So after little over 8 weeks, about 8-9 flights and the viewing of many many videos, my Phantom 3 Standard crashed today into a small tree and is no longer operable. Well it is operable but the motors now run ragged and not smooth like before. I've been searching now for the last 2 hours and I cannot find where or how to begin the repair process. I will contact DJI tomorrow, but hopefully someone is able to help me understand what I did wrong.
Set up for me is
Standard 3
iphone 5
DJApp
Brief rundown: I was flying at a new location. Went thru pre flight checklist, including calibration. The first mistake I made was upon liftoff, I went straight up to about 50-60 feet. I have seen videos that advise to first hover a few feet off the ground after liftoff, just in case something is calibrated incorrectly. This is excellent advice, particularly for beginners, because if there are any problems, you can quickly land the aircraft and make corrections.
I did not do that. So excited to fly after several cold days, I lifted up and went straight up to about 50 feet. My battery was good at 78%, I had about 10 wifi signals, remote near full charge, small wind and battery temp was 25C. Nothing there that I can see that would indicate any problems.
As soon as I was in the air, for the first time ever, the Phantom suddenly began behaving erratically and flying at an alarming rate of speed away from me. As soon as it got up to about 50 feet, it just immediately began racing to my left. Mind you the only control I had touched at that point was the left throttle up. I looked down at my phone and to my horror, saw that I was not in my usual beginner mode P-GPS. The display said Intelligent Flight Mode. Seems like I forgot to switch the left hand switch to the the middle position. This is where my inexperience cost me. When the Phantom began zooming away from me, I kind of panicked and had visions of it flying away completely. So I immediately thought it best to bring it back to me and land right away. So I pulled the control back to bring it down. However instead of coming back down at normal speed, the aircraft was zooming to the ground at a high rate of speed. Fearful of a ground crash, I took it up again, and once again, it started flying erratically and racing to my left. I tried to go back up again to avoid the tree, but it was too late. It crashed into the tree, fell to the ground and ate up the ground around it, before I finally used the double stick manuever to turn off the motors.
What I think I should have done is when it began flying away and I saw that I was in Intelligent Mode, I should have taken it up above the tree line and then I should have clicked back to neutral on the left sticks and made sure the right switch was in P-GPS mode. I think at that point I may have regained control and landed safely.
My question is if I am correct and the Intelligent Mode caused the issue, why did the Phantom just begin flying away without me even touching the controls?? That's what scared me the most and caused the panic. I am not trying to blame DJI here, I'm almost sure I did something wrong because my Phantom has never given me any problems. But even if I was accidentally in Intelligent Mode, I still think the aircraft should not have just started zooming away from me simply because I was not in P-GPS.
I guess my advice for newbies like me is to not panic when flyaways start to happen. There are various ways of regaining control but it's all lost if you panic and make the wrong decision. Of course if you are a new pilot and your aircraft begins racing away from you without you doing anything, it's not easy to stay calm. In one sense I guess it was better that it crashed right in front of me rather than flying away and ending up who knows where.
I would appreciate any feedback and if anyone could direct me to instructions on how to upload my flight logs I'd be happy to post them for review.
Thanks for any assistance and this really sucks because just when we're getting great 50+ degree weather, my Phantom is now going to be pretty much out of action for most of the spring.
Depending on the mode, it could be trying to do a huge circle around you, flight to a saved waypoint or "follow" some ghost signal.
Even the startup calibration + battery warm up could've been wrong before take off due to the flight mode.
Also, maybe you even set the flight mode during the compass dance, so it could have screw your calibration.
Most of it is just speculating, try to upload the log to healthy drones to see if we can find anything else and also sync and fav your flight and get someone from DJI to look at it.
Thanks buddy, one strange thing too, not sure if related or not, but just before I calibrated, my iphone gave me that red and black compass for a second, and then it went away. It's the one where there is a red ball and you tilt the phone and roll the red ball around these red lines in a circle. Maybe the iphone's compass threw something off? Who knows. I tried uploading to Healthy Drones but it requires I download itunes and my computer keeps giving an error and saying i need to uninstall then install again.
You know I have to say, in all honesty, flying is great and super fun, but drones are almost more a hassle than an enjoyment. First of all, unless you are lucky to live in some wide open spaces, it's really not that easy to find good safe flying locations. In my city, it seems like there are either towers, or electric poles and wires or planes flying everywhere. Or there are too many people around. If I had been anywhere near people today when this crash happened, I may have had heart failure. My nightmare is the drone losing contact and flying away and landing somewhere completely lost to me. With my FAA registration number right over the battery.
I guess that is the price we pay to enjoy flying and we all have to do our part and maybe my part is to find out why this happened so that other people may benefit and not have that happen to them.
