Help needed. Signal loss during flight.

[Sean Poole]

Hey everyone. New to this board and to quadcopters in general. Looking for some input.

Received my Phantom 3 Adv. on Monday. Have taken it on a number of flights locally without too many problems. Have had a number of instances when it lost signal for a few seconds, but always reconnected.

Decided to take it somewhere new today, so I went to the west coast in Florida and flew it at Crystal River. Made my first flight out and did about 19 minutes with no problems. Returned and rested a bit before changing batteries and going out again. Went up to about 250 feet and flew out over the water looking at a couple of small islands when I got the weak signal message. My screen showed I was about 5200 ft. away, so I tried turning around a bit to see if it would get better. It didn't, so I initiated a RTH. Within about 3-4 seconds of this I got the no signal message and video feed cut out. I waited, ......nothing. I did a shutdown/restart of DJI Go a couple of times to no avail. No signal. Now I just had to wait. It was a long 4-5 minute wait before I heard it return overhead and start to descend. I was relieved, but it never re-established a signal, so all I could do was just watch as it landed. So happy that I got it back, but concerned about what had happened.

Does anyone have any experience with this happening and a possible solution? Would it be a hardware issue or software? I uploaded my flight data to Healthy Drones and it never shows it returning home. The flight ends when the signal is lost, as if it was lost at sea. Luckily, it wasn't. Any help would be appreciated. As I mentioned, I've had it less than a week, so I believe I can exchange it if there is a problem. Thanks.

 

[Sean Poole]

*bump

 

[CactusJackSlade]

I believe that if the app is down it will lose the info at that time since the app is what is recording the data transmission (which was lost).

Antennas in correct orientation? No obstructions between you and copter? What kind of tablet and are you closing all other apps and wireless is off?

 

[toorboy]

hi sean poole I had this running fw1.4 even though the drone was 20ft away & rc correctly pointing to the bird it still disconnected
am on the older motors bird n running with ipad mini 2 fw 1.5 got rid of it but now my bird has viberations i bought those wind surfer range extenders hopfully i will get out to test them today am running fw 1.6 now and still getting viberations

 

[CCDD]

Inexpeirence may have played a "big" role in this. When faced with a crisis such as this, panic mode likely set in and you may have missed some simple step(s) when trying to restablish signal. This doesn't explain why you lost it in the first place however, not being able to reconnect, especially at such a short distance, is very strange. I assume you've since restarted everything and all appears fine? I would keep a close eye for a bit while you continue to familiarize yourself with the functions of your Phanton. It's also a great idea to know in advance exactly what to do in the event this occurs again.

 

[ChrisRN]

Inexpeirence may have played a "big" role in this. When faced with a crisis such as this, panic mode likely set in and you may have missed some simple step(s) when trying to restablish signal. This doesn't explain why you lost it in the first place however, not being able to reconnect, especially at such a short distance, is very strange. I assume you've since restarted everything and all appears fine? I would keep a close eye for a bit while you continue to familiarize yourself with the functions of your Phanton. It's also a great idea to know in advance exactly what to do in the event this occurs again.

What steps should be have taken the moment he lost signal?

 

[msinger]

Sean Poole, RTH will not work if your remote controller is not connected to your Phantom. It sounds like it might have disconnected right before you attempted to initiate RTH.

When the remote controller disconnects, your Phantom will wait 3 seconds for it to reconnect. If the remote controller does not reconnect, failsafe RTH will be automatically initiated. If you had "Hover" selected in the setting below, then your Phantom would have done what you described above.

 

[CCDD]

The first things I usually do is check the antenna, ensuring orientation is correct including my position. Certainly pressing the RTH button would follow and watching carefully if any changes in signal are noticed on device. If it came down to turning off both remote and app, I would make sure that both do in fact get rebooted, not just the RC.

 

[Sean Poole]

I believe that if the app is down it will lose the info at that time since the app is what is recording the data transmission (which was lost).

Antennas in correct orientation? No obstructions between you and copter? What kind of tablet and are you closing all other apps and wireless is off?

Thanks for responding. The antennas were in the correct position. I even tried some adjustments to no avail. I have also attached the copper parabolic boosters to the antenna as well. No obstructions at all and clear skies. I am using an Ipad Air 2 and wireless off and all other apps closed. Running firmware 1.6 and the newest DJI Go app.

