anyone know what caused this? did the compass calibration slowly in a wide open area, flew around and started coming down at 40% battery and all of a sudden it launches nearly 50 feet to my left, loses tons of altitude goes out of sight and almost caused my phantom to be obliterated on a tree. checked immediately and i had 11 satellites, no wind, nothing.

had my right hand in my pocket so me hitting the stick  for horizontal movement is out of the question, so was it prop wash? i have flown quite a few RC helicopters and came down at full speed with them which must be at least triple what the phantom can do after the firmware update with no problems, and although they are harder to use at least they always do what the user tells them to.. starting to think im not going to use GPS mode when flying my phantom. if anyone has tips on what i can do to avoid what just happened please let me know.

landed it safely but im starting to feel i cant fly this with any sort of objects anywhere near me now. cant see it being my fault as i have experience with many RC copters

No clue, any other condition details or anything else you can share? What mode were you in? And no one is pointing fault, I would ask why you did not have both hands on the wheel though?

Northofthe49th Posted at 2015-3-16 07:20
No clue, any other condition details or anything else you can share? What mode were you in? And no o ...

was in phantom mode, toggle fully up for GPS, hand wasnt on the controller cause it didnt need to be i guess, it was in a wide clearing. it didnt respond for multiple seconds after i held the stick backwards in my direction anyway (nose was facing away from myself)

anyway i contacted dji, see what they say. what happened to it was terrible and it shouldnt do that on its own.. its liable to cause damage.

Talinthis Posted at 2015-3-16 07:30
was in phantom mode, toggle fully up for GPS, hand wasnt on the controller cause it didnt need to b ...

How high were you and did you have prop guards on?
I have flown with prop guards nearly 40 flights from some fairly high altitudes with some wind and with no issues myself.
We're you coming straight down? I can only presume so as you had one hand off the RC and sounds like you locked it in the down position!, if you had prop guards and you were on a straight descent with the controller locked without any movement in any other direction you certainly could have encountered the dreaded VRS..I myself have not as I usually move it around a bit when descending from fairly high altitudes.

Northofthe49th Posted at 2015-3-16 08:37
How high were you and did you have prop guards on?
I have flown with prop guards nearly 40 flights  ...

I like the lock feature for descent, but like you, plan for a left to right/right to left or front to back/back to front descent, anything but straight down.