could have caused Interference? Such as metal antenna, tower, goal posts at a park, etc?
 
Absolutely nothing. If you look at the map it is recent image of my property. Been flying in same spot all week practicing it is clearly visible on the djigo app flight log that the compass goes haywire and spins out of control. I am worried about what caused it and having confidence to fly over mountainous terrain or rivers like I want to do
 
I had nearly an identical crash with mine.... Compass values went crazy after pressing RTH (which I never use anymore). DJI repaired my aircraft at no charge. Question, was there anything that could have caused Interference? Such as metal antenna, tower, goal posts at a park, etc?

At 4:50 he starts RTH around 20ft elevation. It takes him about a minute to travel a short distance. I'm assuming RTH elevated the P3 since at 5:50 (time of malfunctioning) he's around 80ft.

If you look at the battery temp at 5:30 he's almost at 100F. At 5:55 it looks like it started to go down.

Did battery overheat and make the compass fail?
 
I have my RTH altitude set above tree level so it elevated to pre set altitude then compass appears to go haywire as it started to spin back and forth instead of bee line to home point
 
If you look at the notifications on healthydrones there are several warnings: motor obstructed. Like someone else commented, ice on your props due to foggy conditions seems a likely cause
 
The motor obstruction happened after it crashed into the snow 2 propellers were still spinning and 2 in the snow obstructed. If you could see flight as it is on my dgigo flight log you can see I tried multiple times to shut down engines with remote but it did not work I had to reach around spinning blades pick up drone by landing gear and turn off at battery
 
Your compass started going crazy at 5:55 then im assuming it spun out of control. You never lost gps though. Battery temp spiked at crash landing. Were you also fighting wind?

Compass issues is why i returned mine. Mine was swithching to ATTI mid flight.

Wondering if fog and wind made yours go out of control. Dont know the normal battery temp but you were in the 100F range at the end. Looking at my own logs, Im only at 80F at 6mins (35F outside). Which makes me wonder if fighting wind made your battery overheat.
I noticed the compass anomaly at 05:55 also. A battery temperature of 100F is not too high. I've seen temps up to 130F in very hot weather. It looks like the compass caused or is a symptom of the crash cause. The fog may be the cause. Fog is very wet. Electronics don't work well when they are wet!
 
Good to know. I sent it in to DJI anyway. Hopefully everything is OK and I will avoid flying in foggy or wet conditions ever again

The aircraft went haywire soon after initiating RTH though and flew for 5 min flawlessly so it could be a case of coincidence that the moisture effected the compass at that exact time? Not sure.
 
The aircraft went haywire soon after initiating RTH though and flew for 5 min flawlessly so it could be a case of coincidence that the moisture effected the compass at that exact time? Not sure.
Not sure. From the data in Healthy Drones, we can only see the compass went haywire. Or, the electronics were wet from the fog, and it seemed like the compass went haywire. It was definitely strange that you could not stop the engines with the controller either. Does that mean the electronics were wet and not working? Perhaps. When did you last do a compass calibration?
 
Just took my P3p out to show a friend how it works. Full battery flew around just fine then I flew it 100 meters out and pushed return to home on app to show him that. App said it was acceding I noticed drone was acting odd turning side to side etc. I then canceled return to home and as soon as I manually lowered drone it fell out of the sky.
Conditions were foggy and 34 Fahrenheit
I will try to add flight log
did you calibrate your GPS in DJI GO App before takeoff
 
Same thing happened to me. Started from my back yard, got up to about 200 feet, then Phantom 3 advanced dropped from the sky. Like a rock! I've been flying Phantoms for two years now, never had any issues. I was able to recover it. Totaled. Gimbal, camera, props all broken. Landed upside down. 55% battery life when it went dead. Sent it in to DJI, got it back in two weeks, with a new battery. No charge for repairs. I've had this one for 6 months now.
 
Here is some data of that flight taken from the txt log:
The vertical red bar is at 5:59 which is impact time.

I drew red lines to indicate the trend of the charts.
If you check the Amps you will note how amps starts raising at around 3:30 minutes (also lots of negative amps which are unusual error readings).
You will also note voltage graph starts slumping at around the same time. The watt graph starts increasing at round 3:30.
This indicates the Phantom has to use more and more power to remain in flight .
As someone else posted low temp and fog could have led to ice forming and would nicely explain this increase in power

upload_2015-12-27_10-23-1.png


If you post the DAT files of that day if you still have access to them, it will show more data
Transfer the FLYXXX.DAT file to your computer
  1. Go to the DJI GO App and connect to the P3
  2. MC Settings -->
    select Advanced Settings Advanced Settings --> Enter flight data
    mode
  3. wait until you get a dialog telling you that the quad is
    in flight data mode.
  4. Connect a USB cable from the USB plug in the nose of the Phantom3 to your computer. This is not the USB connector on the side of the camera. Your Phantom 3 should have come with the required USB cable
  5. The data drive should mount and be available.
  6. Use the date on the FLYXXX.DAT files to pick the one you want and copy it to your computer
  7. Upload on Dropbog or google drive
 
I have sent the drone to DJI with the SD card installed so I can not access DAT files. I want to thank everyone for looking into this. I hope to eventually find a cause so I can fly with confidence in the future
 
When I bought my first Phantom, a Phantom 2 HD-3D, FPV, I had to learn to fly by the seat of my pants and crashes a couple of times and cost me big time in money. But before the P3's came out we all learned to do the DJI dance, which is to calibrate the compass before ever flight. If you didn't calibrate your compass, you were asking for trouble. I have since then done the same calibration dance with my P3Pro and P3Standard before every flight. I would highly suggest that every DJI pilot do the dance before every flight.
 
I would highly suggest that anyone posting a new topic asking why they crashed include their FLYxxx.DAT of that day (as long as they can still access them).
A Dat file converted to csv includes the Magmod Magx Magy Magz amongst many others- so if a crash was due to a calibration issue it would show up.
And lots of other errors also show up.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,358
Members
104,935
Latest member
Pauos31