Weird power issues

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I have a phantom 1, it's been through a lot but has held up well. Recently I had a battery go dead way early in my flight, having disabled auto landing because I'd rather damage a battery than crash I flew it back as soon as I saw my voltage dropping on my OSD (I was flying FPV).

The battery lost voltage so quick that as I was on my final approach it lost power and simply fell the last 20 feet or so to the ground.

Nothing broke, not even a propeller. It was on a nice soft lawn on a nice dry day.

However, I now can only fly it for about 1m before the back leds on the arms (on the rear ESC's) dim and the phantom acts as if it's not getting enough power and essentially crash lands. I take the battery out and check it and it's fine, has the amount of voltage you'd expect after the amount of time in the air.

I've never heard of ESC's failing like this, usually they studder or never get going at all. It's almost as if I blew out a capacitor somewhere as the power initially turns on and then drops like stone indicating some sort of heat actuated voltage loss.

Main board? ESC issue? Thoughts?
 
brandondrums said:
I have a phantom 1, it's been through a lot but has held up well. Recently I had a battery go dead way early in my flight, having disabled auto landing because I'd rather damage a battery than crash I flew it back as soon as I saw my voltage dropping on my OSD (I was flying FPV).

The battery lost voltage so quick that as I was on my final approach it lost power and simply fell the last 20 feet or so to the ground.

Nothing broke, not even a propeller. It was on a nice soft lawn on a nice dry day.

However, I now can only fly it for about 1m before the back leds on the arms (on the rear ESC's) dim and the phantom acts as if it's not getting enough power and essentially crash lands. I take the battery out and check it and it's fine, has the amount of voltage you'd expect after the amount of time in the air.

I've never heard of ESC's failing like this, usually they studder or never get going at all. It's almost as if I blew out a capacitor somewhere as the power initially turns on and then drops like stone indicating some sort of heat actuated voltage loss.

Main board? ESC issue? Thoughts?

Unfortunately - it could be any of those issues.

It sounds like you only have the one battery? First thing I would try is a new battery - it's possible the battery is damaged somehow between cells and loses connection with a cell intermittently - rare but possible.

If it were an ESC - I would assume you'd see one engine go out - not a general loss of power...

COULD be the connection between your power and the main board as well.. cold solder or something. Have you crashed recently?
 

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