There I am, on my first paying gig with my P4P. Weather is great, a little windy, but clear and warm even. Even got a great platform to work from on top of an empty parking ramp. And less than 2 minutes into the flight, with the aircraft maybe 150 yards away, it suddenly decides to fly itself.
My Latest Crash
- Thread starter San2C
- Start date
Quick glance without seeing a flight log indicates some sort of GPS/Compass interference.
You took off from the parking structure...?
Were you getting compass errors up there? Did you recalibrate while up there?
You took off from the parking structure...?
Were you getting compass errors up there? Did you recalibrate while up there?
No, no errors or warnings of any kind and I was a good 50 feet from the only two cars up there. No, I didn't recalibrate anything.
That almost looks like a bird strike at 1:57. There were birds in that area at what appeared to be that altitude at the begining of the video.
The movement from 1:43 to 1:57 (when you leave behind the church and go to the parking lot), did you volunteer? that is, were you guiding him until he shakes himself and goes to the wall?
They weren't anywhere near the aircraft and I have to think if they collided, the aircraft would have basically dropped right then and there. Instead, it drops in altitude and then (which I watched) it does this circular arc right into the church.
Around 1:45, the thing just started flying itself. Even horizon was off and altitude dropped.
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Wow that was odd. Almost like some kind of magnet pulling the bird towards the church. Making me think if the bells inside the church could be causing compass error (even tho you said you didn't see any warning) any chance of uploading the flight log ?
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Wow that was very crazy. I had mine do something similar to that but nothing that bad when it momentarily went into Atti mode for a few seconds.
I went behind a brick trellis once over a road and since it was only 150 feet away, I figured no big deal being close by, but it took off much the same as yours with the camera also looking down at one leg. Seemed like the electronics just crashed. I recovered by switching into ATTI quickly and flying it manually but it shook a lot. Another when I was in 'Track Me' (or whatever it's called) and the camera went limp and it took off at high speed losing track of me to who knows where, but I recovered it again by switching out of P mode. This was on version .600 if it matters.
I chalk it up to being DJI built and prone to sundry software and firmware issues. Add some issues at times with the tablets losing connections too.
I chalk it up to being DJI built and prone to sundry software and firmware issues. Add some issues at times with the tablets losing connections too.
Funny things is, I downgraded the firmware because of a previous low altitude crash with the latest FW where it just decided to make a beeline for some trees. Now I don't know what to do.
It smacked the church wall and went straight down. I'm just glad it didn't go through a window into someone's house.
The log is on your mobile device so you can access it and post it. Without looking at that it's really hard to determine what happened, but it does look like the effect of a compass error resulting from taking off in a location with magnetic interference.
That parking ramp from where it takes off, necessarily has a large amount of iron in its structure, without electrical conduits and other elements, that could be a cause.
Wow! So scary San2C! Do you think that toggling the mode switch could have brought it out of this? Of course, it's so hard to think of that in an instant!! Sorry about your bird!
If it was a compass problem then switching to ATTI would have eliminated the problem.
Meta4
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???
Switching to atti forces the Phantom to ignore GPS data but the compass problem remains.
With most compass errors, the Phantom will have already done that (but it doesn't help).
Meta4
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It wasn't such a great platform after all.
Rule 1 for Phantom flying - NEVER launch from a steel or reinforced concrete surface.
I've lost count of the number of Phantoms wrecked from that.
When you get around to checking the flight data, it's going to show yaw errors and compass errors caused by launching in the strong magnetic field of all the steel inside the reinforced concrete.
