My turn for crash...of course it had to be over water.

[JerEl]

Thanks guys. Already uploaded the logs to healthy drones and it didn't show any issues. I also uploaded the logs from my 15 minute flight before that and there were no major issues reports. A warning for maximum altitude and a brief signal loss when I was out about a mile. I hit return to home and it came back perfectly. We'll see.

Oh man...I feel your pain!

My father worked for Eastern Air Lines and I can't remember the first time I flew in a plane. 42 years ago I finally got a private pilot's license, flew out of my back yard airstrip for years until it got to expensive and then moved on to RC, flying gliders and fuel powered airplanes. So flying and RC was and is a big part of my life.

I had a total loss with my P2, except for the GoPro3+ (thanks to having Flytrex to find the pieces) and I thought my flying days were over as I really couldn't afford another but I was so depressed I knew I had to get another and get my 72 year old mind and body going again. Against all my financial sense I bought a P3P on credit (one year on Amazon) and if I lose this one it will probably be the biggest mistake that I've made in many years.

I think many of us do a similar thing knowing full well that we could lose it at any time but we take the plunge anyway because, let's face it, it's really fun, really daring, and just another part of making life interesting especially older folks like me that don't have many other "fun" things to do. But...All that said and all the reports about flyaways and other crashes in what seems like DJI caused defects (not counting stupid flying mistakes) we bite the bullet anyway even with all that doubt going on in the back of our mind about what if it is..."My Turn".

 

[djphantom2015]

Everyone goes on ignoring me. Well get your swim soon or later. It takes little effort and little cost to avoid losing for ever your machine. hope you find it after all.

 

[Launchpad]

Well, I was at my parents neighbors flying this evening. Took a few flights with no issues. Landed, changed batteries, and went to do a look over the small pond they have next to their house. I was watching the video and ascended and stopped, planning to turn around. Then all I hear is the thing go nuts. I am not sure what happened. As you can see in the video, all I did was increase altitude before hand. I suppose I could have lost a prop, but I had been flying and doing maneuvers much harder on it than what this was.

I will do a dive for it tomorrow and hopefully be able to find it. It isn't too deep I don't think (10ft or so), This is literally the first issue I have ever had. I will be sending this to DJI. Don't think I did anything wrong, so we'll see what they have to say.

Upload your flight log here HealthyDrones.com - Health Check for your DJI Phantom, log converter and more . Great little diagnostic site.

 

[hozzie]

Upload your flight log here HealthyDrones.com - Health Check for your DJI Phantom, log converter and more . Great little diagnostic site.

Thanks. Not to be rude,but if you would have read past the first post you would see that I have already done that a couple of times.

 

[atki]

I had the exact same thing happen to me and it fell in my pool. Total loss according to my certified DJI dealer. I posted it on this site the only site I have ever written anything on about anything except for my review of a hand surgery book on AMAZON. i was almost universally mocked and accused of not even being an orthopedic surgeon. Two of the replies even used profanity.

I got nowhere with DJI. Fortunately, mine was less than 3 months old and my credit card protection plan gave me a 100% credit. Check out the Phantom 3 reviews on AMAZON and B and H PHOTO. Your problem is not rare. I am preparing a formal FAA complaint as have others as you will see on other web sites.

Good luck, you will need it to deal with DJI service.
Orlando

Can you post any relevant details, flight logs and video feed in your thread?

 

[Dkwesley70]

Well, I was at my parents neighbors flying this evening. Took a few flights with no issues. Landed, changed batteries, and went to do a look over the small pond they have next to their house. I was watching the video and ascended and stopped, planning to turn around. Then all I hear is the thing go nuts. I am not sure what happened. As you can see in the video, all I did was increase altitude before hand. I suppose I could have lost a prop, but I had been flying and doing maneuvers much harder on it than what this was.

I will do a dive for it tomorrow and hopefully be able to find it. It isn't too deep I don't think (10ft or so), This is literally the first issue I have ever had. I will be sending this to DJI. Don't think I did anything wrong, so we'll see what they have to say.

 

[Dkwesley70]

I had the exact same thing happen to me on Wednesday morning. I had flown at the resivore on many occasions. I did my pre flight list and took off was about 100' up did a left turn and it dropped from the sky!
I was freaking out and had no way of getting it due to the reservoir is large. I have been back several times and put a $200 reward up. No luck yet. DJI I hope will be getting her back soon.

 

[BrianG-PH]

A bird strike is likely, probably a water fowl. We've also had close encounters with birds in some of our flights, one time it was a monkey-eating eagle off the coast of Palawan. Nearly took down our drone so we had to land fast. They're very territorial.

 

[atki]

I had the exact same thing happen to me on Wednesday morning. I had flown at the resivore on many occasions. I did my pre flight list and took off was about 100' up did a left turn and it dropped from the sky!
I was freaking out and had no way of getting it due to the reservoir is large. I have been back several times and put a $200 reward up. No luck yet. DJI I hope will be getting her back soon.

Battery flying out is the first thing that comes to mind.

 

[Jbundy63]

Nozzie wonder what is up with the speed? 157.82 MPH

Sure hate to hear about your loss!

 

[Basald]

I have had multiple scary scenarios just like this but I was able to keep visual of the bird and realize what was going on. The last time, I had to manually land in atti mode in somewhat high wind and the darn thing just bounced, refusing to shut props off until it flipped and planted all 4 motors in the sand...after hearing how great DJI service is, even living in LA, I am going to just solder on new motors myself for $80 and 2 days instead of 8 weeks and who knows.

