I was flying my Phantom over the ocean this morning. Everything was going fine. I flew for 8 minutes on the first battery and had no problems. I even used the GPS home feature and it was fine. I was 8 minutes into flying with the 2nd battery and it went down in the water. It even flipped on it's back right before it went into the water. I had the RC on GPS mode. I tried to increase it's altitude as it was going down but nothing was working. At the last moment I tried to use the GPS home feature but it was too late. It was 1/8 of a mile from me but I have flown it 1/2 mile before with no problems. I don't understand why it went down.
Why did my Phantom crash in the water?!?!
- Thread starter stevefromsd
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Nowhere near enough information provided to even guess what went wrong. You need to supply more details if anyone is to have a chance to help figure it out.
Could a battery that said it was fully charged an hour before the flight be dead after only 8 minutes of flying? The battery was no more than 2 months old and 20 flights.
It could if it was faulty, or one of the cells was faulty. Was it a total, sudden loss of power plummet or was it more of a dying battery, autoland you can't override sort of descent (until the backflip at the end at any rate).
Seahorse said:
Things like how high was it when it decided to dive into water? When you mentioned that when you tried to increase altitude nothing happened... that is usually an indication of being caught in its' own propwash or as Pull up mentioned auto land . You weren't descending by any chance when this occurred were you?
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Hello, Bought a P2V from Atlanta Hobby on 2/24/2014, they gave no help, told me to send it to DJI.
Phantom-2-Vision,
First flight went perfect except with two bars on battery I turned off the remote controller to have the P2V fly back. It worked perfect but would not start up again( like it was out of power)., 2nd flight fully recharged all batteries to full, around 5 mins in 3/4 to 1/2 remaining on battery P2V went out of control and went down(like it was out of power). Landed in a pol of water 2' deep. Pulled it out lights still on. Dried it out waited two days. Battery fully charged under 10 mins. Two motors work( white props) other two don,t work. No Wi-Fi, so I don,t know if camera works. DJI said to send to them and it would take 3 weeks to get a answer from them.
Phantom-2-Vision,
First flight went perfect except with two bars on battery I turned off the remote controller to have the P2V fly back. It worked perfect but would not start up again( like it was out of power)., 2nd flight fully recharged all batteries to full, around 5 mins in 3/4 to 1/2 remaining on battery P2V went out of control and went down(like it was out of power). Landed in a pol of water 2' deep. Pulled it out lights still on. Dried it out waited two days. Battery fully charged under 10 mins. Two motors work( white props) other two don,t work. No Wi-Fi, so I don,t know if camera works. DJI said to send to them and it would take 3 weeks to get a answer from them.
I haven't found it yet but I will in the next few days. I am wondering if it stands a chance of working again. I know a dealer who could replace the motors if everything else will still work.
My battery shut off mid flight once, I sent it to dji and told them to fix it and they replaced everything for me. Call dji they will fix it.
I talked to a dealer and he said I just flew it too long and the battery ran out of juice. In a perfect environment like indoors and no wind and hovering or flying slowly he said it could go 10-12 minutes. But carrying a camera and doing circles and flying fast will run the battery down faster. He said he wouldn't fly any longer than 6 minutes outside doing more than just hovering or flying slowly. Especially if it is carrying a camera. I didn't have the camera this time. He said it flipped on it's back because one or more of the motors shut off from the dying battery. 
stevefromsd said:I talked to a dealer and he said I just flew it too long and the battery ran out of juice. In a perfect environment like indoors and no wind and hovering or flying slowly he said it could go 10-12 minutes. But carrying a camera and doing circles and flying fast will run the battery down faster. He said he wouldn't fly any longer than 6 minutes outside doing more than just hovering or flying slowly. Especially if it is carrying a camera. I didn't have the camera this time. He said it flipped on it's back because one or more of the motors shut off from the dying battery.
I think you are on the wrong forum or you told your dealer wrong as it sounds like you have a phantom 1 as the 2 has approx. 20-25 minutes of flight time
I have over 15 flight and have never been down to 25% in less than 18 minutes
Interesting you are using the Phantom 1 on this. This morning, I was flying out some batteries on a P1 that had been charged up last week, just to get them back down to storage levels and I had something similar happen.
With two batteries (out of 7 that I was working with), upon a throttle surge, the P1 just suddenly dropped down as if auto-landing about 100 yards away from me. It bounced a bit and was hard to shut down the motors as it bounced around and felt out of control. It finally flipped over and I was able to get it stopped. The LED was signalling low battery level after only a couple of minutes of gentle flight. Voltage levels on the battery were around 11.4-11.5 volts once I got it out of the unit.
