Fail safe failures

[MajorMel]

A few times lately my phantom went out of range and failed to return home. Today it went out of sight so now its lost. What caused that?

It was in HL and GPS modes. After startup the green lights were flashing within 3-4 minutes and it took off and landed twice with minimal maneuvers before flying it further afield. When I tried to fly it back after some yaw maneuvers it wasn't responding like it was in home lock flight. Instead it was acting basically opposite to the directional control. Before I could get it oriented it was lost against the grey sky over a nearby lake. I switch the controller off as a last resort hoping it would return home but no deal. I didn't mess with the mode switches. I have no reason to believe there's any issue with the GPS signal around here. It's pretty wide open where I fly it.

Last summer I connected it to the naza-m software assistant and some upgrade came along. Everything in the settings seemed fine.

I have found the various instruction PDFs lacking generally. They're poorly organized and not nearly coherent enough for something this complicated and expensive. For instance the naza-m quick start guide v1.02 has 17 pages, how quick is that!! And it seems to cover a lot of stuff that's not applicable to my lost quad copter. The phantom quick start manual v1.5 is 15 pages long but the advanced phantom manual v1.4 is just 11 pages long. On p10 the lower right quarter page is in a red box titled "IOC FLYING NOTES!!". The first line states "LED will blink (green) quickly if recording is successful ..." Recording what? There is no reference to recording anywhere else on the page! That's one of many instances that makes absorbing the instructions a difficult task.

DJI needs to do better with that.

 

[OI Photography]

The first line states "LED will blink (green) quickly if recording is successful ..." Recording what? There is no reference to recording anywhere else on the page! That's one of many instances that makes absorbing the instructions a difficult task.

DJI needs to do better with that.

Can't argue with that!

The quick-green sequence that note refers to is the one following system warmup and GPS lock, indicating that the Phantom has solid enough position data to record the "home" location for that flight. Have you been seeing that before arming the motors or taking off? If not, that's one of the possible reasons why it didn't come back when signal was lost, but that doesn't explain why it was lost in the first place.

The name "Phantom" for this platform is a sad irony, in light of how many have flown off as if possessed. Your experience could simply be another one that has no identifiable cause.

 

[phantomflyer]

The quick flashing green means its recording Forward direction or home point! This should be in the manual that came with your Phantom. Did you see the quick flashing green lights like twenty or so all at once? Also because I don't remember if you said you did or not, Did you have all GPS satellites? I do remember you saying you waited about four minutes before taking off, Was your motors running and was your battery fully charged?
Well that sucks man, Do you think it went into the lake and did you have floats on your landing gear?