New P3A owner, please help me understand a "fly away"....

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Got my P3 last week and am loving it. Easier to fly than I expected and I am getting the hang of it.

I had a "fly away" on the second day and am trying to understand what happened. Any help or explanation would be appreciated. Luckily it was quick and it crashed into some blackberry bushes close enough and low enough for me to get it out. I had prop guards on so no damage there.

Here is what happened:

Started up launched, fly around my property with no problems. Landed, killed the rotors, but did not power down the P3.

Then I picked it up and walked a few hundred feet down the street to a friends house. Set it down and went to take off again.

Had the green P-GPS bar and everything looked good. As soon as it came up in the air it became erratic, did not respond to controls and went about 40-50 feet until it crashed into the bushes. It only got about 4-5 feet up before doing so.

I have reviewed the log, confirmed it appears to have had GPS lock. My initial thought was walking to a different location may have thrown the compass off, but it stayed powered up the whole time so I would think that it would keep track of bearings.

I powered it off after pulling it out of the bushes, checked everything out, powered on, did a compass calibration and took off from the same location and everything worked fine.

In reviewing the flight data, I see that it still showed the original spot I took off from as "Home" after I walked to the second location. Could the problem be that I needed to update the home location before taking off instead of it being a compass calibration issue? Looking at the flight data, it did appear to be bee lining towards the registered home location.

I see lots of posts that suggest calibration is not required as often as some think and that fly aways are usually more from GPS not being locked than from not calibrating compass.

Thoughts?
 
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Imo it's always best to restart everything if you land. Ive always restarted the phantom , app and controller if I land and want to take off again with the same battery . That is what I was told to do and that's the way I have always done it and have never had a problem. Perhaps some other people can chime in and give a little more detailed advice. Did you take off or calibrate near anything metal?
 
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RC and aircraft were both left powered on, just killed the rotors.

No major metal objects, residential area, went from my front yard to the front yard of a house 2 doors down, about 300 feet away.
 
Was the direction it took off towards your previous landing location or seemingly random?
 
Don't keep it powered when you're not flying it. Land and then turn it off.
 
Ok, don't read too much into that but it is ponderous.
 
What was the battery level? It may have tried to return to home position with low battery.
 
I believe it lands immediately once the critical battery level is reached, it does not return to home prior to landing.
When it determines it has just enough battery to return home it will give a warning and if you do not override it it will return to home after 10 seconds. when it gets to critical level (10%?) it will land straight down but controls will still have some effect to move to a better landing spot. Since it was left powered on the warning may have been missed before he started engines to fly.
 
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No real toilet bowl type circling, just pretty much autonomous operation with no response to the controls. Battery level 60%.

Here is a screen shot after take off and before crash if that helps anyone...
ImageUploadedByPhantomPilots1437450456.165691.jpg
 
Something very similar just happened today to my friends new P3 in France. Almost identical situation except he landed it in different area of his property and the. Removed it to another. The drone took off right through an olive tree and tore up some blades . Not good at all. I will try and find his flight logs
 
If you experience a flyaway, switch to Atti mode (PAF switch on the RC). That way the drone stops flying by GPS or VPS and only works on stabilizing altitude. If that doesnt stop the flyaway, it's returning home, so press the RTH button on the RC to cancel that. You can also press the RTH just in case because pressing fast once only cancels RTH if it's active but doesn't trigger a RTH if it was not active before.
Try Atti mode on a normal flight to get a feel for what it's like. It drifts very slowly (if there's not much wind).
 
No real toilet bowl type circling, just pretty much autonomous operation with no response to the controls. Battery level 60%.

Here is a screen shot after take off and before crash if that helps anyone...View attachment 25392

You know it is odd that your home point remained at your old location...

I don't agree with the people saying always shut your craft off before you move it... I use mine to fly golf courses a lot and just walk from a green to a tee box and don't shut it down between each flight and never have had an issue. I HAVE, though, always made sure the home point updated properly either by setting it manually or making sure it reset when I started the motors again.

I think there's something to the post above about your home-point not having been reset...
 

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