Hi All
Apologies for dragging up this thread but I'm pretty sure I suffered from this fate a few days ago and would like to share my experience in the hope of some advice.
I had owned my (bought from a friend) Phantom 3 standard for about 2 weeks and had several hours of problem free flying.
Unfortunately that all went wrong on tuesday and I now have a phantom jigsaw puzzle. I had decided to take the drone above my house for some aerial shots. When ascending I was getting a fair bit of interference on the video feed but didn't think too much of it as I had the drone in sight. I moved away slightly but the video interference continued.
To make matters worse someone else had launched their drone above me, confusing me as I looked between the live feed on my mobile and the air. I thought the other drone was mine and as I believed I was descending (and as the drone I was looking at wasn't moving) I began to panic and descended more rapidly. All of a sudden I hear a whizzing noise and watch as my drone hits the ground 150 ft away.
When I recovered the drone I was a prop missing, still not found. I think it's worth pointing out that they were carbon props and I have no idea of the age / flight time of them. Out of interest how often would you recommend changing props?
I had read about people losing props prior to this flight so was extra cautious in making sure I had a tight fit on all props. When I put the props on I remember one of them seemed to need more turning than the others but I thought I was just being paranoid. I like the PTFE tip given by a previous poster and will do this next time.
I have uploaded my flightlog, you should be able to view it here:
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
I think the thread stripped from inside the prop as I descended and annoyingly I can't seem to recover the footage from the sd card. It keeps wanting to format when I put it in the PC. Does anyone know if I would have more success connecting via a gimble or has the footage been erased?
Sorry for the war and peace post, just had a lot to say!
Thanks in advance