My Phantom Flyaway and Recovery |Video Included|

[babryan]

Well, I've heard about them, read about them, watched others on youtube and now experienced my own flyaway. I gotta tell you, I doubt this will stop my flying, but it scared the crap out of me. I was lucky to not hit someone or a business. Luckily, I only fly areas like this when there are few to no people around.

I was attempting to get some downtown Decatur, Ga. footage, when my P2 decided to stop responding and take off on its own. I have no idea why, it was a routine flight after compass calibration and all green led. You can see the mini iosd and everything appears normal. Best I can tell it just takes off on its own.

Things really get interesting at about 40 seconds see for yourself: http://youtu.be/pxB5AgvSZys

Damage: Gimbal, H3B+, landing gear, Immersion tx and a few scuff marks on the shell.

At least I got her back.

 

[Noël]

Looks like it lost GPS for a fraction of a second. It jumps from 9 to 0 back to 9 again. After this the real trouble started.

 

[Damon]

Good spot Noel. That split second of 0 then 9 appears to be exactly when it all hit the fan.

 

[babryan]

Looks like it lost GPS for a fraction of a second. It jumps from 9 to 0 back to 9 again. After this the real trouble started.

Excellent spot on the GPS, I missed it myself. From the motion, I'm pretty sure something started just before that but can't say for sure. Any ideas what could cause this? I took everything part post crash and all of the connectors and solder joints are in good shape.

Should I even try to contact DJI?

 

[Damon]

That is a pretty compelling video since the iosd info was there. It might actually cause DJI to admit something is faulty with that unit and not the usual "operator error" response.

 

[JDN]

I'm sorry, but these kinds of flyways/crashes are making me re-evaluate flying my P2 anywhere near buildings and people! I didn't see any technical evidence from the iOSD in this video to warrant a crash like that, except for the GPS signal dropout. That's scary!!! Just curious, were you on the latest firmware release to date...V.3.06?

 

[babryan]

I'm sorry, but these kinds of flyways/crashes are making me re-evaluate flying my P2 anywhere near buildings and people! I didn't see any technical evidence from the iOSD in this video to warrant a crash like that, except for the GPS signal dropout. That's scary!!! Just curious, were you on the latest firmware release to date...V.3.06?

Yes, I updated to 3.06 the day it released and have had no issue until now. I have opened a support case with DJI and post results here.

A bit more about my setup: P2 | H3-3D | FPV HUB | Mini iOSD | immersion 5.8 vTX.

Video from flight 10 minutes earlier: http://youtu.be/kPQmq4d0OJ8

 

[tpallred]

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH! ) These guys are killing me. I only discovered these aerial cameras a month ago via something I saw on the web that led me to DJI's site. Immediately started to pull out the plastic for the P2V+ but forced myself to look into them first which led me to here, rcgroups, etc. where I learned about flyaways, magnetic declination issues, and DJI's bad rep for customer support. Looked around for something else but didn't really see anything as exciting as the P2V+. Found the threads talking about the impending release of 3.06 so I waited impatiently for that. Now it's out and I almost pulled the trigger again but now see reports about post-update 3.06's falling out of the sky and problems with getting the props to spin up to full power along with negative impacts on speed and descent rate. Started looking at the Tali H500 but it's new and there are reports of problems with it as well. If somebody ever makes one of these integrated RTF FPV systems that is actually reliable, they aren't going to know what to do with all the money they'll haul in. Impatiently waiting.... )

 

[laselvasurf]

Did you ever switch out of GPS mode? And, are you SURE you had no control? In all honesty, it looks more like an orientation problem... Were you giving any control input to the phantom when it was "flying away"?

 

[ianwood]

At 0:48, TBE and loss of horizon starts. At 0:56, the GPS briefly goes to 0. Most likely GPS dipping to 0 and back is a red herring and/or not related. There was no loss of relative height, distance or azimuth according to the OSD before, during and after GPS blip.

The cause of this crash is most likely taking off from granite surface which had a strong enough magnetic field to cause the compass to initialize improperly. There's no guarantee that this is the cause but it would be the strongest suspect in my opinion.

It doesn't happen every time but it only takes once.

 

[Jaybee]

Don't rule out WiFi interference sending conflicting signals to the Phantom either. Looks like you flew pretty close to a large residential complex just before it went erratic. Modern routers can kick out a signal 40m+. While walls will reduce that range, think about windows, balconies etc. As with Ian, not saying this is the reason, but it is a possibility.

 

[babryan]

Did you ever switch out of GPS mode? And, are you SURE you had no control? In all honesty, it looks more like an orientation problem... Were you giving any control input to the phantom when it was "flying away"?

Everything happened so quickly that I never tried atti or manual. I had 0 control after 52 seconds.

At 0:48, TBE and loss of horizon starts. At 0:56, the GPS briefly goes to 0. Most likely GPS dipping to 0 and back is a red herring and/or not related. There was no loss of relative height, distance or azimuth according to the OSD before, during and after GPS blip.

The cause of this crash is most likely taking off from granite surface which had a strong enough magnetic field to cause the compass to initialize improperly. There's no guarantee that this is the cause but it would be the strongest suspect in my opinion.

It doesn't happen every time but it only takes once.

I guess it is possible that the granite had enough magnetic field. At this point there is no other reasonable explanation and something obviously happened. I did calibrate the compass just before take off and there was no indication of a problem or warning LED's before taking off. I guess going back and taking off from the same place might let us know, but that ain't going to happen by me. To be honest, I am scared to death of it at the moment!