Trying to understand why my P3S fell from the sky

[Bruce Hammond]

I was flying about 2 weeks ago in a field at about 86 feet altitude when my Phantom 3 Standard suddenly dropped out of the sky. The shell was badly damaged and the gimbal snapped off but surprisingly with a new shell I was able to get the bird flying again. In fact, flying flawlessly. I took it up to 400 feet, dived, flew around generally for about 5 minutes and it performed perfectly and the camera worked perfectly.

I had expected a failed engine or something I assumed would manifest itself when I put the bird back together in a new shell but I have had no problems, so I don't know why it crashed. I have looked at all the relevant log files but there seems to be no indication what happened. Can anyone see if I missed something?

I was flying with the Litchi app and the link to the flight log data on Airdata UAV is here. Also I have uploaded the .dat files from the drone itself to my Google Drive here.

 

[PaulSouthport]

Can't see anything in the log.
Were all props on and intact when you found it?
Bird attack?

 

[Bruce Hammond]

All the props were attached, none were broken and all still turned when I turned the drone back on though one arm and leg were badly damaged so I didn't try flying it until I replaced the shell and I was looking right at it when it crashed and I didn't see any birds.

 

[AeroMirage]

I suspect a glitch in the litchi app. I have seen a few reports recently of quads falling from the sky while using it.

 

[tevek]

Nothing obvious from the data and it looks like you were flying in FPV mode? I have stopped using litchi in Pano mode as it often disconnects, spins around erratically and heads off on its own. I have emailed Litchi and they have suggested a number of solutions which do not work and hinted at it being a firmware issue with dji. I'm using a P4 and there are a number of others with the same issue.

 

[BudWalker]

I was flying about 2 weeks ago in a field at about 86 feet altitude when my Phantom 3 Standard suddenly dropped out of the sky. The shell was badly damaged and the gimbal snapped off but surprisingly with a new shell I was able to get the bird flying again. In fact, flying flawlessly. I took it up to 400 feet, dived, flew around generally for about 5 minutes and it performed perfectly and the camera worked perfectly.

I had expected a failed engine or something I assumed would manifest itself when I put the bird back together in a new shell but I have had no problems, so I don't know why it crashed. I have looked at all the relevant log files but there seems to be no indication what happened. Can anyone see if I missed something?

I was flying with the Litchi app and the link to the flight log data on Airdata UAV is here. Also I have uploaded the .dat files from the drone itself to my Google Drive here.

View attachment 80780

I looked at your .DATs. The incident was the third flight in FLY266. There was a battery comm error at time 446. (The flight began at time 426) After that the battery data was constant, indicating that the data being reported was just the last data before the comm error.

The end of recorded flight was at 479 secs. Is it possible the battery came loose?

This is a P3 Standard which has limited motor data. In particular, motorVolts data is not reported. motorVolts can usually be used to determine if the battery came loose.