Hello Phantom pilots,
I decided to share my crash story here, because I'm certain many of you have felt that same dreadful feeling of adrenaline that makes your fingers start shaking as you struggle to keep decisions calm and logical. Knowing something is wrong and just hoping the bird will make it home in one piece again.
This time it didn't make it.
I was flying my Phantom 3 SE at a hill over an open field outside of town. I sent it 2000m away, I lost signal and RTH engaged, the battery at this point was 41%. I had no video and the connection did not restore almost until halfway to the home point. Then the link began acting weird with the signal turning on and off. At one point the battery suddenly dropped to 25%. I pushed the stick forward when I had visual on the drone. The critical warning kicked in and limited my airspeed and the aircraft kicked in auto landing ... I tried to bring it as close as possible thinking 12% battery will make it over 600m (I should have just pushed down to land--- but then again I was on a hill and forward = less altitude). At the end the aircraft fell out of the sky on 6-8% battery from 7m at 130m.
It is my fault for fly so far away but **** if the auto landing at critical battery cannot land the craft from 60m why is it there at all. I really should have been pushing the descend hard and not relying on auto land.
Battery was charged to 100%, I took off, flew 5 mins then landed then took off again at 56% battery.
Full IMU-calibration prior to take off - check. Compass- and Gimbal-calibration - check.
Home point at take off position. Smart RTH on, RTH altitude 60m.
Low battery warning was set at 30% and crit battery warning at 15%.
Weather conditions: good to perfect - no wind, temp around 25 C, dry.
No trees, no power lines.
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
14m 21.1s - there as sudden drop in power from 41% to 25%
Result is: 2 broken propellers a broken camera gimbal arm and some scratches. And the drone cannot connect to the remote.
Is there a way to extract the flight logs from the aircraft (.DAT files) with no connection...the internal sdcard maybe??
I've also read somewhere that powering on and off too much will erase those logs ... so I only once tried powering on and I've got constantly blinking yellow lights.
The drone is still in warranty and I'll send the flight logs to DJI once I recover them. I want to know what you think about this. Is there a chance to get a free repair. I blame the sudden loss of battery power.
I decided to share my crash story here, because I'm certain many of you have felt that same dreadful feeling of adrenaline that makes your fingers start shaking as you struggle to keep decisions calm and logical. Knowing something is wrong and just hoping the bird will make it home in one piece again.
This time it didn't make it.
I was flying my Phantom 3 SE at a hill over an open field outside of town. I sent it 2000m away, I lost signal and RTH engaged, the battery at this point was 41%. I had no video and the connection did not restore almost until halfway to the home point. Then the link began acting weird with the signal turning on and off. At one point the battery suddenly dropped to 25%. I pushed the stick forward when I had visual on the drone. The critical warning kicked in and limited my airspeed and the aircraft kicked in auto landing ... I tried to bring it as close as possible thinking 12% battery will make it over 600m (I should have just pushed down to land--- but then again I was on a hill and forward = less altitude). At the end the aircraft fell out of the sky on 6-8% battery from 7m at 130m.
It is my fault for fly so far away but **** if the auto landing at critical battery cannot land the craft from 60m why is it there at all. I really should have been pushing the descend hard and not relying on auto land.
Battery was charged to 100%, I took off, flew 5 mins then landed then took off again at 56% battery.
Full IMU-calibration prior to take off - check. Compass- and Gimbal-calibration - check.
Home point at take off position. Smart RTH on, RTH altitude 60m.
Low battery warning was set at 30% and crit battery warning at 15%.
Weather conditions: good to perfect - no wind, temp around 25 C, dry.
No trees, no power lines.
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
14m 21.1s - there as sudden drop in power from 41% to 25%
Result is: 2 broken propellers a broken camera gimbal arm and some scratches. And the drone cannot connect to the remote.
Is there a way to extract the flight logs from the aircraft (.DAT files) with no connection...the internal sdcard maybe??
I've also read somewhere that powering on and off too much will erase those logs ... so I only once tried powering on and I've got constantly blinking yellow lights.
The drone is still in warranty and I'll send the flight logs to DJI once I recover them. I want to know what you think about this. Is there a chance to get a free repair. I blame the sudden loss of battery power.
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