Scared. Power down to 10% would not descend from 80'

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Jan 19, 2016
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Flying my P4P tinight I was pushing my battery. Just above my house at 80' the warning went off. I tried to use the left control stick but it would not descend fast. I came down at less than a meter per 2 seconds, really slow. I was scared it would not get low enough for me to even hand grab it. Then all of a sudden it almost dropped from three feet and made a very hard landing. Also noticed that it would only go about 4-5 MPH backwards. Sidewards and forwards were fine, just would not go fast backwards. Any help would be appreciated.
 
Perhaps the AC was autolanding on critical battery? Upload your flight log to healthy drones or phantomhelp to remove some of the guesswork.
 
I thought that too but it seemed as if it was not landing at all regardless how much I moved the stick. Ill get the log to HD.
Forget HD ...it's useless for looking at flight data.
Go to https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
Follow the instructions to upload your flight record.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides.
 
Looks like pilot error to me, IMHO. The system told you to come home at 21:58. You directly overhead and you didn't come down from 200' prompt enough, you took too long to descend. I think you may have been thinking, I'm already home, since you were directly overhead. But that's not true, that notion is flawed. Being home is on the ground, not high overhead.

You do realize that full left stick down is OK, the craft will not turn off the motors while in flight with full down left stick. To descend faster than that, fly forward at about 10-15mph and turn full right (or left) while left stick is full down to descend, in a toilet bowl method. That will let you get down really fast, but you need to practice that to learn this tactic.

Bottom line, you had plenty of time to descend 200' when the warning appeared. You simply didn't act prompt enough, with adequate vigor to get yourself on the ground. A good practice is to never let the RC give you an RTH warning for low battery. Pay attention to the battery level at all times and get yourself on the ground before you reach 20%. If you do that you won't have an issue.
 
I was stupid and recently ignored a low batt warning. She failsafe landed in a huge ravine I was over. I was lucky it went in dead center or else it would've clipped an embankment and been all over. I will never ignore a low battery alarm again. I got cocky because the bird was overhead as well.
 
Looks like pilot error to me, IMHO. The system told you to come home at 21:58. You directly overhead and you didn't come down from 200' prompt enough, you took too long to descend. I think you may have been thinking, I'm already home, since you were directly overhead. But that's not true, that notion is flawed. Being home is on the ground, not high overhead.

You do realize that full left stick down is OK, the craft will not turn off the motors while in flight with full down left stick. To descend faster than that, fly forward at about 10-15mph and turn full right (or left) while left stick is full down to descend, in a toilet bowl method. That will let you get down really fast, but you need to practice that to learn this tactic.

Bottom line, you had plenty of time to descend 200' when the warning appeared. You simply didn't act prompt enough, with adequate vigor to get yourself on the ground. A good practice is to never let the RC give you an RTH warning for low battery. Pay attention to the battery level at all times and get yourself on the ground before you reach 20%. If you do that you won't have an issue.


This is what worries me. Yes I was at 192 at around 17%. But at that moment I tried full left stick down and it barely moved. This is why I panicked. Especially when it got to about 70 feet it seemed to hover rather than descend according to my command. I did overestimate my battery but still think it should have gotten down much quicker. Maybe auto land will only descend at a set rate regardless of my input? Not sure. Looking at the log it took 20 seconds to get from 69.6' down to 60' with full left stick down, that is very slow. Then it took about 9 seconds for the next ten feet. Still very slow considering I was full down. Just don't know what to think?
 

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