I have been flying my Dji Mavic Pro for 6 months. Great little drone, had no problems and rock solid. Well done Dji, a winner, bought Care Refresh with that BTW. So after producing some great works with the Mavic decided to upgrade and bought a Phantom 4 Pro for $2399 AUD on May 23 from a store in Sydney, Australia. Like the Mavic I watched all the videos, read all the forums and got into it very slowly, about 15 flights under my belt. All the time I noticed it wasn't as solid as the Mavic, it was rather 'drifty', would slowly move to one side or the other, which I thought was odd. Always kept in P mode, compass and IMU calibrated a few times. Every now and then, even in open country, I would get 'interference messages' but it would take off and be relatively responsive. Most of the time I thought it was me just getting used to a bigger drone, which felt like a bus after the Mavic.
So gets to June 7 and I decided to do sensor calibration using Assistant - mainly because I had bought the P4P because of the extra sensors and safety and wanted to triple check they were all active and working. So all good and calibrated. June 8 around 3pm decided to do a short flight to test everything was OK and try some new NDs filters that had arrived. Took it up to 50m, a few still images, then noticed it drifting quite badly, 1m this way and 2m that way. So I started to carefully bring it down. Got to about 6m off ground and it then just took off to it's right, the sticks were centered but it just kept moving, about 10m sideways and to the right, straight into the top of a tree with bare branches. Crash. Two props gone, gimbal off centre, the left leg bent inwards - not a massive crash, but rendering it unflyable. Now shows Compass 1 disconnected, gimbal points mid left, but will start up, do gimbal calibrations and motors work - but with weak left leg, wont fly. Anyway.


Contacted Dji support on Thurs 8 immediately after the crash. I said this is just over a week old and I had Care Refresh. Through no fault of my own it just flew sideways into a tree. Explained I have flown the Mavic for over 150 flights, and the p4p for 15 or so flights. Never had I had a drone just fly sideways by itself with my fingers off the sticks? So the chap Francis said he would have someone get back to me within 24 hours. Of course 24 hours go by so contact them again (btw takes forever to navigate the site just to get to the online chat?!) - A new chap called Jeff (with the same avatar picture) apologised and gives me a case number. Says it will take about a week to organise mail pickup and then 10-15 business days to get to a quotation, then perhaps a few more days for repair and return. I talked about driving the drone to the Burwood repair centre to save a week of hassle, but he said they can't really do that?

So. I have a week old $3000 drone (when you include all the batteries etc) that has some kind of GPS or control spasm, and now I have to wait probably a month to get it repaired or replaced under warranty. Is this normal? Is this what $3k gets you nowadays...the sort of service you get with a $50 toaster? I was super careful with my drone and indeed on-going with my Mavic and kind of expected more. Any suggestions to make this less tedious and slow? Cheers - and yes guessing you have heard this sort of tale multiple times, but it is a pain when it is oneself...

I missed a key point re: how fast it would be for them to look at the p4p. I was willing to drive this 1.5 hours to the service centre on Friday yesterday, but because nothing was done in the first 24 hours, I now have a full 3 days (weekend and holiday Monday) before I might even get a postal message - again I said I was willing to drive it to the service centre as I need a working p4p by June 20. And again a week old p4p with an obvious fault, so annoyed that one gets treated like its 3 or 6 or 9 months old?! CAS-698885-Q2Y0C9 

"Got to about 6m off ground and it then just took off to it's right, the sticks were centered but it just kept moving, about 10m sideways and to the right, straight into the top of a tree"

Looking at the data for that flight, the thing that's immediately obvious is that while you had a steady 12-14 satellites while 30+ feet up, when you descended lower than 25 ft, your sat numbers dropped until you had just 5 at 2:07.2.  This is probably due to tree canopy and/or other obstacles blocking the sky view.
Not having the required number of satellites, put your Phantom into atti mode without position holding or braking and subject to being blown around.
Being in atti mode close to trees is not a good recipe for Phantom health.
I'm not certain that there's any hardware issue that needs fixing.

Labroides Posted at 2017-6-9 18:15
"Got to about 6m off ground and it then just took off to it's right, the sticks were centered but it just kept moving, about 10m sideways and to the right, straight into the top of a tree"

Looking at the data for that flight, the thing that's immediately obvious is that while you had a steady 12-14 satellites while 30+ feet up, when you descended lower than 25 ft, your sat numbers dropped until you had just 5 at 2:07.2.  This is probably due to tree canopy and/or other obstacles blocking the sky view.

Thanks Labroides for looking.

According to my playback on Go4 app, it actually crashed at 2.02 so as the compass 1 stop working then too having 5 sats at 2.07 when it was on the ground was due to the crash? It had 10 sats up until the crash ?

Labroides Posted at 2017-6-9 18:15
"Got to about 6m off ground and it then just took off to it's right, the sticks were centered but it just kept moving, about 10m sideways and to the right, straight into the top of a tree"

Looking at the data for that flight, the thing that's immediately obvious is that while you had a steady 12-14 satellites while 30+ feet up, when you descended lower than 25 ft, your sat numbers dropped until you had just 5 at 2:07.2.  This is probably due to tree canopy and/or other obstacles blocking the sky view.

Here is the playback video  - the crash window was from 1.50 to 2.02 and there were 10+ satellites in that period? .... 27MB https://www.dropbox.com/s/1j038d2l66xtksh/FlightPlaybackP4PCrash.mp4?dl=0

We feel sorry about the accident and understand your frustration. But there is no on-site repair service in Australia at the moment, we will have logistics team contact you and help you arrange the free pickup service for diagnosis and repair.
Since the drone was out of control, we will have data analysis team to check the flight data to judge if it's malfunction, if the crash was caused by hardware issue which is within fifteen calendar days of receiving the product, we will help to to replace it,  the turnaround time may be long because of data analysis.
We apologize for the inconvenience that has been caused, hope we can get it sorted out shortly.

DJI Mindy Posted at 2017-6-9 19:05
We feel sorry about the accident and understand your frustration. But there is no on-site repair service in Australia at the moment, we will have logistics team contact you and help you arrange the free pickup service for diagnosis and repair.
Since the drone was out of control, we will have data analysis team to check the flight data to judge if it's malfunction, if the crash was caused by hardware issue which is within fifteen calendar days of receiving the product, we will help to to replace it,  the turnaround time may be long because of data analysis.
We apologize for the inconvenience that has been caused, hope we can get it sorted out shortly.

Thanks Mindy - yes it was within 15 days so hope for a speedy resolution. Best Gary

garyphayes Posted at 2017-6-9 19:34
Thanks Mindy - yes it was within 15 days so hope for a speedy resolution. Best Gary

DJI Australian logistics team will contact you later.  Thanks for your patience. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.