Phantom 4 - Aircraft Disconnected While Flying - Lost Drone

Josue F. Rodriguez · Sep 8, 2016

Hi, today we sadly saw our Phantom 4 drift down to the bottom of a river and we weren't able to rescue it. The drone was flying at 75 feet of altitude and at around 100 feet away from us. All of the sudden we got the Weak Signal and within 2 seconds we got the Aircraft Disconnected message. We ran closer to gain reception and pressed the Return Back Home and we saw the drone just fall to the bottom of the river. The weird thing is that with over 18 hours of flight, we had never encountered this situation before. We had all of the latest firmware up to date, fully charged controller battery, fully charged iPad Mini battery and fully charged Phantom 4 smart battery. Now we have no way to rescue the drone and it is lost forever. I wonder how many people has this happened to. It almost feels as if there was an electrical cut-out or power off which caused the drone to just loose connection with the controller. As we review the video reference recorded on the iPad, the video just cuts off as if the entire P4 just shut off on mid air. How can I report to DJI? We have the flight report available.

WWK888 · Sep 8, 2016

Did it lose all power and fall or did it lose signal and go into RTH mode and possibly land due to the settings?

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Josue F. Rodriguez · Sep 8, 2016

It lost all power. My spotter watch it fall down at the same time my video reference on my iPad mini went black and the signal status said: Aircraft Disconnected. When I looked up I did not see the drone, I walked towards a closer area while pressing on the controller the Return Home, waited, watched the status on screen still say: Aircraft Disconnected. We knew it was near, we could see the GPS tracking the drone near by. We found it at the bottom of the river impossible to reach as it drowned. We have reported the issue to the DJI support, we have the GPS flight record and we are now waiting for the technical team to review our case and give us a cause. We had all full batteries, we had calibrated, we had great signal, no wind, perfect sunlight, lots of open space and with 16 hours of flight, this is the first time this has happened. We are not sure if we would consider another DJI drone product after this, unless DJI tech support team can report an electrical shutdown with no Return to Home. We lost hours of valuable aerial content for a client that we can NOT recapture as today was a clear sky, Calm weather and long hours of driving to various locations. Side Note: we always put a fully charge battery in all of our take-off, even when only at 80 percent of remaining power.

WWK888 · Sep 8, 2016

It will be interesting to see what DJI says. Without the actual drone in hand they may deny any warranty claim. Keep us posted and good luck.

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Josue F. Rodriguez · Sep 8, 2016

Our main concern here is the flight hours a Phantom 4 can handle, not on a straight back to back day, but as a whole before any technical issue can cause everything to fail. Our spotter saw it fall down the very same moment we saw the video cut off, so the only conclusion we have is that the drone just cut-off completely. Maybe a faulty battery which we will now review the missing battery with the original DJI boxes to review the serial numbers and send to DJI tech support once we arrive to our home office in Florida.

RémyHeli · Sep 9, 2016

Right ring a bell

P4 battery shut down after 1.5 minutes

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Flying Dutchman · Sep 9, 2016

**** that's sad, feel for you. You need mr Singer. I am curious to now what happened.

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Erised · Sep 9, 2016

A couple of weeks ago I was getting ready to take off and had the safe to fly, had a fresh battery at 99% and as I attempted to arm the motors noting, tried again noting, looked at GO and there it was Battery Defective red screen. A good thing I was not off the ground I don't know if it would have just turned off. I checked in the battery settings and one cell was 0.2v low and that was enough to cause a no go. I hope that this situation will not cause a shut down in flight and rather warn you to get back and land now. The battery menu also said to send in to DJI for repair. This battery had 22 charges and I don't think it never went below 10% as I usually land bettween 15 and 20. I sent it in and DJI and thery sent me a new battery on warranty and it only took 2 weeks! I think the batteries are not guarenteed but they changed mine! I like to think that this sould not have happend in my situation and decided to replace it. This was my first time dealing with dji and I give them an A+.(so far). After this incident I was looking at past flight logs in GO and following the AC flight on my tablet when I noticed a fast notice besides the battery % that said low voltage, this lit up for about 2 seconds then it never came back in the flight. I don't know if this was the same battery that failed about one week later.( I have 4 batteries). So now I check to see if any low voltage blimps come up because the log seems to record even slight voltage variations in flight. I think the low voltage notice may have come up on my tablet as I was flying, but we do not always look at our tablet or are too concentrated on the image to notice.

Neon Euc · Sep 9, 2016

Wow sorry to hear about that. I saw a video of the same thing regarding a P4 just last night. The guy sent the log to DJI and they confirmed it was a mechanical fault and sent the guy a brand new P4.fingers crossed for you mate as you should get the same result

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Multicoptertec · Sep 9, 2016

Did you check that the battery was fully inserted and locked in?

dennis6112 · Sep 9, 2016

Multicoptertec said:
Did you check that the battery was fully inserted and locked in?

Good point. On more than one occasion I have noticed that my battery was not fully "clicked" locked it. Either the top or bottom battery lock might not be fully engaged. Now I go out of my way to check this anytime I insert a fresh battery.

Josue F. Rodriguez · Sep 9, 2016

We just received out Case ID from DJI Support:

CAS-250515-C5M1Q5

I'll keep you all updated on the process they take to investigate these type of situations, which is sad for the most part.
They said it normally takes anywhere from 3-5 business days for them to send an email with a status on the investigation. Good thing we always do a calibrated take-off and we also do a iCloud backup of all of our flights at least every 3-4 days.
Total hours logged on that particular P4 16.5hrs

raynist · Sep 9, 2016

dennis6112 said:
Good point. On more than one occasion I have noticed that my battery was not fully "clicked" locked it. Either the top or bottom battery lock might not be fully engaged. Now I go out of my way to check this anytime I insert a fresh battery.

Same here. I noticed after landing once that my battery pack was not clicked in all the way. I always make sure I double check it now

Josue F. Rodriguez · Sep 10, 2016

This the place I lost my Phantom 4 this week.

Neon Euc · Sep 10, 2016

Josue F. Rodriguez said:
This the place I lost my Phantom 4 this week.

Wow that's a pretty big place to lose it. The one good thing is that the phantom is white so with all that green around hopefully it will be easy to spot. Do you have another drone you can fly over the area with?

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Josue F. Rodriguez · Sep 12, 2016

Here is a copy of the last recorded flight take-off of our P4. The drone just disconnected while on the air.
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

Josue F. Rodriguez · Sep 14, 2016

GREAT NEWS.!! Last night we received a confirmation email from DJI support stating the cause for our P4 to crash was electric related, therefore we will be receiving a free P4. We will need to link the existing controller to the new P4 when they ship it in about 3-5 days.