aburkefl
Second Officer
Flight distance : 78612 ft
United States
Offline
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It is obviously difficult, if not impossible, to identify, investigate and solve any reported fly-away. However...
It's incredible how many stories of these incidents contain contradictions and/or statements that support something other than a fly-away. Like "...I was doing maneuvers..." and proceeds to describe wild stick movements. Or "...I was minding my own biz when my phantom disappeared behind a building....", etc., etc., etc.
I've also seen numerous posts where users run the battery power more or less down to the nub, hit the critical battery level warning (where the phantom immediately starts looking for a place to land) and then panic when the phantom starts either trying to RTH or to land.
When you hit the critical level, your bird may no longer have enough time to climb to the pre-set fail-safe altitude and fly to the correct position, then safely descend on the Home Point.
What else? People flying through steel bridges, around huge metal towers, hi-tension power lines, lose line-of-sight. A moderately common one I've seen several times already - user launches Phantom, climbs up about 100 feet, flies off to one side 20 - 30 feet, hits the RTH button and the phantom promptly descends immediately right where it is, slamming into a tree in the process. User is dumbfounded until arriving here and being informed "...if an RTH condition is encountered and the phantom is less than 65 feet (or is it meters?) away, instead of returning to the home point, it will land immediately."
The list goes on. and on. and on.
Have there really been some legitimate fly-aways? Probably. How many of the fly-aways took place in environments where the manual cautions use - neighborhoods loaded with WiFi signals - near radio/tv towers, near cell towers....blah, blah, blah.
I truly "feel" for those who have lost their Phantoms. Some reasonable caution can go a long way.
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