The P1 was a bit dirty but nothing seemed broken, so I brought it back, did some quick tests and sent it up again. A couple more flights went fine, then the second blip came around, similar to the first and similar voltages when I finally got it settled out.
This is the oddest I've seen my P1 behave in regards to the battery. While this bird has well over 100 flights, that's spaced out over 15 batteries, so none of them have a ton of use. I've marked the two batteries in question and will use those very cautiously.
In addition, while it cost me a set of props, at least I was in a field and not over some canyon or something where the P1 would be lost. I am using stock batteries and it seems in my case, either these two can no longer output the current needed to accelerate quickly, triggering the auto-land function or they could just be bad batteries and aging pre-maturely.
I will be looking closely at these two batteries with more tests to see if they are even worth saving. I will post if anything interesting results from it all.
With two batteries (out of 7 that I was working with), upon a throttle surge, the P1 just suddenly dropped down as if auto-landing about 100 yards away from me. It bounced a bit and was hard to shut down the motors as it bounced around and felt out of control. It finally flipped over and I was able to get it stopped. The LED was signalling low battery level after only a couple of minutes of gentle flight. Voltage levels on the battery were around 11.4-11.5 volts once I got it out of the unit.
The P1 was a bit dirty but nothing seemed broken, so I brought it back, did some quick tests and sent it up again. A couple more flights went fine, then the second blip came around, similar to the first and similar voltages when I finally got it settled out.
This is the oddest I've seen my P1 behave in regards to the battery. While this bird has well over 100 flights, that's spaced out over 15 batteries, so none of them have a ton of use. I've marked the two batteries in question and will use those very cautiously.
In addition, while it cost me a set of props, at least I was in a field and not over some canyon or something where the P1 would be lost. I am using stock batteries and it seems in my case, either these two can no longer output the current needed to accelerate quickly, triggering the auto-land function or they could just be bad batteries and aging pre-maturely.
I will be looking closely at these two batteries with more tests to see if they are even worth saving. I will post if anything interesting results from it all.
Well this should give some people encouragement, I was videoing behind a dam where the spillway emptied, very fast and turbulent water. As I backed away from the dam about 4 feet off the water, I was paying too much attention to slowly tilting the camera down as I drifted to the far side and backed into to a small tree limb hanging over the stream. It fell in the water right there, about 2-3' from the bank. I had to sprint up and over the dam to get to the other side of the spillway, I then went thru 100' of swamp to get to the spot. I luckily took my cellphone off just then and my boots. But as I stepped 2' from the bank the bottom dropped to about 5', and the current was brisk, I just knew it had washed down the stream. I held onto a stump off the tree it hit and stuck my leg out sweeping the bottom as far as I could, but wasn't far cause the bottom dropped even further another foot out. Its Feb and water temp was stinging. And I was in the only clothes I had ridden on a motorcycle 50 miles to get there, and here I am wet up to my arm pits with time ticking away on the Hero and Phantom2, I was bummed. So as I get a good grab onthe stump to lift myself out, my back foot slipped and I went down to my neck and as I scrambled to find somewhere to put my foot to keep from going under, I felt something move and thought at first it just a stick. But since I was already near submerged, I just bent over, felt with my hand and there was one of the arms. When I brought it up the crowd across the dam cheered(I guess they were trying to make me feel better since I felt like the biggest ******* when this happen- it always draws a crowd) Probably less than 10 min had passed. To make a long story short, I knew the gopro was gone but thought I should dry out the P2 quick. The state park had hand dryers in the bathrooms so I took camera and Zenmuse off, battery out, shook the hell out the P2 and used the hand dryer, took P2 battery circuit board cover off, also on the Zenmuse, and just as a try used another hand dryer on the gopro after removing the battery and card. Did this for over an hour. At home used air compressor to blow every compartment possible. Took P2 cover off and blow more, same with Zenmuse and gopro. Left gopro on heating pad all nite. Well P2 and Zenmuse work as good as ever and even the gopro works. The battery that was in it is fried but I had extra. There was a small very slight hazy spot in middle of picture in brite conditions. I disassembled the gopro per youtube instructions and got to the sensor and lens back. It was competely dry and appears the seal between the two had kept it dry. Must be between lens elements. However, now a few days later after keeping on heating pad more the haze has gone Whew!!
Lucky it was fresh water, and short time frame, - and oh yea, it helps to have a hand dryer handy. Now that motorcycle ride home was another *****.
Lucky it was fresh water, and short time frame, - and oh yea, it helps to have a hand dryer handy. Now that motorcycle ride home was another *****.
ussvertigo said:
Awesome story!! Glad to hear it worked out in the end. And I definitely know what you mean by a cold motorcycle ride...
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