Hi guys .
Went out flying out , ( no straight , No VLOS, but clear enough ) , Did 26000ft ( One way) then turn around and on the return trip , too much powerful front wind , battery dropped and at around 17% the AC wanted to land itself , no control over , i had the camera down from 28% and was starting to anticipate an emergency safe landing area .
Pushed the bird behind a tree , i guess he dropped/ crashed  ( i was about 4 miles away) .
Got in the car and after a few minutes i found it , it was very foolish to increase the range and bypassing my limits ( i should have grown 1000ft/per flight)
Bird is way better , smoother with the old FW . No damages , full flight on another battery after the crash / recovery.

*** I totally forgot to change my Autoland settings as before , but since i was testing the downgraded Fw , i did not have too.

The trip :
24800ft /58% Batt ... i kept going ( stupid me  )
[size=14.666666984558105px]


26000 started turn around :

[size=14.666666984558105px]

Bird started to land here , I pushed the stick to have it land behind the Tree , not too far from the road
[size=14.666666984558105px]

Then ...disconnected and vanished from all radars .....



This is the sat pic who helped me too ( missing from a line above )

[size=14.666666984558105px]



Got in the car , used the nav to get to the city name /area and used the map to find the tree .
On Long range flights , i always monitor areas i am above in case something happen and i need to get there , great exercise .

Actual tree ( cell pic)
[size=14.666666984558105px]

Where the bird crashed

[size=14.666666984558105px]

To summarize , i should not save been that foolish and trying to increase my 1000ft step progress , because i do 41000ft easily no VLOS / 100% Video Signal and landing with 20 + battery available .
I will redo more testing later , but this Phantom is pretty cool and way much better upgrade over the P3 models ( to my humble opinion)
heard that the Magic Pro is a killer as well , but i like the Phantom look much better .

Very long trip and bird recovered, nice.
What is your firmware on the p4p ? I have too this bird.
Thanks for the sharing.

Xian Onemanshow Posted at 2017-9-11 06:08
To summarize , i should not save been that foolish and trying to increase my 1000ft step progress , because i do 41000ft easily no VLOS / 100% Video Signal and landing with 20 + battery available .
I will redo more testing later , but this Phantom is pretty cool and way much better upgrade over the P3 models ( to my humble opinion)
heard that the Magic Pro is a killer as well , but i like the Phantom look much better .

Wow, it looks like you got lucky, wow

That's some more good range!  All stock?

rookie mistake looks like...  we are all guilty of making them sometimes even the most experienced.. glad you did not truly lose your phantom and you recovered it.    just be mindful of your battery and the wind.  i think a bit laterally/tactically about such things myself.  so if i was fighting a 20mph head wind and it was making my mavic pro struggle a bit on retur like killing battery and lowering her down.  , im not going to fight it..  im going to find a safe spot to land it, pick lesser of the evils..  disable VPS/landing protection and initiate autolanding if im in a field i can access.. and then race up after it..   over water you maybe screwed but thinking laterally maybe get away with putting your bird on a sandbar if its low tide or maybe a barrier island..and snagging a boat or a kayak.. over a city , im thinking finding a church or a cemetery and putting bird there..  just not worth fighting it with weakened battery so far out.

Taking the wind into consideration comes with experience, or you can watch some of the beginners on the internet as they fly out with a stiff tail wind only to realize on the return there return speed is way down and the battery drain is way up. If you watch some of the little mistakes people make on there sUAS on YouTube you can eliminate the most common mistakes people make. Just a note if I wanted to test max distance I would look for a cool windless day, to keep the battery temperature as low as I could and without any wind to increase or decrease my test distance.  If you look you had about 8 mph difference in air speed. I did not look at the return distance left versus time distance to see if you would have made it back had there been no wind. But you could make some ruff calculations if you know wind speed and direction versus your flight path.

Very fortunate that you found, not only a field, but some indentifiable landmark.  It looks like that forest at the top was pretty thick and would have been difficult to locate it, had it gone in those bushes.

First thing I do when and wherever I fly....I take off, climb to 100 feet and put the drone in Atti mode to see which way wind blowing and how fast. With that information I adjust my flight accordingly.

BrianKushner Posted at 2017-9-11 09:20
First thing I do when and wherever I fly....I take off, climb to 100 feet and put the drone in Atti mode to see which way wind blowing and how fast. With that information I adjust my flight accordingly.

That's a good tip Brian!!! Thanks

You are so lucky to retrieve the drone without obvious damage. As discussed above, take care of battery level and performance when you test it.

RMJovo Posted at 2017-9-11 09:07
Taking the wind into consideration comes with experience, or you can watch some of the beginners on the internet as they fly out with a stiff tail wind only to realize on the return there return speed is way down and the battery drain is way up. If you watch some of the little mistakes people make on there sUAS on YouTube you can eliminate the most common mistakes people make. Just a note if I wanted to test max distance I would look for a cool windless day, to keep the battery temperature as low as I could and without any wind to increase or decrease my test distance.  If you look you had about 8 mph difference in air speed. I did not look at the return distance left versus time distance to see if you would have made it back had there been no wind. But you could make some ruff calculations if you know wind speed and direction versus your flight path.

I agree , thanks .

BrianKushner Posted at 2017-9-11 09:20
First thing I do when and wherever I fly....I take off, climb to 100 feet and put the drone in Atti mode to see which way wind blowing and how fast. With that information I adjust my flight accordingly.

