I have my app setup to give me a low battery warning at 30% and again at 20%. At 20% I usually bring it home manually (p mode) with about 15% left after landing. I have noticed on two occasions (the latest one being yesterday) that if it is still flying with about 10% remaining, it just drops hard to the ground even though I am "controlling" it. On both occasions My altitude was fairly low (about 1-2) metres) and the Phantom 3 was not damaged. Is there a setting that I should be checking? Is this a RTH feature? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Phantom 3 Pro hard landing
- Thread starter Neilbro
- Start date
Do not fly your batteries below 30 % without being in the process of landing or you will have more hard landings. Once they reach 30% you have about 3 minutes max to get it on the ground or it will land on its own. Further, your batteries are not going to be any good if you keep flying them that low.
I believe its setup to go ahead and land at 10 percent to avoid damaging the batteries and ofcourse the bird itself land before that. I usually have mine setup for a warning at 30 percent and a critically low battery warning at 25 percent in which i go ahead and land it.
Also watch your descent rate. Descending "too fast" can cause the rotors to eat their own downwash and greatly reduce thrust. More power will make it worse. It's called vortex ring state or "settling with power" (somewhat of a misnomer). Watch the auto land descent and stay at or below that rate when flying manually.
If you are too high or to far away at 10 percent it will land and if the battery is drained to those levels every flight, it is not long for this world and could fail completely at 20 or 30% or even 50% if the cells become unbalanced-- causing much more than a hard landing. There are a lot of good videos on youtube regarding, usage and care of lithium based batteries-- a good idea to spend sometime studying the subject and see what those say about the subject. Some of those have been posted on this forum.
The Phantom does not suffer from this condition fortunately-- the rate of descent is controlled even it the stick is all the way back-- to fast to land but not fast enough to produce the vortex ring.
Might be a silly question, but have you updated to the new firmware and app? They fixed the VPS. The previous version gave hard landings with RTH. Until yesterday, I'd intercept RTH landings at about 15' and land manually, which I like to do anyway. But yesterday with the new firmware, I let the RTH land to the ground. It was smooth and gentle!
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As others have mentioned, you should consider landing when your battery is at about 30%. And, you should allow any of the battery cells to go below 3.3V. See more about that here:
http://www.phantompilots.com/thread...y-voltage-to-watch-for-signs-of-failure.43313
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