Help understanding the Phantom 2

[jwrichte]

Ok - Sorry about this, but I have to ask a bunch of questions that may have been individually answered throughout the forums.

First - How concerned should I be about Fly away? I plan to fly my Phantom 2 near my house and on ocean vacations, but I am worried about wifi/electronic interference. In central Indiana going somewhere without houses for miles would require driving to uninteresting places. Should i be worried that wifi signals from peoples houses, or electronic interference will cause me an issue? I see video's of people flying them in residential area's all the time, but I have also been reading a lot about disasters so now I am nervous.

Can I control the gimball (non vision phantom) directly from the remote or will it require additional parts? If additional parts, which?

What does it take to get me to using FPV on an ipad or iphone? I love the features of the Phantom 2 Vision (altitude, distance, battery, etc) through the app, but I want to use a gopro for video quality reasons. Is my only option a ground station? Is that supported yet?

 

[GhostMaster]

As the flyways, i use naza for a long time and i never had a problem, most flyways are related to compass error, so before each flight just calibrate and use the phantom assistant to check the compass.

Yes if you order a phantom 2 with zenmuse you dont need anything eles.

The FPV you need to get some ground station, most people use 5.8ghz systems, dont use WiFi or you will crash the phantom for sure.

 

[Ton4]

If you should be worried about flyaways is up to you. Flyaways can occur anywhere, anytime, any place.

The risk of a flyaway is not reduced by avoiding possible places of interference, buying better transmitters, frequent compass dances or avoiding dances, or watching for solar flares.

It's caused by a glitch in the NAZA, hardware or software. Any (future) pilot should be aware that NAZA's or any other flight controller for that matter may fail and destroy your investment. Buying a flying machine without proper backup flight system involves taking a risk. Even Boeing realizes that.

Yes you can control pitch from your controller, just use a small monitor for your feed.

 

[Gizmo3000]

If you should be worried about flyaways is up to you. Flyaways can occur anywhere, anytime, any place.

The risk of a flyaway is not reduced by avoiding possible places of interference, buying better transmitters, frequent compass dances or avoiding dances, or watching for solar flares.

It's caused by a glitch in the NAZA, hardware or software. Any (future) pilot should be aware that NAZA's or any other flight controller for that matter may fail and destroy your investment. Buying a flying machine without proper backup flight system involves taking a risk. Even Boeing realizes that.

Yes you can control pitch from your controller, just use a small monitor for your feed.

Agreed.
there are a number of factors that might result in a flyaway. and unfortunately, sometimes it's just a failure or glitch that's unavoidable.
and to be honest, the compass dance really isn't required or necessary unless you change take off location hundreds miles away.
(I flew both my Phantom and F450 100 miles away (and 5,000ft up) without doing the compass dance, and they flew perfectly fine.

But true flyaways have only happened to a small percentage of flyers, and some of those are user error.

just fly safe and smart, put your name on the Phantom, and fly with caution and you should be ok.

 

[Ton4]

(I flew both my Phantom and F450 100 miles away (and 5,000ft up)

Hope you filed a flight plan. What battery did you use :mrgreen:?

 

[jwrichte]

Thanks everyone. Can you please let me know what the iosd is and how it works. I have read on the forum, but I don't want to make any false assumptions. It sounds like it records flight data, but what does it feed back to? Can you use the data mid flight, or is it just for post flight analysis?

Are these hard to install?

 

[Ton4]

OSD = On Screen Display.

Gives feedback as an overlay on your video down link.

Search youtube for a few samples.

 

[GhostMaster]

DJI Iosd mini is cheap and works fine on the phantom 2.

 

[iResq]

so before each flight just calibrate and use the phantom assistant to check the compass.

Before each flight calibrate and check with phantom assistant? Many people calibrate before each flight but this is the first I have heard to then check in phantom assistant.

 

[jthorstad]

Even if you do EVERYTHING properly, by the book, you can stand there and watch your $800-$1100 fly away from you, never to be seen again. It's a sickening feeling.

Not saying it will happen to you, but be prepared for it. Some of the Phantoms fail, and DJI won't care.

Should I ever buy another one, I will definitely have some GPS tracker in the thing. Name and phone number written on it is not enough (at least, where I fly. Lots of woods and fields).

Owning a Phantom is a gamble. Don't take their "return to home" too seriously.

That's my 2 cents. Or...$800.