P2 WOULD NOT RESPOND TO STICK COMMANDS

[skeyephantom]

It will be a year in December since I purchased my P2, Zenmuse 2D and GoPro. I have well over 200 flights under my belt, although I would not consider myself a seasoned pilot....yet. I had an incident which raised the ol' pucker factor to the max. I recently went FPV, so the P2 now has some added hardware, but after flying FPV for several weeks, everything seemed to be fine with the exception of a slight reduction in flight time, which was expected. While flying at the beach, I ventured out about 350m and made a turn to return to base and was flying at about 10-15m altitude, when suddenly the copter stopped and hovered and would not respond to stick commands. Winds were elevated.....15-20mph....out of the west, so I was immediately concerned with drifting over the water. I was at about 30-35% battery, so I was worried about a forced landing in the drink if I couldn't regain control. Anyway, in a panic I put the Tx in Home Lock mode and pulled back on the stick and the P2 flew back to base......what a relief !!!! As it hovered 7-8 m above me, I again found it not responding to stick commands....either stick. Within a few minutes, the low battery warning flashed and the P2 slowly descended into my hands. Firmware was updated several days before this flight. I have had time to fly the P2 on several occasions since, but not tested it with any distance.

Anyone have this issue? If so, let me know if it happened again or what you did to resolve the problem. My heart won't take many more of these.

 

[N017RW]

It will be a year in December since I purchased my P2, Zenmuse 2D and GoPro. I have well over 200 flights under my belt, although I would not consider myself a seasoned pilot....yet. I had an incident which raised the ol' pucker factor to the max. I recently went FPV, so the P2 now has some added hardware, but after flying FPV for several weeks, everything seemed to be fine with the exception of a slight reduction in flight time, which was expected. While flying at the beach, I ventured out about 350m and made a turn to return to base and was flying at about 10-15m altitude, when suddenly the copter stopped and hovered and would not respond to stick commands. Winds were elevated.....15-20mph....out of the west, so I was immediately concerned with drifting over the water. I was at about 30-35% battery, so I was worried about a forced landing in the drink if I couldn't regain control. Anyway, in a panic I put the Tx in Home Lock mode and pulled back on the stick and the P2 flew back to base......what a relief !!!! As it hovered 7-8 m above me, I again found it not responding to stick commands....either stick. Within a few minutes, the low battery warning flashed and the P2 slowly descended into my hands. Firmware was updated several days before this flight. I have had time to fly the P2 on several occasions since, but not tested it with any distance.

Anyone have this issue? If so, let me know if it happened again or what you did to resolve the problem. My heart won't take many more of these.

What are your flight limits set to?

 

[skeyephantom]

Excuse the delayed response back......off the grid for awhile. As to flight limits, I checked after your post and found they were where I had set them.....500 m, both altitude and horizontal. Since my original post, this happened again. This time I was only about 75 m away and again was successful with bringing it back with home lock and waited for it to descend from low battery.
Am I the only one having this problem?

 

[Buckaye]

Excuse the delayed response back......off the grid for awhile. As to flight limits, I checked after your post and found they were where I had set them.....500 m, both altitude and horizontal. Since my original post, this happened again. This time I was only about 75 m away and again was successful with bringing it back with home lock and waited for it to descend from low battery.
Am I the only one having this problem?

It sounds like you lost signal. It will sit and hover for a while to see if it reacquires signal and if not will attempt to fly home. Just by the way you described it it sounds like it was searching for a signal and you reacquired and got control back.

It might be your FPV is causing some interference?

 

[skeyephantom]

If it lost signal would it still respond immediately to the home lock like it did on both occasions? Because it responded to the home lock, I had eliminated loss of signal as an issue.

 

[skeyephantom]

And like I mentioned in my original post, the quad still did not respond to stick commands after flying back to base on home lock....when it was hovering only 5 m overhead.

 

[Buckaye]

And like I mentioned in my original post, the quad still did not respond to stick commands after flying back to base on home lock....when it was hovering only 5 m overhead.

Oh I missed that... Sorry

 

[skeyephantom]

No problem.....I welcome any input. Usually there is someone out there that has had the same or similar problem and can offer some guidance, but so far, no takers.

 

[skeyephantom]

As for the FPV, I'm using a 5.8GHz, 400mW Video Tx, so I would assume it would not interfere with the 2.4GHz signal between the quad and the controller. Is interference possible in this instance.

 

[TeamYankee]

Have you removed the FPV transmitter temporarily and tested it ?

 

[PetePerrim]

It definitely sounds like a signal reception issue which makes me wonder about the placement of your video Tx antenna in relation to your P2 receiver antenna. Although there should not be any cross over or interference, you may have inadvertently placed part of your FPV in the way of the Phantoms own receivers. This could also explain the random occurrence of signal loss you are describing. Could you post a photo (or two) on here of the underside of your Phantom so we can get a look at how it's set up please? Ideally the video Tx antenna needs to be well away from everything else because at 400mw, it's pumping out a fair amount of radiation.

 

[skeyephantom]

No, I have not. However, this problem has been so intermittent, I could fly w/o the Tx and have no problem and it wouldn't necessarily suggest that I found the problem.

 

[skeyephantom]

Sorry.....didn't see your response on 2nd page of thread. Here's my set up.

 

[skeyephantom]

It definitely sounds like a signal reception issue which makes me wonder about the placement of your video Tx antenna in relation to your P2 receiver antenna. Although there should not be any cross over or interference, you may have inadvertently placed part of your FPV in the way of the Phantoms own receivers. This could also explain the random occurrence of signal loss you are describing. Could you post a photo (or two) on here of the underside of your Phantom so we can get a look at how it's set up please? Ideally the video Tx antenna needs to be well away from everything else because at 400mw, it's pumping out a fair amount of radiation.

I understand what you're saying, however, I am still confused as to why it could be a reception issue if the P2 responded to the right stick, returning to base during Home Lock. Isn't it an "all or nothing" situation with signal?

 

[skeyephantom]

Also... after the successful Home Lock return to base and Home Lock was turned off, the P2 again did not respond to stick commands and we had to wait for a low battery forced landing to recover it.

 

[macheung]

Did you have the iosd? If so, ehat did the flight mode say on the bottom left when you lost control? If singal is lost, it should say FS.

 

[skeyephantom]

Did you have the iosd? If so, ehat did the flight mode say on the bottom left when you lost control? If singal is lost, it should say FS.

Good point....yes, I had an iOSD, however, I was in panic mode at the time and was concentrating on a visual of the copter and my battery level. If it happens again, I'll be sure to take note of that. Thanks, but I still am not convinced it's a signal problem. As I mentioned in previous posts, after returning to base and the home lock was turned off, I again had no stick control and the P2 was only about 5 meters overhead.

 

[jason]

I'm not an expert but it does sound as though you do have signal problem not with the copter but with the RC unit itself