Well, after reading all of the horror stories it has happened to me tonight.  Took up my P3P out a few hundred yards right at take off and BOOM.  Lost signal and lost all lights on the aircraft.  I'm assuming the battery fell out our something.  I was not recording yet.  How do I find the GPS location of the aircraft?  I need to go hopefully find it in the morning...Thanks for everyones help.  I'm sooooooooo bummed.  

Eric

Aloha Eric,

     If you were using the Google Earth satellite view, the flight log should show the path and location or approximate location of your P3.  When the White Main Screen comes up (before you connect to your aircraft), the upper left corner has a paper airplane icon. Press it and the flight log will come up.  Do not worry about the map loading noted in the database.  When you press on the last flight, the satellite view and the path of your P3 will come up.  You should even be able to zoom in on it's last location.  Hope this helps!  Sorry about your loss.

Aloha and Drone On!

Hey Eric, @Cetaman already suggested you a resolution, but what I want to ask you is to let us know something not so serious maybe as a factor for many of the pilots - the take off battery percentage

Could you please be so kind and let us know if the battery was charged completely to 100% before take off

todor Posted at 2015-10-25 05:06
Hey Eric, @Cetaman already suggested you a resolution, but what I want to ask you is to let us know  ...

Thank you both.  Where the P3P fell is right in the middle of a huge industrial plant which is gated, and of course they are not there on Sunday.  I sure hope I can get it tomorrow.  Todor, its funny you said that.  I always fly with 100% battery, but this flight was only 61%.  Family was over and I wanted to just fly out a couple hundred feet and show them the Return to Home feature real quick.  Well only after a few seconds of flying the lights on the bird went completely off and it fell from the sky.  

Eric  

I know it's funny, but on my side of view it is not, Eric. I can't fully explain it, but what I am wondering about is the take-off battery power in percentage for most of the users in this forum. It is just an essential survey in my mind, because I will never ever take off again with battery not charged completely in the same day of flight. In addition, I am always trying to fully charge the batteries hour or two before take off if it it's possible. This is the reason why I've asked you and the voting pool is already created ~>  http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=34125

As it's stated in the http://download.dji-innovations. ... al_v1.4_en_0915.pdf --- DJI's Phantom 3 Professional user manual in page 44:

Preflight checklist:
1. Remote controller, Intelligent Flight Battery and mobile device are fully charged.

p.s. The take off battery power is an issue which I'm sure is important as the wind speed, Kp index and all other subjects to fly safe.
just my 2 cent
Best regards,
Todor

Well, good news is I finally got my P3P back, bad news is its destroyed.  For the guys that know how to read healthy drones, will the below info give you enough info to tell me what happened on this flight? Or is there anything else I need to do?  I just pulled the log files from my phone, do I need to do anything with the actual bird?   Just a reminder I took off and just a few seconds later I instantly lost all power.  I would love to know why the battery just shut and the bird crashed?  I'll contact DJI today as I now have the P3P in hand.

https://healthydrones.com/main?f ... f755f1aac9984ecdf74

Thank you all for your help.
Eric

It sure looks like the battery fell out or disconnected:

There have been a few reports of the battery not being pushed in all the way.
Also, a major part of maintaining the P3 is to regularly use DeOxit on the contacts for the battery and telemetry.

If the contacts are clean and pushed in all the way it's highly doubtful that it would do this.
It goes without saying that quickie family demos should not be over locked industrial areas...also, using the bird for demos and showing folks what it can do are all tempting fate (in general), as it's always a matter of when - not if - a quadcopter is going to malfunction.

Well Eric like you I had the same thing happen. I took my drone up about forty feet and everything just shut off on the drone lights, motors and I tried to catch it but couldn't get to it quick enough. It hit the ground and shattered the camera. I made sure the battery was in tight powered everything up calibrated the compass and home point. Then I took it up. The total flight was 15 seconds. What happened? I have no idea. will be contacting Dji this mourning.

This is what happend to my P3P WITH 70% battery. Just fell from the sky while on the job. I have a FAA 333 and a pilots license, I know how to fly. This thing fell from 80'. Like a switch was flipped off. Fell in the water and it is totaled. DJI need to figure this out. Mass producing drones is cousing problems.b Glad no one was hurt. Its hard to run a drone business when your tools dont work. No help from DJI yet.

one rule of flying is always check your battery levels before take off. once it clicks, pull back and try to yank it out without using the tabs and make sure its in there real good. Then hover for 30 seconds after take off and make sure everything is fine and not going to crash. If its going to crash its going to be shortly after takeoff.

Michael M Posted at 2015-11-12 05:37
one rule of flying is always check your battery levels before take off. once it clicks, pull back an ...

Agree in the most part but i would not attempt to pull out to test as i think it will cause wear on the clip and frame, instead just listen for the click?

sdharris Posted at 2015-11-13 07:57
Agree in the most part but i would not attempt to pull out to test as i think it will cause wear o ...

I always wiggle it abd give it a tug judt to make sure its snug and wont fall out. Wibt wear out the clips. Only if it moves around which it shouldn't

sdharris Posted at 2015-11-13 07:57
Agree in the most part but i would not attempt to pull out to test as i think it will cause wear o ...

I always wiggle it abd give it a tug judt to make sure its snug and wont fall out. Won't wear out the clips. Only if it moves around which it shouldn't

I just put up a similar post on the forum. 3 minutes into flight and power failure. Phantom dropped into water and is unreachable. There is no way that the battery "fell out" I would think that is quite rare anyway. I don't think the thing would even start up if it wasn't pushed all the way in and locked. I do however thing there is a software glitch in the batteries themselves. Although my batteries were fully charged they had not been used for about a week. They still showed full charge showing all lights. I think that possibly the lul between charging and using the batteries was long enough to sent the battery into it's auto discharge cycle and it happened while it was in flight and bang killed all power. Just a theory but it's all that would make sense in all these stories including my own. Whatever set it off I'm betting it's some glitch in the auto discharge circitry.

todor Posted at 2015-10-25 14:14
I know it's funny, but on my side of view it is not, Eric. I can't fully explain it, but what I am w ...

from this healthy drones analyzes there is one thing that is very funny. the estimated flight time is zero and the estimated flight distance is also zero for the battery. Batteries are funny when not charged. You can remove the battery from a device when it is completely flat and after 30 minutes you fit it again and suddenly it powers up just to fail a few seconds later. I do not think that your battery fell out. I think your battery was way below the 61% and the app only realized it after you have already moved to the point where it shut down. best practice is to not fly with a battery that was not fully charged within the past 48 hours.  

Hello, I took the same accident.
Until now, I can not understand what happened. In the evening 09.11.15 updated firmware and remote drone, decided to fly the next morning. The weather was perfect with no wind. I select an open area. Before the start of calibrated compass. Raised by 1 meter and 10 seconds held it in limbo. Further raised 3.7 m checked the flight characteristics of the right to the left and turned. It would seem that does not foretell disaster. In 30 seconds, raising higher phantom sent to flight, somewhere 50 seconds of flight, I squeezed sticks forward and upward. After 7 seconds of flight at the drone shut off the engine. Almost from 70 meters down to the bottom of the stone. the result is divided chamber 4k broken legs and desk. I stayed for parts ((( healthydrones.com

I just want to share my direct supervision about the DJI's intelligent flight batteries:  _always_ fully charge your batteries same day of flight, no matter if they weren't used after their last full charge. Just curious if here is someone who already follow these DJI suggestions and experienced batt failure midair