No RTH with Litchi P3A

[Si in the Sky]

Hi everyone , i wonder if you can shed some light on a scary incident I had with the P3 on Friday?
I have been flying this drone for a year or so now, and gradually have gained confidence in it's reliability and range etc.

I normally fly in a field in Sussex that has loots of woodland surrounding it. Last Friday I flew the phantom from an adjacent field and planned to fly the drone about 1/4 of a mile over the trees and a lake and land in the normal field I fly from.
I thought I had taken everything in to consideration regarding loss of signal, no buildings or people in the line of flight etc.
Using the Lichi app, I took off and flew without a problem towards the field. A friend was setting up his quad in the field and the idea was to surprise him as I flew over.
As I started to lower the P3 to land I checked signal strength, and all was at the maximum. I closed in on his position and lowered the craft about 100 Mtrs away.

This is when it all went tits up! The video started to break up and at that point i put the drone into a full power climb.Then I noticed the litchi app said aircraft battery 0% and the red disconnect light was on on the remote. With slight panic setting in, and knowing the RTH button was a waste of time I waited for the automatic RTH to kick in, It never did! What happened was the P3 continued to drift towards me mate and his pride and joy BMW! The P3 then collided with the rear screen before being apprehended by the cars owner! Understandably he was pissed off!

So what went wrong then? I had checked the app when I installed it, and the RTH command is indeed return to takoff point, not the hover option,
Am i at fault here, other than flying out of line of sight?

 

[With The Birds]

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[Si in the Sky]

Thanks .
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

 

[JoBe]

the battery went from 86% to 0% in less than 1 second. that cant be true and it also continued to give power to send data after it showed as 0%.
maybe it never went to rth if it never lost uplink? that has confused plenty of peoeple before. still since it looks like you flew into an obvious no los area i would think control would be lost and rth would happen.

why did your mate drive his prized bmw into that field?

 

[3rdof5]

You say your friend was setting up his AC as you flew close, is it possible the two control systems conflicted with eachother? I've never flown nearby any other person flying their AC so I do not know how safe that is.

 

[JoBe]

normal is no trouble with more than one. intel flew thousands at one time in the olympics. still it just seems like it would be trouble so i avoid it. they already tell us all the itme to avoid wifi congested areas or fly in airplane mode but then also tell us more than one drone is fine. i'd rather not take chances.

 

[Meta4]

I closed in on his position and lowered the craft about 100 Mtrs away.

This is when it all went tits up! The video started to break up and at that point i put the drone into a full power climb.Then I noticed the litchi app said aircraft battery 0% and the red disconnect light was on on the remote. With slight panic setting in, and knowing the RTH button was a waste of time I waited for the automatic RTH to kick in, It never did! What happened was the P3 continued to drift towards me mate and his pride and joy BMW! The P3 then collided with the rear screen before being apprehended by the cars owner! Understandably he was pissed off!

So what went wrong then? I had checked the app when I installed it, and the RTH command is indeed return to takoff point, not the hover option,
Am i at fault here, other than flying out of line of sight?

What shows in the flight data is you flying >1200 ft away in a generally flat area with about 360 ft of forest between you and the Phantom.
You've lowered the Phantom until it is close to the ground.
VPS is indicating 1-6 ft in the last 5 seconds.
Your video signal has broken up and your downlink is dropping out because of the forest between you and the Phantom.
The data shows you pushing the left stick down from 1:18.1 until the end of the flight record at 1:23.2.
The Phantom has plenty of GPS sats and its position in the flight record does not show any drifting or crashing.

Flying out of sight is one thing but flying out of sight and behind thick tree cover that blocks your signal is something else (and an unsafe practice).
You need to be able to control your drone and you need to be able to see where it is and what's around it.

We don't have any flight data to explain what happened after you lost signal but it appears that was before the crash.

I'm not sure why the flight data shows 0% for the battery as it shows full data for the individual cells and the battery was not malfunctioning.
Your friend's Phantom would not have caused any problem.
Phantoms can fly together only feet apart without issues.