So I'll try to find a way to post those logs and will call DJI tomorrow.
The compass in your phone would not have had anything to do with what happened, the RC unit does not use it at all.
I am a bit puzzled by your statement:
"The display said Intelligent Flight Mode. Seems like I forgot to switch the left hand switch to the the middle position."
The middle position is A or Attitude mode, which is close to being full manual control. The most stable mode is with the switch fully to the right, or P mode, which really should be the mode you are in when taking off initially. The switch position fully to the left is F mode or Function mode, where you access the functions of POI or Waypoint programming. This is also a quite stable mode, whether you are using the Intelligent Flight modes or not.
In addition, the mode is normally locked into P Mode unless you go into the camera menu, under 'Mode' and unlock the other two modes.
So unless you unlocked 'Multiple Flight Modes' and were actually in the centre or A mode, I really do not understand how the aircraft would have performed the way you say it did.
However the switch in the middle position is A-mode that is a flight mode that does not use anything for stabilize the aircraft except to the barometer that is used for stabilise the height. So are you sure that the switch was in the middle (A-mode) or in on total left (F-mode)?
Because if you were in A-mode and there was also a little wind the aircraft is not stabilized and it is free to follow all kind of perturbation and go everywhere without any action on controllers.
If you went in a mode that uses the iPhone 5 gps that was probably the issue as the GPS/compass suck in my iPhone 5 after all the updates. IMO you should only use intelligent sleep mode on modern devices that have been confirmed working by DJI or the community. The iPhone 5 is nowhere near reliable enough to do fpv, I would never trust it with intelligent flight mode.
Thanks guys. But I NEVER use Intelligent Flight Mode. My Phantom is set to Beginner Mode, restricted to about 100ft up and away. I wanted to become skilled at Beginner Mode before I messed around with any other mode. Normally my right control on the remote is set to to upper most position P-GPS and my left control is set to the middle position. This is from my manual. I have flown that way since I bought the unit with no issues. This time, I forgot to confirm what positions the switches were in before flying. I have had this happen before, not being in P-GPS mode but no flyaway or drifting happened then. No idea why this time was different.
One other thing I thought about last nite, usually once I complete all checklists and calibrate correctly, as soon as I execute the power up commands, I get the Home Point Recorded message from my phone. This time I do not believe I got that message. Again, not sure if that made a difference.
Also once the Phantom started flying erractically to my left, all I did was try to fly back to me and to the ground. I didn't execute any manuevers to turn the motor off. I didn't even have time to try to do a RTH landing. The Phantom was flying away so fast, I was just desperately trying to stop it from flying completely away and land as quick as I could.
Looking at the Phantom's shadow just before it hit the tree it looks like you were panicking at the controls thinking it was in GPS mode. You can see the Phantom jerking really hard at least twice just before it encountered the tree. I'd be curious as to if anything had been setup on the intelligent flight mode.
Thank you buddy! You are so right! At the most it's the loss of a $499 extra fancy toy. No one was injured, no property was damaged and no, thankfully I didn't suffer that near death upside down landing. If that's you, salud! I can always buy a new one and hopefully your insurance can get you a new plane!
The way you describe the movement and lack of stating home point recorded could mean you didnt have sufficient GPS satellites, did you happen to notice he amount?
Before I lifted off, I checked the display and I had 10 satellites. Here's the main thing: my normal flight mode is to lift off, then hover for a few seconds, before I decide what else to do. The unit has never given me any issues when I do that. So that is what I did again, lift off, then hover. However this time, when I looked up at the unit, that's when I saw it drifting very quickly away from me. Remember at this time I was not even touching the controls. The unit was flying away all on it's own. That's what so scared me. I was like WTF?!? I pushed the right controls to fly back to my direction and the unit would respond, but then almost immediately begin flying back away again. It's hard to explain in that short sequence because it only lasted a few seconds, but it just seemed like the unit was determined to fly away from me no matter what controls I pushed. Finally it just flew into the tree and fell to the ground.
DJI has sent me a shipping label so hopefully this damage will be covered and repaired.
Just sent off my P3S today. DJI sent me a shipping label that paid for the shipping, which was nice to start. Hoping this is a covered repair, that would be even nicer. I'm curious to hear exactly what went wrong. I noticed on the flight info from the DJI app, the last few seconds show that I was warned I was flying in some code other than P-GPS (ATTI?) and then the next images show I lost GPS signal. However if that's the case, shouldn't the unit then just hover, until it regains signal, and not begin flying off somewhere?