The issue I experience is my bird shows multiple satellites and goes "green" with safe to fly. As soon as it takes off it switches to atti mode. It is hit or miss if it records the home location first. I typically fly in moderate wind in close proximity to expensive kitesurfing kites, so atti mode is extremely difficult to manage even though I know what I am doing. I sent the bird through a good friend's kite already due to no GPS position hold from takeoff. I have now gotten in the habit of standing directly behind the phantom during take off and letting it hover at 2 feet until I am sure it is not drifting...manually lock the home point, then fly.

My bird is currently grounded until I can figure out what is going on.

Between this and the cracking shells I'm really regretting going with DJI over 3DR and GoPro this round.

Does this happen to others?

 

[hozzie]

Nozzie wonder what is up with the speed? 157.82 MPH

Sure hate to hear about your loss!View attachment 29391

I am guessing it is from the downward crash speed.

Sent a support ticket to DJI with explanation and said I have logs last Friday with not so much as an email response yet asking questions. I did get the confirmation email from the support request so I know they got it. We'll see how long it takes to get any type of inquiry.

 

[dronepilottampa]

You should put your logs through here, these are amazingly accurate at disecting your entire flight log: DJI Log Converter

 

[dronepilottampa]

I am guessing it is from the downward crash speed.

Sent a support ticket to DJI with explanation and said I have logs last Friday with not so much as an email response yet asking questions. I did get the confirmation email from the support request so I know they got it. We'll see how long it takes to get any type of inquiry.

I had one crash in the water and someone was nice enough to look through my flight logs and tell me exactly what happened, I lost my previous info but he is the one who runs the flight log site I told you about in my post. In the Android code if your battery becomes unseated there was a bug in the code that tells you if the aircraft loses signal with the controller, so I could see everything but the code that was left out was supposed to tell me if the controller lost signal with the aircraft and it didn't, so it showed I had 51% battery life and then all of a sudden landed in the water at a moments notice. See my video here

. After months of arguing my case DJI sent me a refurb, I have had it 3 weeks and the Yaw arm broke, all I did was tighten the bolt down, and my remote went out, I charge if for days and it just won't turn on, I have tried everything. So I have a message into DJI support as well because they need to replace the remote, I will just have to buy a new Yaw arm but it still is a pain. Anyways here is what the guy found for me to argue my case:
Here is the issue:

“There's actually a message in the Android app codebase:

res/values/public.xml: <public type="string" name="warning_battery_error" id="0x7f080062" />

res/values/strings.xml: <string name="warning_battery_error">Battery Communication Error. Fly Carefully</string>

But this message isn't referenced anywhere in the code itself - they forgot to implement the tiny bit of code where they show the error message. If they'd implemented this correctly in the app, you would have seen a warning.”

 

[43k]

What do you think of this as a possible cause to sudden crashes?

From the release notes of the beta firmware released a week ago:

17. Fixed issue of the Joystick sending the NAN command that may cause the aircraft to crash.

Just saying.

 

[Jbundy63]

I am guessing it is from the downward crash speed.

Sent a support ticket to DJI with explanation and said I have logs last Friday with not so much as an email response yet asking questions. I did get the confirmation email from the support request so I know they got it. We'll see how long it takes to get any type of inquiry.

Hoping for the best of luck hozzie!

 

[Othan1]

I just posted my P3P's death. I was witness to it as I had it in line of sight. I wept. (okay, not really, but it's hell trying to get an RMA!)

 

[BenDronePilot]

Its stories like this that make you wonder if it's just a matter of "WHEN" its your turn to post a similar incident.

If you fly long enough then correct its just a matter of when. Electronics will inevitably fail at some point it's just a matter of how long it will take to eventually happen. Tho most of us will move on to a new bird before flying enough for a component to fail catastrophically.

 

[hozzie]

So I figured I would give an update one month later. It's pretty simply, there is no update. I sent a support request via the DJI website, but apparently that doesn't really mean anything. No response at all after two weeks. I had contacted CopterShop where I bought it to see if they could help, but they basically said all they can do it contact DJI Support as well. At least they did give me another email address to try.

So I send an email to the new address and I did at least get a response asking me to fill out a form, which I did immediately. They said when I responded with the form, a supervisor would review the information and get back to me. Well, that was almost another two weeks ago and not so much as a peep out of them. I have even asked for an update and they can't even respond saying it is in queue or anything.

Pretty sad really. If they can't even respond to a status check request, I pretty well figure I will never hear from them. What a pitiful level of customer service.

I also wanted to ask, is there a classified section on this forum? I might as well sell my other 3 batteries, controller, extra props, and carrying case.

 

[RCFantom]

Well, I was at my parents neighbors flying this evening. Took a few flights with no issues. Landed, changed batteries, and went to do a look over the small pond they have next to their house. I was watching the video and ascended and stopped, planning to turn around. Then all I hear is the thing go nuts. I am not sure what happened. As you can see in the video, all I did was increase altitude before hand. I suppose I could have lost a prop, but I had been flying and doing maneuvers much harder on it than what this was.

I will do a dive for it tomorrow and hopefully be able to find it. It isn't too deep I don't think (10ft or so), This is literally the first issue I have ever had. I will be sending this to DJI. Don't think I did anything wrong, so we'll see what they have to say.

Welcome to the "Water Club", we should all get a badge or a patch....