Why did Phantom ascend without my control - crash landing

adjmirealty · Jul 10, 2015

I was recently driving my Phantom all over town no problem as soon as the battery became low I brought it home and played around with it between 10-20% when i decided to land for some reason it started to rise without my control I don't know if this was due to the battery being low or maybe it went into fail safe mode and ascended so it can go to the home point which was not to far away... As it rose I pushed the throttle down and nothing was happening (that's why I'm guessing it was battery because phantom should still land manually in fail safe mode... I don't know) I was about 30 feet up until I decided to cut the engines and I had to watch it drop.. Snapped one of my landing gears, snapped the gimbal off the base and cracked the lense... Please help me figure out why this happened if it was fail safe mode how do I cancel the fail safe trip

Uptowndisco2 · Jul 10, 2015

You could have just flicked the top left mode switch to centre and back to cancel what it was doing , much the same as S1 was used on the Vision+ range

John Locke · Jul 10, 2015

Sounds like RTH was enabled because you drained the battery too much. Had you let it go do it's thing it may have landed fine. You can change that in the settings to land instead of RTH when the battery gets low. Your story is convincing me to make that change asap.

Uptowndisco2 · Jul 10, 2015

or dont muck about with a low battery , plan to land by 30% for safety sake and battery health.

Morphious · Jul 10, 2015

Yes, it was flying to the RTH altitude

Meta4 · Jul 10, 2015

Your Phantom was acting as it should but you didn't understand what it was doing or what options you had.
I'd suggest studying return to home and trying it out to understand how it works - and how you can cancel it and resume control.

adjmirealty · Jul 10, 2015

John Locke said:
Sounds like RTH was enabled because you drained the battery too much. Had you let it go do it's thing it may have landed fine. You can change that in the settings to land instead of RTH when the battery gets low. Your story is convincing me to make that change asap.

Please educate me on the difference between return to home and landing why it wouldn't have risen in "landing" from my knowledge return to home will raise the Phantom to ur set altitude and bring it home but at that same height, landing will do the same but just land it at home but the vehicle still rises to set altitude to pass trees and objects then lands so in my case where my battery was at 15% (just checked) and the fail safe RTH get triggered it will still rise bring it to the home spot and land it... If I put it on landing what differently will happen because dosnt it still have to rise to finish its task... Next time I'll switch the switch to middle and back to gps

Meta4 · Jul 10, 2015

The manual has two pages on the three types of RTH.
Pages 12-14.
One whole page is on Low Battery RTH.

adjmirealty · Jul 10, 2015

Meta4 said:
The manual has two pages on the three types of RTH.
Pages 12-14.
One whole page is on Low Battery RTH.

Dam dude I thought the only Manuel they have you is the quick start guide I was looking for the Manuel until I just realized there's no "Manuel" title on the Manuel just says safety guidelines etc

RoyVa · Jul 10, 2015

You probably had it set in the assistant to RTH when battery gets low. You also have a RTH height set or the default was 20 meters. When the battery gets to a set amount per the Assistant you get a warning the battery is getting low. When it reaches the set amount it initiates a RTH and will climb to the altitude set then Fly to the GPS home lock position and land. If the battery gets way low to 8% it will initiate a auto land regardless of where it is. Down she comes and it doesn't care what's under it.... Tree, water, cars or people.

Julius717 · Jul 10, 2015

When RTH is activated because of the battery it has a popup giving you 10 seconds to cancel.

I'm amazed how little people know about these when flying them. No wonder there is so many issues with crash landings.

adjmirealty · Jul 10, 2015

Meta4 said:
The manual has two pages on the three types of RTH.
Pages 12-14.
One whole page is on Low Battery RTH.

Nope realized that it's just guidelines and disclaimer my DJI didn't come w a Manuel wtf!!!

