That was my 4th flight with new Phantom Vision plus when after ~10 minutes of flight connection dropped at ~400 meters distance and it started going down in circles and after 20-30 seconds it disappeared in the middle of the river (I was not able to recover it). I don't remember much from my phone: it had 398m distance, 9 satellites, 60% phantom battery and few seconds after that some error that connection lost.
I was really in shock, although I don't feel myself a novice pilot: had more than 100 flights with Phantom 1st, reading this forum for 1 year. Of course I want to understand the possible root cause for such behavior, but I will never be so confident anymore about DJI products, although was quite skeptical about flyaways before my crash.
I'm trying to find the answer to 2 questions:
A. Why connection was dropped at 400m, although I have switched controlled to FFC mode (and controller beeped twice when turned on)?
B. Why after connection lost it didn't return home, but started immediately landing in circles down? I'm sure I had GPS lock, home point registered and 9 satellites before take off, both S1 and S2 sticks in the top position.
Looking back I can find/point some areas where I could do better, but I still don't believe the below actions would prevent me from losing my bird some time later:
1. I didn't connect Phantom Vision plus to the PC after purchase and I wanted to check how it flies before making any updates/customization. I do believe Return to Home when connection is lost is enabled by default, isn't it? This means I was flying with "stock" parameters and it was OK for the first 3 flights.
2. I didn't calibrate the Compass before the 4th flight (I did it during the very first flight when Phantom arrived). I don't have excuse for this and fought would calibrate in case I would see any deviation when lift off. I'm always monitoring the first 30 seconds and keeping bird close before making a distance. I didn't see any issues and it was very stable.
3. I didn't want to go so far, especially over the water, but friend of mine asked to show me the view over the constructions on the other side of the river and I couldn't withstand. I didn't expect RTH would activate in 400m.
4. I had screen recording application installed on my phone, but didn't enable it before the flight - this could bring much more info/background about the situation and parameters.
5. I had too much confidence and couldn't believe something wrong could happen - I personally do believe it was the biggest mistake of mine and you should never come to this mode/attitude when flying DJI products.
What is your view / analysis on this situation? Are you sure after implementing the 5 points above I would avoid the crash? What is the safest way to test RTH functionality for Vision plus? At least for Phantom v1 I had a string attached and activated RTH manually by switching the controller off when having phantom few meters away...
Let it be another lesson to all of us...
Thank you all for the comments.
LarasLTU
I was really in shock, although I don't feel myself a novice pilot: had more than 100 flights with Phantom 1st, reading this forum for 1 year. Of course I want to understand the possible root cause for such behavior, but I will never be so confident anymore about DJI products, although was quite skeptical about flyaways before my crash.
I'm trying to find the answer to 2 questions:
A. Why connection was dropped at 400m, although I have switched controlled to FFC mode (and controller beeped twice when turned on)?
B. Why after connection lost it didn't return home, but started immediately landing in circles down? I'm sure I had GPS lock, home point registered and 9 satellites before take off, both S1 and S2 sticks in the top position.
Looking back I can find/point some areas where I could do better, but I still don't believe the below actions would prevent me from losing my bird some time later:
1. I didn't connect Phantom Vision plus to the PC after purchase and I wanted to check how it flies before making any updates/customization. I do believe Return to Home when connection is lost is enabled by default, isn't it? This means I was flying with "stock" parameters and it was OK for the first 3 flights.
2. I didn't calibrate the Compass before the 4th flight (I did it during the very first flight when Phantom arrived). I don't have excuse for this and fought would calibrate in case I would see any deviation when lift off. I'm always monitoring the first 30 seconds and keeping bird close before making a distance. I didn't see any issues and it was very stable.
3. I didn't want to go so far, especially over the water, but friend of mine asked to show me the view over the constructions on the other side of the river and I couldn't withstand. I didn't expect RTH would activate in 400m.
4. I had screen recording application installed on my phone, but didn't enable it before the flight - this could bring much more info/background about the situation and parameters.
5. I had too much confidence and couldn't believe something wrong could happen - I personally do believe it was the biggest mistake of mine and you should never come to this mode/attitude when flying DJI products.
What is your view / analysis on this situation? Are you sure after implementing the 5 points above I would avoid the crash? What is the safest way to test RTH functionality for Vision plus? At least for Phantom v1 I had a string attached and activated RTH manually by switching the controller off when having phantom few meters away...
Let it be another lesson to all of us...
Thank you all for the comments.
LarasLTU