Then if the unit began flying from me maybe because RTH was triggered, first that would be impossible because at this point, I was not even touching the controls. I had gone up the 50 feet, left the controls so that I would just hover, and then I looked down at my phone screen, and that's when I saw that I was not in GPS Mode. I looked up again, and the unit began zooming to the left. Not really fast, but alarmingly waay to fast for my liking.
Now if I had the time, or if I was fast thinking enough, I could have tried to switch into GPS mode right at that moment, to lock in a signal and regain control. But the unit was flying so strange, I just desperately wanted to land and finish this flight. Then in the video you see the nose of the unit begin to spin crazy. I think it goes thru 2-3 loops. At this time I am trying to simply fly the unit back to me, lower altitude and land. But because the nose is spinning all over the place, it's impossible to control, and the Phantom flies into the tree, and the rest is history.
At this point, whatever the outcome, I will be up in the air again. The video from the Phantom is just too revolutionary. The power to see your world, your immediate surroundings in ways we still can only dream of is way too powerful to resist.
DJI promising a turnaround repair time of 2-3 weeks. The guy on the phone said 10 working days. I'll give them 4 weeks. If I get my Phantom back by April 9th, I'll be very satisfied. Lose one month of great weather, but gain a valuable lesson in flying. I'll take the tradeoff.
Tracking my repair. Fedex tracking shows DJI received my package 3/16/16. Unfortunately the one thing I forgot to do was write the RMA number on the outside of the package. Apparently that will cost me a few extra days while DJI tries to match the package with the RMA number. As of today, my phone number and RMA number turns up nothing according to the website. So far thankfully I am not really missing any flying days. It's been cold and miserable here in Minneapolis the last few days. Hopefully I hear back soon and hopefully it's a covered repair.
If you are still tracking this repair along with me, I have to say, thus far, I am super impressed with DJI. The repair process is wonderfully painless. First I love how DJI ties flying into their responses. The emails end with hoping they can get you flying as soon as possible. I was also emailed a free shipping label. All I did was package my Phantom and take it to Fedex. The shipping label paid for tracking and insurance. If you ever return, don't forget like I did, to write your RMA number on the actual box. Anyway I did give the RMA number to a chat rep, who may have forwarded it to the return team.
Anyway once DJI received the package, I went to an extremely helpful link in an email they sent me, and from there I could put in my phone number and viola, the repair progress is shown in a simple and clear graph that tells you when the unit was received, if there was a charge, if it was tested and repaired, and when it's been shipped. Mine hasn't been shipped yet, but DJI has DELIVERED for me!! Super impressed.
If all goes well, I should have my Phantom back in couple weeks and I will be so grateful!
I keep mine off so it stays in P-GPS and it does not matter what position S2 is in on the remote.
Good point bud, I will check once it's been returned. I wasnt aware you can turn it on and off, because it's real easy to hit the S2 switch while your calibrating or attaching your mobile device. Thanks for the tip, I will definitely turn it off if thats the case when it comes back.
Geebax Posted at 2016-3-6 23:12
The compass in your phone would not have had anything to do with what happened, the RC unit does n ...
The OP has a Standard, and the flight mode switch on the standard is on the upper right. But the switch position is the same, i.e. middle position is atti mode.
I suspect if he was in atti or ioc mode, he had wind and that's what sent the p3 away.
Returning to this thread in the unlikely event that someone is still tracking the repair or wants to find out what was the eventual outcome. I got my Phantom back from DJI in very good time and it was repaired at no charge, which was great. However a few things points:
1) Strange enough, DJI did not clean my unit. They repaired the damaged motors, which had been grinding, but the dirt that was kicked on and into the unit, by the propellors when it hit the ground, all that was still on the unit when I got it back. I guess you can't ask for too much, to repair the unit for free, and clean it up too. I did clean it up as best as I could before sending it off, but I had thought that DJI had maybe some high powered blowers that could have blown the dirt clean.
2) If you send your unit in for repair, make sure when you get it back, you calibrate IMU again. I didn't do this and then subsequently suffered a real hard landing, that had my motors grinding again, and I had to send it in for repair a 2nd time, this time costing me $105. It's now back again and repaired again and working near perfect now.
3) I won't disagree that the crash was almost totally my fault. Truthfully, I did not spend enough time reviewing all my flight information BEFORE I began flying that day. This is so crucial. Now each time before I fly, I spend several minutes simply reviewing all the information on my mobile device. Battery temperature, satellite signal strength, remote control battery, flight mode, I make absolutely sure they are all in good or normal range. Then I VISUALLY check to confirm I am flying in P-GPS mode, then I calibrate, then lift off, and hover. Only after I observe the unit rock solid hovering, do I then take it up and away. If I had done all those things that day before flying, I do not believe I would have had a crash.
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