Meta4 · Jul 10, 2015

adjmirealty said:
Dam dude I thought the only Manuel they have you is the quick start guide I was looking for the Manuel until I just realized there's no "Manuel" title on the Manuel just says safety guidelines etc

The Phantom is a complicated machine and understanding how it works is very important.
Go here to find the manual.
http://download.dji-innovations.com...hantom_3_Professional_User_Manual_v1.2_en.pdf

hebimetaru · Jul 10, 2015

I think once it triggers the come home mode it flys up to a safe altitude then goes to the home point it last got a lock on. If it was nearby you may have panicked which is understandable and that's what probably caused the confusion

Meta4 · Jul 10, 2015

adjmirealty said:
Nope realized that it's just guidelines and disclaimer my DJI didn't come w a Manuel wtf!!!

Actually it did .. it's in the app.

The Quickstart Guide says ...
Preparing Your Phantom 3 For Flying
Read the User Manual and watch the video tutorials in the DJI Pilot app or on the official DJI website www.dji.com

adjmirealty · Jul 10, 2015

Julius717 said:
When RTH is activated because of the battery it has a popup giving you 10 seconds to cancel.

I'm amazed how little people know about these when flying them. No wonder there is so many issues with crash landings.

From what I remember I hit cancel... I could've also hit RTH button on remote to cancel it but... I clearly remember canceling by pressing cancel on the pilot app that's why I think something wrong happened out of my control.. If I go to P to A mode and back to P will it cancel as well? You can cancel from the pilot app by hitting cancel I'm not just thinking stuff right?

Meta4 · Jul 10, 2015

adjmirealty said:
From what I remember I hit cancel... I could've also hit RTH button on remote to cancel it but... I clearly remember canceling by pressing cancel on the pilot app that's why I think something wrong happened out of my control.. If I go to P to A mode and back to P will it cancel as well? You can cancel from the pilot app by hitting cancel I'm not just thinking stuff right?

There's lots of confusion here. The best place to start is the manual.
The manual doesn't say that switching P-A-P will cancel RTH but unless you have enabled multi-mode in the app, switching will do nothing at all anyway.
RTH is a very important element of Phantom flying and it is essential that Phantom flyers:

1. read and understand the RTH section of the manual
2. Experiment and practise RTH and cancelling so that when RTH activates or is needed, they know what is happening and what their control options are.

An understanding of RTH isn't something you can get properly from asking strangers in a forum. The answers you get will be confusing and some could be quite wrong.

30secs · Jul 10, 2015

Not that confusing.
-Rth can set to go to home or land in place (in app)
-If Rth is chosen, set the altitude it will go to before making its way to the home point and descend
- the h icon on the app is the point at which Rth will auto initialize
- if the phantom is at a certain distance from you (forget how many meters) it will land instead of going to the home point
- you can initiate (hold click) or cancel (short click) Rth with the controller button in middle
- you can somewhat (slower) control the altitude while in Rth. You can also yaw all day long as it makes its way back to you.

That about sums it

adjmirealty · Jul 10, 2015

Meta4 said:
There's lots of confusion here. The best place to start is the manual.
The manual doesn't say that switching P-A-P will cancel RTH but unless you have enabled multi-mode in the app, switching will do nothing at all anyway.
RTH is a very important element of Phantom flying and it is essential that Phantom flyers:

1. read and understand the RTH section of the manual
2. Experiment and practise RTH and cancelling so that when RTH activates or is needed, they know what is happening and what their control options are.
An understanding of RTH isn't something you can get properly from asking strangers in a forum. The answers you get will be confusing and some could be quite wrong.

Couldn't have said it better... I was searching for a Manuel out of the box and had nothing to resort to but quick guide and tips from friends as well as testing it my self and learning all my options... Until just now where I downloaded the Manuel and I can understand it much more... The only thing I couldn't find is what F mode does in depth and does F mode only work when IOC is on and of course what is IOC it explain but what and how do you use these functions

Chuck Young · Jul 10, 2015

I always make sure my RTH is going to land right where I want it to and usually right in front of me in a nice clearing. I think most of the time you can hit the RTH button to toggle the thing off. Although the other day coming down from altitude took a bit longer than I thought and the RTH had full control and I was having a hard time getting the bird to go where I wanted and had to let it land where it's chosen RTH was. Ate a bunch of tall grass in the process, still have green props.