Loss of control at 250 feet

Hunter · Mar 17, 2015

I am experiencing a loss of control signal at 250 feet. I live out in the country with nothing around to interfere with the transmitter. I have 30+ flights on my phantom 2v+ 3.0 all the software is up to date and has flown reliably in the last couple of weeks. Yesterday I was try to take pictures of the sunset and lost signal at 250' straight up. Today I flew it with GS went out to its first waypoint, lost control signal on the way, flew to its 2nd waypoint and landed nicely in the cow pasture. The video feed was still working and I watched it set down on my iphone. I flipped it to fail safe as I saw it descending and I just continued to land.

Everything is charged
Compass calibrated before every flight
Software 3.12
Iphone 6+
FCC mode on

What am I missing?

Meta4 · Mar 17, 2015

Straight above you is the trickiest angle to get good signal and where you expect to have problems.
Go out further and up .

Hunter · Mar 17, 2015

Where I lost signal today I was 100 feet agl and 250 feet away. It is very strange acting why would it loose signal and then land instead of RTH?

happydays · Mar 18, 2015

Did it complete the ground station mission? It's not clear from the original post whether it did. Landing safely in the cow pasture? I understood that when a GS mission had completed that the phantom hovered until either told what to do next or the auto land kicked in due to the battery going flat.

On all of the GS missions that I have flown, the phantom can get so far away behind buildings, trees, hills etc that both control signal and (especially) FPV are lost, but it continues on until the mission is complete.

If yours didn't, and auto landed, then I would suspect something else to be the case, maybe with battery or data contact pins?

BlackTracer · Mar 18, 2015

happydays said:
I understood that when a GS mission had completed that the phantom hovered until either told what to do next or the auto land kicked in due to the battery going flat.

The manual says when a GS mission completes, the Phantom returns to the home point and hovers.

dalebb · Mar 18, 2015

A solar flare hit the earth yesterday, I also had some issues with connecting to the bird but no crashes.

Hunter · Mar 18, 2015

It only completed 2 of 4 waypoints. So it did not complete the mission. I am wondering if it could be a battery? the batteries only have a few flights on them.....

flyNfrank · Mar 18, 2015

dalebb said:
A solar flare hit the earth yesterday, I also had some issues with connecting to the bird but no crashes.

I'm with dalebb on this one. There was a severe geomagnetic storm in the atmosphere during the 17th.

happydays · Mar 19, 2015

Strange that it didn't complete the mission. I would be keeping an eye on that particular battery. If there wasn't enough juice to complete the mission it might have gone into auto land. I would run a test again in a big field on a day when solar activity is less just to be sure. You wouldn't want that battery to let you down.

flyNfrank · Mar 19, 2015

I wonder if what happened during my flight on the 17th was due to the Geo-Storm?

The 1st image shows the names of the columns in question. The 2nd images shows the issue on lines 138 & 139.

Btw, if I wasn't logging the data I would not have known there was a problem. I actually log data using 2 data loggers at all times.