New dog in the air

[grahng]

Very interested in getting into quads. I have looked at both the Phantom 2 and the Blade 350QX.
I am aware of the price differential which is not a factor. I am most concerned about the fly-a-way issue. Is that still a problem? It or was it a problem with DJI or human error or both?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks, Jerry in Central east coast Florida

 

[N017RW]

At the risk of sounding dismissive,

I don't think there is any [one] thing to 'fix'.

Human error (pilot, preparation, design, manufacturing/assembly),
poor judgement,
equipment failure,
lack of understanding,
etc...

These are the contributors to loss of control (fly-away if you must).

 

[SilentAV8R]

I watched a guy flying a DJI S1000 with a Sony NEX5 camera on it yesterday. He was barely able to control it. SOrt of scary to watch. He landed and packed up because it was "too windy to fly."

Winds were just under 8 mph at the time. I launched my Phantom 2 Vision+. He astonished at how stable it was even in the "heavy winds".

Point is that there is a huge spectrum of experience and ability on Internet forums. The signal to noise ratio is very low. The folks with "problems" whether real or imagined make the most amount of noise. The large majority of us with few to no problems do not make as much noise.

 

[grahng]

OK...so if a person were to lose control or get out of range, isn't the Phantom suppose to go into safe mode and return home?

 

[QYV]

indeed. a lot of the early "flyaways" were due to people leaving their gopro's wifi turned on, which interfered with the RC signal and the Phantom didn't realize it had lost touch with the RC.
under normal conditions if you fly too far or behind an obstruction and the Phantom loses signal there is indeed a return-to-home failsafe feature that is supposed to kick in. The Phantom GPS-locks wherever it is when you power it up and it flies there and tries to land. Obviously this can be a problem if you flew behind a tall building or something, most people advise to maintain LOS Line of Sight with your Phantom while flying. Even if it's far away and merely a spec in your sight, that's still within LOS and not behind a mountain or building.

pure, random normal-condition flyaways are pretty rare these days imo but there are cases of "return to home" going to the wrong location (aka flying away in failsafe mode) in certain conditions like if you're in a part of the globe with high magnetic declination or fly over a weird magnetic field or something.. but hey nothing in life is without risk. Usually on my first flight of the day I take off, fly a bit away but not far and manually trigger failsafe, then make sure the Phantom flies directly back overhead before trying to land. Now I know it has a good lock to my position if failsafe gets triggered at distance

 

[grahng]

Good to hear things are not as bad as they seem. I suppose then for the most part, like most things in life, bad things get all the press.
One of the places I had planned to start flying was just a few blocks away at a collection of ball fields. There is a fire station maybe 200 yds away. Would you think sginals from their communications set up would pose problems?

 

[WPSPETE]

I started to worry when I had read to much here. Then I remembered my Jeep. I had an 07 JK 4 door. Beat the living hell out of it, spent its entire life lifted on 35's with HD bumpers and a winch. Never had any maintenance related issues in almost 200,000kms. But if you read on the forums you hear every single issue. If I had read the forums first I may of doubted its durability and ability. I always drove smart. Going to do the same thing with my Phantom when I get it. Thats my plan anyway. Turn wifi off on the gopro, let it connect and go slow learning how to fly.

 

[sergekouper]

These flyaways posts just make me sick now! reading them just scared me to fly, probably wrongly. It's mostly pilot error, bad faith+ignorance you'll never know.
Colin Guinn explains everything in his videos, how to avoid flyaways, and also how the phantom is protected against interferences.
One factor of problem is this forum as well with the quantity of false problems and wrong informations next to the right stuff.
Also, telling the new owners to update their firmware when they have not even a clue where is the front or the tail of their aircraft is not a good advice! they start calibrating stuff that doesn't need to be calibrated, and I wouldn't be suprised that it was a cause of "flyaway" on new machines...
When you don't know. don't touch! learn first.
I noticed a new post on a flyaway, nobody answered yet, I hope nobody will, we are all fed up with this aren't we?