P3S Range Tanking! - Time to be Concerned?

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Gonna keep this as short and sweet and hopefully the super human minds here can help.
Bought my P3S in Feb. Upgraded FW to 1.8.10 per request. Everything worked wonderfully... Range varied around 3000ft and even achieved a 4900ft with a parabolic antenna.

Come today, I can get a blazing 600ft before RTH kicks in. Its been a slow decline, but now its painfully painful.
Here are the particulars:
FW 1.8.10
GO: 3.1.10
Decline started in April
AC babied and never a hard landing, no crashes and no mods.
I do live in a high wifi area, but always have.
I fly out over the ocean from the same spot as a control to test range. Range deteriorated from just short of a mile, to 600 ft in over two months.

So, is this typical of a P3S or am I looking to send it in or am I gonna buy something better? Am I being affected by sun spots or ancient aliens? Maybe Capt. Kirk is warping off to Uranus to wipe out the Klingons? What gives?
 
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Per the usual suggestions, try flying somewhere open with no wifi and see what your results are, and make sure your antenna is oriented properly.
What is disconnecting first, video or control?
It sounds like you were still flying fine after doing the firmware update, correct?
I know the quality control for standards isn't great and loose antenna connections are possible. If you have a few extra $$ in the budget for a phantom, I would sell the standard and look at a p3 pro or a p4 but if $500 is as high as you can go, your options would be a free repair with DJI, although a nightmare to deal with, or opening up the phantom and controller yourself to check connections.
My personal advice is to stay away from firmware updates, they seem to bring more problems than fixes.
 
Per the usual suggestions, try flying somewhere open with no wifi and see what your results are, and make sure your antenna is oriented properly.
What is disconnecting first, video or control?
It sounds like you were still flying fine after doing the firmware update, correct?
I know the quality control for standards isn't great and loose antenna connections are possible. If you have a few extra $$ in the budget for a phantom, I would sell the standard and look at a p3 pro or a p4 but if $500 is as high as you can go, your options would be a free repair with DJI, although a nightmare to deal with, or opening up the phantom and controller yourself to check connections.
My personal advice is to stay away from firmware updates, they seem to bring more problems than fixes.

Four weeks ago I was in the Arizona desert and that's when I really noticed a bad range problem. Middle of nowhere at the Superstitious Mountains when things went really south.
Video feed was always strong and AC would RTH way before video was lost. No problems with that FW update I took when I first bought the AC.
 
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Four weeks ago I was in the Arizona desert and that's when I really noticed a bad range problem. Middle of nowhere at the Superstitious Mountains when things went really south.
Video feed was always strong and AC would RTH way before video was lost.
If you know that the range didn't immediately drop after ANY updates to the phantom or the device you are using to fly, I would be leaning towards a loose connection. You can open the controller easily and look without voiding your warranty, but opening the phantom is a bit more involved.
 
If you know that the range didn't immediately drop after ANY updates to the phantom or the device you are using to fly, I would be leaning towards a loose connection. You can open the controller easily and look without voiding your warranty, but opening the phantom is a bit more involved.

The only thing that got updated was the iOS version of Go. But that should not effect range from what I understand.
 
I would agree with opening the controller also. After reading threads about range boosters and such I come across a thread some had range issues got the blue proton kit open controller antenna wire not even connected, made me think and ran grabbed mine opened it up the TX antenna connector was touching the shield over the transmitter. I pried it away so it wasn't touching next flight made it out to 4800+ feet when I couldn't make it to 2000 feet. Always worth a look.
 
I think the app FW is optimized for the AC FW, you might need to update your AC. I don't care what others think, I always stay on the latest FW!
 
I think the app FW is optimized for the AC FW, you might need to update your AC. I don't care what others think, I always stay on the latest FW!

I have the latest FW at this point. I have not been notified of anything newer.

I also pulled apart the controller and found no obvious issues with the antennas. One connection for each panel and one for the external antenna.

Am I going to need to buy a P3A now?
 
I think the app FW is optimized for the AC FW, you might need to update your AC. I don't care what others think, I always stay on the latest FW!
I tend to agree with you about using the latest FW. I work in the tech support world and have to do FW updates all the time on our equipment. But something has changed with my P3S and my Pro. I never used to have the video freeze with the P3 Pro, and I used to be able to go out much farther with the Standard. I even tried one of those ARGTek mods. It helped, but not much. Certainly not worth keeping in installed. I removed it months ago. The Pro has been perfect. Never have a problem with it. Distance has always been much farther out that I'm comfortable with. I've had it out two miles, and it would have kept going. But I got scared. I don't really need that kind of range anyway. I just use mine for searching areas in the mountains and desert. The Standard I just used for close in practice flying and experimenting with firmware and programs. However, I sure would like to know what has happened. Especially with the video freeze. As I stated, I nearly ran into a mountain today. It's possible that the video feed problem is just my Tablet. I'm going to experiment with that next. I'll try turning on "Airplane Mode" next time. I'll see what that does.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if DJI is lowering range on the standard intensionally. Never hear of these issues with more expensive models as stated above. The standard is DJIs cheapest model by far and it's becoming dated so DJI probably wants to encourage some pilots to upgrade.
 
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Maybe it's a problem with the remote? Do you know anyone close with the same remote you could test?
 
Range deteriorated from just short of a mile, to 600 ft in over two months.

So, is this typical of a P3S or am I looking to send it in or am I gonna buy something better? Am I being affected by sun spots or ancient aliens? Maybe Capt. Kirk is warping off to Uranus to wipe out the Klingons? What gives?

I have the same problem in or about the same timeline but for several months believed my issues were with the DBS mod I put on my controller. During the first few days (weeks?) I was getting 1 mile without a loss. Then suddenly I couldnt get more than 500-800m before RTH initiated. Has to be the controller right? Well, I took out my unmodified controller which with a windsurfer and tested this setup. Sucked big time.. I was lucky to get 500m . Used to be able to get 1200m with this setup. Same location for all my tests, latest apps (Litchi and/or DJI-Go) latest FW.

Do you know whether your controller LED turns red when RTH is initiated? Reason for my question, on both my controllers, my LED stays green even though the app says I lost signal and RTH is initiated,
 
I have the same problem in or about the same timeline but for several months believed my issues were with the DBS mod I put on my controller. During the first few days (weeks?) I was getting 1 mile without a loss. Then suddenly I couldnt get more than 500-800m before RTH initiated. Has to be the controller right? Well, I took out my unmodified controller which with a windsurfer and tested this setup. Sucked big time.. I was lucky to get 500m . Used to be able to get 1200m with this setup. Same location for all my tests, latest apps (Litchi and/or DJI-Go) latest FW.

Do you know whether your controller LED turns red when RTH is initiated? Reason for my question, on both my controllers, my LED stays green even though the app says I lost signal and RTH is initiated,

That's wild. Both of my r/c's turn red when I lose signal. What does your screen say on signal strength (bars) when this happens?
 

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