I have bought my Phantom 3 Advanced drone directly from DJI’swebsite while I was in France. This is my second drone; I used to own a Phantom2 before. I took it with my to Lebanon in order to fly it during my holidays.

I have made all the firmware updates for the drone (1.2.8)and the remote controller, as well as the latest DJI Pilot app. I have nevercrashed my drone and used it in a perfectly normal manner.

Yesterday when I was flying the drone 500 meters away fromme, it stopped functioning altogether (The iPhone pilot app showed "Nosignal") and it fell from the sky like a rock. The lights were off, and nofailsafe was initiated.

I need to mention that no obstacle was in front of the dronesince it was going towards a downward hill. I tried to get to the place of thefall but the terrain isn't practical at all and the drone might be gone forgood.

I still have the flight record RoadMap showing the lastpoint where the drone was before falling from the sky. The battery was still inthe green, GPS was on, flight time was 00:57, etc.

Has anyone experienced a similar problem with their Phantom3?

Hi,
there are a few reports like this, was you able to recover the Bird and you can still power it on?

It would be good if you can share the logs from the Pilot App and the Bird itself prior sending it to DJI.

These reports are getting more common! Makes me worried to fly.

Will DJI accept responsibility for these? Has anyone had replacement if this has happened?

Are you 100% sure you "clicked" the battery all the way in ? One of my first flights I forgot, it was 1mm. out. Thank good, it could have felled out.  Even if pilot app crashs or signal is lost it should return to home. Think I remeber I saw on this forum another guy, did'nt push the battery all the way in and fell out / disconnected the power.

Sorry for your loss.  

Yes there have been a couple of people who reported this same thing.  Could have been a faulty battery or connection.  But it seems to be extremely rare.

NorthernLoop Posted at 2015-6-30 03:01
These reports are getting more common! Makes me worried to fly.

Will DJI accept responsibility for  ...

I think such reports are quite rare- but they happen.

Most long term R/C folks agree that every model is going to eventually fall from the sky - it's really only a matter of time and percentages. With (approx) 100,000 Phantom 3's in the hands of users there will definitely be failures. Some will be pilot error others machine or battery defects.

I don't think there is any trend....and, in fact, the P3 is "trending" much more reliable than former models IMHO.

I know that doesn't help someone who loses their drone - DJI should see the logs and determine the cause.

Reading more into the forums and does seem if you throttle down and go backwards and turn off the motors. Was this the case here?

You could see the lights were off 500m away?  For that matter, you could see the Phantom 500m away?  Were you using binoculars?

kiwichrish Posted at 2015-6-30 07:00
You could see the lights were off 500m away?  For that matter, you could see the Phantom 500m away?  ...

I would have to agree with you.... no way you see any lights over 1500 ft away !!

Another factor people seem to ignore is that there is a reason DJI introduced the composite propeller hub in the P3 and didn't go with the metal hub of the P2's 9450 prop which is essentially the same apart from the hub being different. P3 uses active braking in order to make the bird more responsive and stop quickly once sticks are released. The supplied composite props must be tightened well prior to flight otherwise there will always be a chance of one of them coming off during active braking. I remember I used to simply twist the props on my P2 without ever tightening them as they self tightened during flight, but a different story with the P3. Make sure you always tighten yours well. Also, I reduced the braking figure in the pilot app gain settings from 100 to 85. Now my bird doesn't brake as aggressively. Learned all this the hard way after I lost a prop during active braking at about 10 feet up, no significant damage. But never happened again.

Its a total loss of power.... Battery got loose ?  or its connector just got loose momentary that made the P3 reboot on air ? Will the RC be reconnected then ?

Contacted support already? If yes please leave me your case number. If not, can you power on your bird now?

DJI-Autumn Posted at 2015-6-30 19:13
Contacted support already? If yes please leave me your case number. If not, can you power on your bi ...

I am sure the battery was completely inserted in the drone, so I don’t think this was the problem. And for the lights I could see the red / green lights blinking since I was going in a backward direction… Again I didn’t stop the engines, I already practiced flying with my Phantom 2 before.

The problem is I lost contact on my controller so I thought I would wait for the phantom to come “Home” as it always did. When I looked up in the air, I could see the very small drone falling from the sky instead of coming back!

I tried contacting the DJI support (Phantom_Jilian) and they told me to send them the flight log that is ON the SD card (in the drone). I told them that was nearly impossible but I’ll try.

I went near the location of the fall in order to find the drone today with 3 other friends. We brought ropes and went mountain climbing since the drone fell on a very steep downward hill. We were unsuccessful since there is so many bushes and the slope was very dangerous (pic on instagram @dark_matters_entertainment).

I don’t have a case number but here you can see my flight Road Map and the discussion with the DJI support team.

DJI-Autumn Posted at 2015-6-30 19:13
Contacted support already? If yes please leave me your case number. If not, can you power on your bi ...

Here's my case number with Sophie Zhang: 80226

DJI-Autumn Posted at 2015-6-30 19:13
Contacted support already? If yes please leave me your case number. If not, can you power on your bi ...

Here's my case number with Sophie Zhang: 80226

DJI-Autumn Posted at 2015-6-30 19:13
Contacted support already? If yes please leave me your case number. If not, can you power on your bi ...

Here's my case number with Sophie Zhang: 80226

DJI-Autumn Posted at 2015-6-30 19:13
Contacted support already? If yes please leave me your case number. If not, can you power on your bi ...

Here's my case number with Sophie Zhang: 80226

NorthernLoop Posted at 2015-6-30 03:01
These reports are getting more common! Makes me worried to fly.

Will DJI accept responsibility for  ...

I had a very similar occurance on holiday in Mauritius.

I was flying roughly 75m high and descending when it just dropped like a stone at about 20m.

Luckily it didn't hit my wife and child below.

It dropped in the ocean and that was that.

I sent it back to Germany the end of May, DJI sent a replacement and I received it last week.

Here's the answer of DJI:

"The video didn't record the crash moment; while according to the video, the height is not far away from the take-off point.
The speed is slow, while still able for collision.
The record didn't include the crash moment, it might be crashed, or something else; which is hard to identify."

So I basically have no real answer from the technical support

mac_3_4@hotmail Posted at 2015-7-17 16:06
Here's the answer of DJI:

"The video didn't record the crash moment; while according to the video,  ...

They can only respond to the data that they have on the Flight Data Recorder.  The data is the data.