- Joined
- Apr 21, 2015
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Just when I thought it wouldn't happen to me...
Here's the story. P3P, I have about 70 flights under my belt. I paid for Litchi the same day that the latest firmware came out, because I really wanted ground-programmable waypoints as an option. I had about 7 successful litchi flights, including 2 good flights earlier the same day.
Flight: Saturday afternoon, around 5pm. I took off from my patio like I have at least 20 times before, and shot up to about 150ft to get well above the many 100 foot trees in my neighborhood. My typical routine is once I am at altitude I will then flip the switch from P to F, and then load a waypoints mission. Before I could even get to that point, I looked up and noticed the P3P drifting forward (camera view) really badly to the west (we are talking probably no more than 20 seconds after takeoff). I double-checked the switch - definitely in P mode. I pulled back on the stick towards me which halted the drift, but it wasn't coming back - at least it didn't appear to be. It was almost like I was pulling against an unseen force - like wind - except it wasn't windy, just a breeze. It was over trees, so I couldn't just land it where it was. I don't really recall, but I must have changed the orientation of the phantom while trying to get it back to me, because when I let go of the sticks, it now started drifting off in a different direction.
At the time, it didn't occur to me to try steering it to see if it could be controlled. In my mind, I am almost at last resort, and try an RTH via the hard button...it continues to drift away from me, while beeping. At this point I take off running - out of my back yard, down the street, and down another street, hoping to intercept it. When I get to the third street, I see that the phantom is now at about 50 feet, and about 5 feet away from running into a tree. I throttle it up and it narrowly misses the tree. I had just enough control that I was able to get it into the middle of the street while it continued its RTH descent. When it got low enough, I darted out and grabbed it, before killing the motors with the throttle fully down. This is all in a Florida suburban neighborhood by the way...no cars on the streets.
That was the last time I flew it. Since then, I have downloaded all of the FLY logs, and also the CSV off the tablet (NVidia Shield). I uploaded the CSV to flightreplay.com to view it, thinking that it would show stick inputs, compass values, IMU values, RTH engaged, any errors, etc, but it only shows the flight path.
Again, this was all done in Litchi, so I don't have any of the corresponding logs that DJI Go gives you. It was all recorded, but not much to see other than an extremely tilted horizon at one point (never seen that before), and the part where it almost hits the tree. I did shoot an email to Litchi support telling them what happened and asking for assistance in troubleshooting. I got a reply back a few days later simply saying that it couldn't be Litchi, but not much else. Not really the great support that I had been expecting from what everyone has said, but oh well. I kind of agree that it shouldn't be Litchi since I didn't do anything other than keep it in FPV mode. Can anyone assist me in troubleshooting further?
Thanks!
-mmjax
Here's the story. P3P, I have about 70 flights under my belt. I paid for Litchi the same day that the latest firmware came out, because I really wanted ground-programmable waypoints as an option. I had about 7 successful litchi flights, including 2 good flights earlier the same day.
Flight: Saturday afternoon, around 5pm. I took off from my patio like I have at least 20 times before, and shot up to about 150ft to get well above the many 100 foot trees in my neighborhood. My typical routine is once I am at altitude I will then flip the switch from P to F, and then load a waypoints mission. Before I could even get to that point, I looked up and noticed the P3P drifting forward (camera view) really badly to the west (we are talking probably no more than 20 seconds after takeoff). I double-checked the switch - definitely in P mode. I pulled back on the stick towards me which halted the drift, but it wasn't coming back - at least it didn't appear to be. It was almost like I was pulling against an unseen force - like wind - except it wasn't windy, just a breeze. It was over trees, so I couldn't just land it where it was. I don't really recall, but I must have changed the orientation of the phantom while trying to get it back to me, because when I let go of the sticks, it now started drifting off in a different direction.
At the time, it didn't occur to me to try steering it to see if it could be controlled. In my mind, I am almost at last resort, and try an RTH via the hard button...it continues to drift away from me, while beeping. At this point I take off running - out of my back yard, down the street, and down another street, hoping to intercept it. When I get to the third street, I see that the phantom is now at about 50 feet, and about 5 feet away from running into a tree. I throttle it up and it narrowly misses the tree. I had just enough control that I was able to get it into the middle of the street while it continued its RTH descent. When it got low enough, I darted out and grabbed it, before killing the motors with the throttle fully down. This is all in a Florida suburban neighborhood by the way...no cars on the streets.
That was the last time I flew it. Since then, I have downloaded all of the FLY logs, and also the CSV off the tablet (NVidia Shield). I uploaded the CSV to flightreplay.com to view it, thinking that it would show stick inputs, compass values, IMU values, RTH engaged, any errors, etc, but it only shows the flight path.
Again, this was all done in Litchi, so I don't have any of the corresponding logs that DJI Go gives you. It was all recorded, but not much to see other than an extremely tilted horizon at one point (never seen that before), and the part where it almost hits the tree. I did shoot an email to Litchi support telling them what happened and asking for assistance in troubleshooting. I got a reply back a few days later simply saying that it couldn't be Litchi, but not much else. Not really the great support that I had been expecting from what everyone has said, but oh well. I kind of agree that it shouldn't be Litchi since I didn't do anything other than keep it in FPV mode. Can anyone assist me in troubleshooting further?
Thanks!
-mmjax