Thank you

DJI Susan Posted at 2017-9-11 19:59
You are so lucky to retrieve the drone without obvious damage. As discussed above, take care of battery level and performance when you test it.

Yes i am , thank you for the advice .

plexus Posted at 2017-9-11 06:16
Very long trip and bird recovered, nice.
What is your firmware on the p4p ? I have too this bird.
Thanks for the sharing.

Hi , my A/C  is running 1.03.0509
Thank you for the comment .

ALABAMA Posted at 2017-9-11 07:21
That's some more good range!  All stock?

Antenna booster for keeping video Signal/feed  at all times .

MrRobert5823 Posted at 2017-9-11 09:16
Very fortunate that you found, not only a field, but some indentifiable landmark.  It looks like that forest at the top was pretty thick and would have been difficult to locate it, had it gone in those bushes.

That’s right .

Dirty Bird Posted at 2017-9-12 03:35
Your mistake was flying out with the wind.  Whenever possible ALWAYS begin a long flight INTO the wind.  That way you'll have a bit of a cushion on the return.

True , thank you for the tip .

Xian Onemanshow Posted at 2017-9-12 02:12
Hi , my A/C  is running 1.03.0509
Thank you for the comment .

Hi, what GO4 version are you using? Thank you.

ROBERTO SMERA Posted at 2017-9-12 05:31
Hi, what GO4 version are you using? Thank you.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
Where can I download the firmware 1.03.0509 ???
I dont see it with dji assistant or dji go04? I see only the last xxxxx.602.

I'm new here (in some respect). Question, how did you find the map of your flight path and where it went down? In anticipation of experiencing the same, I would want to prepare myself and the AC for such an event. I read there was software that can be purchased to aid in locating downed drones, is this correct? Are there any tips I need to know to help find lost AC easily?

Hope not too far off topic..

Thanks

pbxcomm Posted at 2017-9-12 06:54
I'm new here (in some respect). Question, how did you find the map of your flight path and where it went down? In anticipation of experiencing the same, I would want to prepare myself and the AC for such an event. I read there was software that can be purchased to aid in locating downed drones, is this correct? Are there any tips I need to know to help find lost AC easily?

Hope not too far off topic..

You can see the flight path by uploading the flight to the DJI cloud server from the app.  Then you can see the latitude and longitude of where your drone is as any particular part of the flight as per my picture above.  

Dirty Bird Posted at 2017-9-12 03:35
Your mistake was flying out with the wind.  Whenever possible ALWAYS begin a long flight INTO the wind.  That way you'll have a bit of a cushion on the return.

Yup with a decent wind on the return leg my Phantom 3 Standard covered the trip home at amazing speeds.  Got to love knowing where the wind is and starting flights into the head winds. Not many safe landing spots in my mountains lol. I was also descending from max height therefore the downward speed on the vertical as well as horizontal speed.

ROBERTO SMERA Posted at 2017-9-12 05:31
Hi, what GO4 version are you using? Thank you.

I run the  4.1.9 ( latest)  i might  try the 4.1.0 for a while .

Xian Onemanshow Posted at 2017-9-11 06:08
To summarize , i should not save been that foolish and trying to increase my 1000ft step progress , because i do 41000ft easily no VLOS / 100% Video Signal and landing with 20 + battery available .
I will redo more testing later , but this Phantom is pretty cool and way much better upgrade over the P3 models ( to my humble opinion)
heard that the Magic Pro is a killer as well , but i like the Phantom look much better .

I am sure the stress of finding your bird was strong. Glad you recovered it. Is the aircraft operational now?

plexus Posted at 2017-9-12 05:41
Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
Where can I download the firmware 1.03.0509 ???

You can not downgrade to an earlier firmware. You should consider refreshing your current firmware.

DJI-Mark Posted at 2017-9-12 08:49
You can not downgrade to an earlier firmware. You should consider refreshing your current firmware.

Hi dji mark,
Thanks for the reply.

pbxcomm Posted at 2017-9-12 06:54
I'm new here (in some respect). Question, how did you find the map of your flight path and where it went down? In anticipation of experiencing the same, I would want to prepare myself and the AC for such an event. I read there was software that can be purchased to aid in locating downed drones, is this correct? Are there any tips I need to know to help find lost AC easily?

Hope not too far off topic..

Easier to replay the flight as well , you have all those infos available
As for my flights i always pick an itinerary than i think i can access , and i put the camera down and record or take pictures of the landing area /spot if i can , on that flight the camera was long  non use to save battery but i was looking at the screen and was paying attention to all details around , next step some time will be a special tracker on it .

How ever i proceed like this , there is also a third option thru Flight logs upload ... too long for me  ( specially in case of emergency out there .

Option 1 :
Access your flight logs and replay the flight ( live) that s what i used for this time ( all pics above from that )



Access your flights record


They wil show here , click on your flight having the ‘’issue’’ and replay it , all telemetry will be available




Option 2 :
use the Find my drone option

Xian Onemanshow Posted at 2017-9-12 08:30
I run the  4.1.9 ( latest)  i might  try the 4.1.0 for a while .

So are you flying your Phantom with the .509 fw and Go 4.1.9 normaly?

Xian Onemanshow Posted at 2017-9-12 01:42
Thank you

A word of caution to my method...The wind can change...so again you might want to do this a few times. I once had 4-5 mph wind, flew several miles out over a bay turned to come back and I have a 112-15 mph wind, barely made it back.

Another thing to have in mind would be that if the connection is lost also would be the location of AC.