Crashed

Joined
Sep 8, 2014
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
I was flying my phantom 2 vision + today and I was at 4 minutes left on the battery according to the phone display.

It then said going home and then started going to where I initiated lift off, it then crashed into a tree and fell to the ground.

It broke the camera away from the gimbal.

Has anyone done this before? Do you have any recommendations?

I called DJI and they said I need to basically purchase a new gimbal and camera.

Has anyone repaired these before? Should I just buy a new gimbal/camera? Should I buy a whole new phantom?
 
I am glad you made it here but did not want to read this as your first post.

The camera part is a big deal and as I am sure you found out its expensive.

Is your ribbon cable OK? There are guys that have have tweaked the cameras back in shape and put them back together. They do not really sell parts for them. All or nothing.

I know its kind of late now but for future reference when dealing with trees and pushing the RTH limits you should lift off and get some elevation and reset your home a ways up in the air. The Phantom does a RTH at 66' above your home setting. If you set home at 50' (example) then it will fly back at 50+66' or 116' and then land. The home reset in the air does not effect how it lands.

By the way I am the guy from Vimeo that you messaged.

Post some pictures so the experts here can help.

Rich
 
How can you guys find this forum and not look at any post ?
There literally tons of post on this , everyday there's one. I doubt if you can repair it. Make sure there's nothing between you and RTH. seems as if you ran your battery down to low. I'd be heading home at 20-30 % battery.
Just look at all the post on broken gimbals.
Why would you run your battery that low ?
 
I apologize about not reading posts before posting.

I was at 4 minutes left, to me that is not that low.

I would say if I had 1-2 minutes I would personally say that would be running it low.
 
You'll find many threads here about repair/replacing camera/gimbal without having to search far.

Trees are the natural enemy of the Phantom and extra care is needed any time you have trees around.
If the Phantom initiates return home ... once it gets to its RTH altitude, it will happily fly a straight line to a point above its launch site. If there are trees anywhere on that straight line, the chances are good that it will crash into them.

The solution:
1. Keep away from trees
2. If point 1 is not possible, reset your home position above tree height after takeoff so that RTH will not get lost in the branches.

ps ... It's a good idea to be planning to return home yourself at around 20% so you have control rather than letting a dum and blind autopilot do the driving. When you get back nice and early you can use some of the remaining battery doing a few practice manouevres close by to brush up your skills (and have some fun).

But I still wouldn't have my bird in the air past 10%. Voltage drop means the last 10% is not the same as the first 10%.
 
Sorry for your loss, been there myself :(

When a battery related RTH has been initiated and you've not reset your RTH altitude you can always flick your S1 (right) switch down then up again and fly it back manually.

The "dumb and blind autopilot" is fine if you're in an open area otherwise try and take control back when you can just to be safe :D
 
Thanks for all of the replies.

I guess reading on this forum to find tips & tricks is going to be something I am going to do while it is getting repaired.

I called DJI today and they said I can send it in for repair and it would take roughly 4 weeks. I don't know what it is going to cost to have it fixed as he said it is 60 or 65.00 an hour. I cannot remember which one.

I am hoping I can get it fixed for a few hundred from them.

It broke the cable from the camera when the camera popped off.

Again, thank you for all your quick replies.
 
You might get lucky. For some reason DJI occasionally replaces a camera for free. Most of they time they charge about $700 for a broken camera.

Best of luck!
 
Cross my fingers I am one of the lucky ones, if not I guess I have no other choice :) lol

I was told by DJI today that worse case scenario it would not be 50% of what the unit costs. I guess 700 would be a little more than half.
 
stldrone said:
Cross my fingers I am one of the lucky ones, if not I guess I have no other choice :)

Might be worth keeping an eye on this.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y_aB4gylS8[/youtube]
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,358
Members
104,936
Latest member
hirehackers