How long is everyone getting out of there batteries? I've now flown mine 4 times and the flight times are...

5-12-2015    10 min - first short test flight
5-13-2015    14 min - 20 % remaining
5-13-2015    15 min - 20% remaining
5-14-2015    16 min - 9% left trying to get home was within 10 feet of home and about 7 feet up caught a tree branch and flipped over and hit the ground.

I had installed prop guards and 2 of them broke. Props, camera, gimble, and drone all survived.

So where is my 23 minutes of flight time??

I would think prop guards would alter stock battery time since they would cause some air interference.

How fast are you flying it on average?

On average, I'd say about 10 mph. I did have it full speed for a short distance a couple of times.

jacmac64 Posted at 2015-5-15 07:46
On average, I'd say about 10 mph. I did have it full speed for a short distance a couple of times.

...

I'm about to go fly mine and I'll report back.

The more you fly the better the battery gets, meaning more flight time.

Fully dressed you will never see the advertised flight time...no regulatory body to hold DJI to that standard....15 minutes is not too bad though...just a tip....takes more battery to hover than to maneuver steady with purpose...I fly a P2 and believe it or not..when I plan my flights to accommodate slow steady movements I get upwards of one to two minutes extra flight time...

Michael Starley Posted at 2015-5-15 10:47
Fully dressed you will never see the advertised flight time...no regulatory body to hold DJI to that ...

My personal experience - if you're stopping and starting a lot, you're eating up a lot of energy, i.e., battery current. Slow, steady movement, coordinating turns, etc., will all contribute to maximum flight time. It makes sense too if you're climbing/descending a lot, you're going to absorb a great deal more energy than if you just climbed to a specific height and then flew pretty level from there.

It's also prettier, i.e., makes for better video. The gimbal mount will reduce a lot of pilot-created herky-jerky. If you fly a quad with a GoPro and no gimbal mount, you can see how pronounced it is. Stopping and starting will make the quad "shift" slightly until it "settles in" with the motion/direction. It is much less detectable with the gimbal mount on the P3, but if you know you're doing it.....

Guess you haven't heard of conditioning the batteries, you don't want to run them that low the first ten flights or so. I have flown six flights and stopped flying when battery was around 50% and still had average flight times of 14 minutes or so. It depends what type of flying you are doing and wind as well. Happy flying!

My guess is that's based on taking them to 0%, which of course we can't do.    I guess it's like a car.   You can go 300 miles on a tank but then you run out and are stuck on the road, so you'll probably only go 200 and fill up.

And yeah, prop guards are adding weight and possibly affecting efficiency.   Then there's the battery coming into full power.    Try again in a couple of weeks without prop guards and let us know how you go!

You also have to remember the new braking system. If you are tooling around with a lot of stop start, the aircraft is using a lot of power to reverse the direction of travel and stop dead. Fly with purpose and try not to just release the controls when at speed and deploy the brake.
DJI's 23 minute promise is for guys who fly like the Pope...

Ended yesterday my 12th flight with 23% remaining battery after 18 minutes non stop flight, video recording and pictures shooting. Total distance 1600m and height between 10 and 100m.
6 pictures on this flight for which I take time to position the quad slowly and exactly where I want which means approximately 6 minutes of stationary flight.
I suppose I fly like the Pope but the P3 is more an imaging tool rather than a racing engine.  

Expect 15-20 minutes of flight time. You don't want to run your battery too far down. It hurts the battery - and you risk getting into trouble - it might want to do a Return To Home and might start flying by itself, which can be quite the shock. I don't go below 25%, (20% max).

Flying style has an impact too. Flying fast - and going up high will naturally drain battery a bit faster. If it is windy it will also use more battery - because it corrects itself and fights the wind constantly.

In fact, I would not be surprised if recording 4K video during all of your flight will also use up some extra battery power. So not capturing video might also give you a bit more flying time (kindda defeats the purpose, but I'm just trying to think about how we could get the longest flight time).

And as others mentioned - flying with Prop-Guards is extra weight and wind-resistance and will likely take a few minutes of flying time. Sounds like you were right flying with them on considering your crash. But in general I'd fly without them - just don't crash ;)   I don't want to make anyone afraid of prop guards - but there were stories with the P2s about Vortex Ring Syndrome especially happening to people descending quickly (straight down) and it seemed to happen more often to people using Prop guards. They did slow down the descend speed to 2m/s (3m/s for the P3) so it is likely not a huge problem anymore.

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Buy your DJI-gear, batteries, cases by using this link - it'll help me out

Hello FantomDK,
Quick question from your post.

"I don't go below 25%, (20% max)"
Do you charge your battery at this point or do you discharge further?



"Sounds like you were right flying with them on considering your crash."
Had I not had the prop guards on I wouldn't own a phantom any more.

jacmac64 Posted at 2015-5-17 21:36
Hello FantomDK,
Quick question from your post.

My flight this morning was something like my 10th or 11th flight overall. I flew until the battery percentage (as seen in the pilot app) was just below 50%. There were two video segments - the file system shut one down at around 5 gigs and the remainder of the flight video was on file #2.

Total video time was approx 11.5 minutes. So, if the battery was at 50% (probably more like 49 or 48), I could safely fly another 4 or 5 minutes without any danger. I didn't fly too fast (I'm still learning how to steer it safely and smoothly) although I did get up well over 100 feet at one point.

Under the parameters of my morning flight, I could conceivably get 20+ minutes, but the battery level would be extremely low. My experience with LiPo batteries is such that I'm not about to fly and drain my battery anywhere near that low a level.

Your battery needs conditioning.  I would recommend charging it up to about 90%  fly it until the battery reaches about 35%.  Repeat that cycle 5-6 times.  Then go ahead a fully charge to 100% and I bet you get 20 min.
Never run the battery down below about 20% or you risk permamnet damage to the battery.

Also... Store the battery at 50%.  Never store a dead battery.  It will kill it.