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lvl.4
Flight distance : 60709 ft
United States
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One battery may last 200 flights and another 20. Maybe less.
That's the problem that does not seem to have a solution. The batteries register as perfect or near so since the DJI "smart battery" tests and the software are only looking at them under no load. When put under load, they fail....and quickly. Then, when the user picks up his battery from the crashed quad, it still indicates a lot of life and charge...as it would in this case!
A fellow pilot on RCG put it this way.....which makes it even more of a concern because DJIGLOBAL is pushing that video!
"Nice video of a defective battery. 90% life and 33 cycles should be nothing, this battery had a weak cell and resultant voltage sag and autoland trigger prematurely under flight load. As soon as he caught the model the red LEDs cancelled when the motor load went away and the voltage climbed back up. The moral of the story is to Always Be Watching, for warning lights or autoland kicking in. Be prepared to raise the throttle like our expert friend did in the video.
You can test for sagging in flight by gently pumping the throttle and climbing, now and then while watching for a Red Flash. If it happens, fly gently back and investigate more with the model hovering close."
The chances of every Phantom user load-testing their batteries in this manner is about zero.
It would be nice for DJI to clarify all of this - since their instructions certainly would say we could fly with these "high life" batteries and mention absolutely nothing about load testing. It would be even better if they could come up with a load testing procedure better than having us fly the quad up and down near ourselves every X flights....
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