Phantom 3 malfunction and crash (flight record video)

Is that the flight path created by a crazy compass?
 
It's good to see you're so sympathetic knowing the guy just lost his quad.

Some people are just ruthless.
Comedy is often the best medicine. I was trying to cheer him up. I can't bring his crashed drone back to life. At the same time, there is a guy in Miami that has been flying his P3P over Miami and it's beaches crowded with people and he replied to a comment of mine on YouTube about how he is always CAREFUL when flying. My point is that this has nothing to do with being careful. Craziness can happen with these drones. I wouldn't want to be responsible for injuring or killing someone because I had a false sense of security that these types of crashes can't just happen all of a sudden.
 
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I reckon you can be sure that was loss of power on one corner.
Prop, motor or ESC.

And it was not a flyaway. My money is on a hardware failure- and not user error.

And until I know the result of the post mortem, my plan to buy into the P3 are on hold.
( Note to DJI- I know you are viewing this forum- sort this out )
 
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If someone can explain what the hell just happened, I'd be awfully appreciative.

Trying to troubleshoot the "jello" issue, I had my P3P in the air floating around 90 feet while changing settings. I go to bring it a little closer and it goes absolutely crazy. With nothing around it, it spins, rocks from side to side and as you can see from the video below, crashes. It's completely totaled (gimbal broken, shell busted, ripped apart). Thankfully no one was hurt! My neighbors were scared, but really just felt bad for me. They saw it just go crazy.

Thankfully there's flight records so I can prove it went completely crazy with ZERO input from me... however does that matter? Is this considered user error? I'm just out?

Stunned.


Could we please see a picture of the damage to the Phantom?
 
This looks like pro, motor, or ESC failure to me too. If you upload the flight logs (.txt) files from your tablet/phone, I can decode them and export all the data to a CSV file. I can also to some extent decode the FLY*.DAT files located on the internal SD card, use the Pilot app to put your P3 in "flight data recorder" mode then connect to a computer by USB to retrieve them.
 
Did you notice it went into P-Atti Mode before the craziness.
 
Sorry to hear it. My P2 just had another "anomaly" last night. Looks like my NAZA went nuts. Total write off.

Did it spin like it showed in the replay?

EDIT: Loss of power in one corner would be a very rapid tumble to the ground. This kind of looks like that but hard to tell from an animated replay.
 
I reckon you can be sure that was loss of power on one corner.
Prop, motor or ESC.

And it was not a flyaway. My money is on a hardware failure- and not user error.

And until I know the result of the post mortem, my plan to buy into the P3 are on hold.
( Note to DJI- I know you are viewing this forum- sort this out )
I feel confident this is what it is too.
 
you contradict yourself

what were your exact settings changing you were doing, could that have caused the problem?

I do feel bad for you, no one likes to see someone else lose their bird and investment

I was changing camera settings. 1080, 30 fps, 24 fps. When I said without "user input" I meant anything that had to do with flying.
 
If someone can explain what the hell just happened, I'd be awfully appreciative.

Trying to troubleshoot the "jello" issue, I had my P3P in the air floating around 90 feet while changing settings. I go to bring it a little closer and it goes absolutely crazy. With nothing around it, it spins, rocks from side to side and as you can see from the video below, crashes. It's completely totaled (gimbal broken, shell busted, ripped apart). Thankfully no one was hurt! My neighbors were scared, but really just felt bad for me. They saw it just go crazy.

Thankfully there's flight records so I can prove it went completely crazy with ZERO input from me... however does that matter? Is this considered user error? I'm just out?

Stunned.


Sorry for your loss! Can you post a pic showing the damage to the phantom??
 
Alright lots of questions, I'll try to answer them all in one post:

-I'm fairly certain you guys are right about one corner motor suddenly either going dead or malfunctioning. It's just crazy because it wasn't during any whacky maneuvering. You can see from the video it sat idle in the sky for a period of time, I turned it and it wasn't going but 2-3 mph when it went haywire.

-yes, the craft was spinning, but not in a perfect circle like it shows in the flight record of course... it was rocking left and right. I mean, just imagine all hell breaking loose when a real helicpoter goes down. That's what it looked like. I wasn't attempting to right it either... it was VERY clear this was over I was watching just to see where it would end up.

-looking at the flight record it was going in and out of atti mode, but no i didn't notice that during, only looking at the video later.

-I couldn't find an angle to take a good picture (cause there was so much damage) so I just took another video:


-I'm gonna attempt to get the .txt files as was suggested now...
 
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It's good to see you're so sympathetic knowing the guy just lost his quad.

Some people are just ruthless.

I don't see anything remotely approaching "ruthless" in that comment. Lighten up, he lost his toy model aircraft, not his wife and children.

OP, thanks for posting this and please keep this thread updated with DJI's response.
 
This looks like pro, motor, or ESC failure to me too. If you upload the flight logs (.txt) files from your tablet/phone, I can decode them and export all the data to a CSV file. I can also to some extent decode the FLY*.DAT files located on the internal SD card, use the Pilot app to put your P3 in "flight data recorder" mode then connect to a computer by USB to retrieve them.
I've entered flight data mode a couple times now, it says it's ready to connect but when I plug it in, my computer doesn't see it at all. Maybe something was damaged?
 
Sorry, Adam, that really sucks. Let DJI know and they should give you a discount on another.

On the bright side, you could sell your battery or at least have two when you get a new bird. I know, not much a bright side.:(
 
This @#%$@#$% guy.

B.S. This is not a troll.

Or if he is has waited 5-6 weeks to act like one.
Guys, relax! He wasn't calling him a troll, he was poking for pics. Everyone is so sensitive today! [emoji53]
Yeah it sucks when one of our birds bite the dust BUT it's no reason to cry and get bent out of shape. Pun intended... [emoji6]
 

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