I don't know of if my cases were an exception but I will explain what happened here and you can decide for yourself or at least have it in your pocket in case it happens to you.
I have a couple hundred flights with my Phantom 2 Vision Plus (adding up flights on all three batteries). After week two of flying every day, and this being one of several quadcopters I have owned in the past seven years, I felt comfortable opening up my controller and phantom to Naza mode. This, in my experience, is what saved my quad.
I was flying in my back yard some time after all of this. I usually keep it in Phantom Mode while I am flying a bit higher and taking video. This day had no wind and great visibility. I was very close to my take off point, about 150ft up and 50ft out, when all of a sudden it said control signal lost, the quad stopped, started to climb and then just took off in the opposite direction of "home" and myself. I started to panic a bit and ran after it just mashing buttons. A quick thought was to turn off gps. I pulled the switch down to naza m and it stopped flying away and just started gliding. It immediately came back under my command and I was able to fly it back to my feet. I was pretty confident I had just experienced a so called "flyaway" and won.
To confirm my theory, at least a month later I had a very similar experience at a radio controlled park and was able to, once again, catch it and bring it home.
I am not sure if this is right or not but my theory is that, since most people use phantom mode, they are in a situation where once control is lost they can not take it back from the "come home" feature. They are stuck until it lands itself. I think that the GPS may get a weird reading and try to take it home far far away in these rare occasions. That seems to be what happened to me. If you unlock your Phantom you are gaining the option of turning off gps even if it is only in the event of that weird emergency. Anyone have any thoughts?
I have a couple hundred flights with my Phantom 2 Vision Plus (adding up flights on all three batteries). After week two of flying every day, and this being one of several quadcopters I have owned in the past seven years, I felt comfortable opening up my controller and phantom to Naza mode. This, in my experience, is what saved my quad.
I was flying in my back yard some time after all of this. I usually keep it in Phantom Mode while I am flying a bit higher and taking video. This day had no wind and great visibility. I was very close to my take off point, about 150ft up and 50ft out, when all of a sudden it said control signal lost, the quad stopped, started to climb and then just took off in the opposite direction of "home" and myself. I started to panic a bit and ran after it just mashing buttons. A quick thought was to turn off gps. I pulled the switch down to naza m and it stopped flying away and just started gliding. It immediately came back under my command and I was able to fly it back to my feet. I was pretty confident I had just experienced a so called "flyaway" and won.
To confirm my theory, at least a month later I had a very similar experience at a radio controlled park and was able to, once again, catch it and bring it home.
I am not sure if this is right or not but my theory is that, since most people use phantom mode, they are in a situation where once control is lost they can not take it back from the "come home" feature. They are stuck until it lands itself. I think that the GPS may get a weird reading and try to take it home far far away in these rare occasions. That seems to be what happened to me. If you unlock your Phantom you are gaining the option of turning off gps even if it is only in the event of that weird emergency. Anyone have any thoughts?