Drone Crashed, any one suggest why?

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Morning all.
I took my drone out yesterday morning (Phantom 3 professional) and all was working nicely.
I was filming a viaduct which has a river running through the center span.
I decided to fly through the center span which is approx 40 foot wide and probably 50/60 foot high.
I flew through the span very slowly as I was videoing and exited the other side, I then turned the phantom 180 degree and started another slow run back toward me, still in the center of the span and about 3 meters above the river.
It got about 3/4 of the way through and then started moving very slowly to the left, i took my hands off the controller but it still continued to move to the left. I then tried with the controller to go right but the drone didn't respond. It continued slowly to the left until it hit the center of the bridge and dropped into the river (where it still is at this moment in time).
There was virtually no wind so I can't figure out why the drone became unresponsive, any ideas?
P.S, hoping to recover the drone next weekend. Probably wont be usable even after allowing it to dry out, but I want the SD card from it for the video I had done.
 
You didn't mention, but what was the app telling you? Were you still connected, did you still have good satelites, any compass warnings? Any or all of those could indicate the culprit. Consensus here is that it usually isn't a good idea to fly under a metal reinforced object like s bridge that can block your signal and sky view as well as mess with the compass.the fact that you got through once may just mean that you were luck once! Not trying to slam you, just trying to help work out what happened. Did you get any indication that the bird had switched to atti mode? Loss of satelites and or compass could have caused that. That could explain the drifting and depending on the view geometry, losing contact at about the same time could have prevented you from correcting. By the way, did you have RTH set? And if so, how high (compared to the bottom of the bridge)?
 
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Thanks for reply Richard,
I have to admit that it only took about 6-8 seconds from start to finish, and my eyes were mostly on the drone not the screen.
RTH was set to 120 metres which is obviously a lot higher than the bridge.
It may well have lost GPS etc. As I say my eyes were more on the drone than the screen.
 
Prbly lost sat lock went into atti mode and drifted having no sat lock.
 
yeah, it's hard to watch 2 critical things at the same time. Happened to me when a tree branch sneaked up on my bird and I was so focused on the shot that I didn't see it. Hearing you bird imitate a buzz saw and then fall 40 feet doesn't do your underwear any good LOL! Try looking at the log on the RC, that may give you some insight. Check some of the other threads, there have been several post on how to get and read them.
 
Whats odd is it ddn't respond to stick input. And It sounded like he was close enough for signal.
 
Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com looks like it did go to Attitude mode
There's not a lot to go on in the flight log.
It shows you flying at low level under the bridge and your satellite count drops from 16-17 to 9, then 6, then zero.
Under the bridge is a bad spot for satellite cover and your Phantom goes into atti mode.
There may not be much wind but even in still air, the Phantom is like driving on ice and has no position hold ability in atti.
You had your hands off the sticks for most of the last 5 seconds with a short burst (o.6 secs) where you pulled both sticks back which would account for the drop in altitude in the last second.
The flight data doesn't have anything identifiable as the moment of impact.

If you can recover the SD card, the final video file will not have been finalised and won't be viewable unless you can fix that.
 
Well we went fishing this morning... lol. Unfortunately we were unable to locate the drone so looks like another purchase is needed.
Any one selling a Phantom 3 Professional ?
 

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