 

[Sean Poole]

Inexpeirence may have played a "big" role in this. When faced with a crisis such as this, panic mode likely set in and you may have missed some simple step(s) when trying to restablish signal. This doesn't explain why you lost it in the first place however, not being able to reconnect, especially at such a short distance, is very strange. I assume you've since restarted everything and all appears fine? I would keep a close eye for a bit while you continue to familiarize yourself with the functions of your Phanton. It's also a great idea to know in advance exactly what to do in the event this occurs again.

I have no doubt that some inexperience may be involved in my not being able to re-establish a connection. As I said, I restarted the software a couple of times. What I didn't do was restart the controller itself. Not being in this situation before, I wasn't sure how it would affect what I had already done. As I mentioned, I had already initiated a RTH just a few seconds prior to the loss of signal. I wasn't 100% sure that restarting wouldn't cancel that action, so I didn't do it. Had it not returned when it did, I certainly would have tried this. I didn't panic when nothing seemed to work, I just waited for the failsafes to work as they are supposed to. I guess my main concern is that this shouldn't happen at all. Never re-establishing a connection even once it landed and was 5 feet from me. Doesn't seem right.

 

[Sean Poole]

Sean Poole, RTH will not work if your remote controller is not connected to your Phantom. It sounds like it might have disconnected right before you attempted to initiate RTH.

When the remote controller disconnects, your Phantom will wait 3 seconds for it to reconnect. If the remote controller does not reconnect, failsafe RTH will be automatically initiated. If you had "Hover" selected in the setting below, then your Phantom would have done what you described above.

View attachment 42392

Thanks for the response. I had initiated the RTH just prior to the loss, so I was lucky there. My RTH is set to return in failsafe menu.

 

[MrMcfly]

Saying signal loss shouldn't happen at all is a bit unrealistic. There are other factors at work besides
transmitter/receiver interaction. There's no telling what type of interference can present itself in a mile
distance, natural or artificial. I've had signal loss at 800 ft. Best thing to do is as you did... don't panic, and work to resolve
the issue. Most important is to put "Set RTH Settings" and then "Verify RTH Settings" on your preflight checklist. I always
look at those settings twice before the props spin.

I've also made a habit of restarting the controller, and on my Tab 4, killing all apps and restarting the Go (Litchi) App between flights.
I have much less connection issues with this system.

 

[Sean Poole]

Saying signal loss shouldn't happen at all is a bit unrealistic. There are other factors at work besides
transmitter/receiver interaction. There's no telling what type of interference can present itself in a mile
distance, natural or artificial. I've had signal loss at 800 ft. Best thing to do is as you did... don't panic, and work to resolve
the issue. Most important is to put "Set RTH Settings" and then "Verify RTH Settings" on your preflight checklist. I always
look at those settings twice before the props spin.

I've also made a habit of restarting the controller, and on my Tab 4, killing all apps and restarting the Go (Litchi) App between flights.
I have much less connection issues with this system.

I wasn't really saying I should never have a signal loss, more-so that it doesn't seem right that it never reconnected. When back in range and on the way home, I would think a reconnect would be pretty important. My whole problem is the failure to reconnect and am wondering if this happens often to other people. As I mentioned, I am well within my exchange period and would like to establish whether this is a serious problem that might continue to happen or maybe it happens to everyone, and if I should exchange. I was reading through the current topic about if anyone never had problems with there Phantom and there were a lot of responses that said they never had a problem. Kind of using this as a barometer. Thanks again.

 

[MrMcfly]

I wasn't really saying I should never have a signal loss, more-so that it doesn't seem right that it never reconnected. When back in range and on the way home, I would think a reconnect would be pretty important. My whole problem is the failure to reconnect and am wondering if this happens often to other people. As I mentioned, I am well within my exchange period and would like to establish whether this is a serious problem that might continue to happen or maybe it happens to everyone, and if I should exchange. I was reading through the current topic about if anyone never had problems with there Phantom and there were a lot of responses that said they never had a problem. Kind of using this as a barometer. Thanks again.

Gotcha... did you upload the flight to Healthydrones.com? You might see something in the data of that flight that could
indicate why this loss of reception happened, such as a specific area, or error... Good or bad flight, I always look at the
flight report to see signal strength in the area, and over performance of the P3. Hope it was a one off event for ya.