Today I started what I thought was a pretty simple  waypoint flight.  My IPHONE bracket was loose and about 2 minutes in it and the IPHONE swung around under the remote controller.  No big deal as my PS3Standard was "flying" itself in waypoint mode.  Still, as I fumbled around trying to get the IPHONE and bracket back around top, I unknowingly hit and locked the left stick in the down position initiating a rapid descent.  I looked up just in time to see my drone descend out of site behind some homes.
I began to panic but remembered something I read here on the forum.  "If you sense a crash or flyaway, don't panic!!!   Examine the situation and try to figure out what is causing the problem.  I looked at my controller and saw the left stick was locked in the down position!   I immediately (and apparently just in time) thrust it up to initiate a climb.  (I had no other choice as I had lost site of my craft.)
While I know that some flyaways are unrecoverable, i'd bet that some (like my almost crash) can be prevented and recovered if we just remain calm and try to see what is causing the situation.

Very nice recovery...  Very good thinking while in semi-panic. I practice RTH situations myself. I wouldn't have thought to go manual... Hopefully I would still have camera view, and could override RTH with "up right stick" till I regained vison of craft. Then got  visual for home with device display. Cheers....

Nice recovery, and good, quick thinking.

Fortunately, there are near misses. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Wow - great recovery there!

Nice recovery!  Another suggestion though - try not to fly directly over the middle of the road.  If you did happen to crash, you don't want the drone to an oncoming vehicle, which would likely cause a very serious action.  I know the odds are low for something like that on this particular street (which doesn't look too busy), but it is all about mitigating risk!  Well done with the situation at hand though!

Nice recovery! Today I made a terrible mistake. I forgot to kill one of the apps I use to fly my bird and I think it was the culprit behind my crash. I was flying and it seemed to be doing ok. about 4 min into flight it started to just drift on its own in one direction towards this huge tree. I pushed up and went over the tree and circled it around to try and land. got it down to about 15 feet alt. and 25 feet from me, I couldnt stop it from drifting east ,towards this huge tree, so i tried to go over it again and try for another attempt to land. Unfortunatly i smacked right itno the branches. I panicked , I didn't know what to do. I thought here i go again replacing another ECS board. I switched off the remote. I guess it worked cause it didnt hurt anything. I got out of the tree. and calibrated the IMU and took the props off, then turned everything back on all four fired up. I did notice a hair line crack under one of the motors, not that long though about a quarter centimeter. Change of landing and taking off location indeed. I still got to go over the flight data. I didnt get no messages, of course it happened so fast. I thought only if i just went back farther i would been able to just snatch it out of the air if it was low enough. I havnt  flew it again yet, hopefully everything is ok.

Excellent job...you've learned a valuable lesson in aviation and provided an example for others; panicking never (if very very rarely) solved a problem.  Most people marvel at cockpit voice recordings that show the pilot(s) sounding calm all the way to the end, because they know what you now know, you have all the way till the end to try and solve the problem.  Spending time, energy, and effort throwing one's hands up and screaming like a little girl may make for great theater but it wont stop or resolve a darn thing.
Aviate - Fly the aircraft
Navigate - Fly the aircraft where it needs to go
Communicate - talk to others or yourself about the situation and what needs to be done to resolve it
ALL meaning the first priority is to fly the aircraft...in an emergency the first thing after maintaining aircraft control is to analyze the situation, which is what you did.  Then apply the correct procedures or control inputs to begin the recovery, you did.  Then finish the recovery with a safe return and apply any other procedures to ensure that result, which again you did...bravo!

HELL OF A RECOVERY!!!  Great job not to panic ... hats off to you!

Nice save!  I fly down the middle of my road too, to avoid the irate negihbor who threatens me when I fly too close to her home ;)

When I first started in RC flight the guy who was teaching me always told me to fly the plane to the point of impact, at first I never knew why he said it or if it was really a thing! After a few crashes the penny dropped and I fully understood what he meant as I also had a few near earth encounters that I managed to avoid by flying the plane rather than panicking or just watching it plummet. Great save and glad yours was just near earth experience rather than a clean up.

Fantastic !!

if you didn`t say anythnig but show the video, no one would think of possbile disaster...
it looks normal, no sudden turns or fliping ...

but does anybody switch mobile phone to "airplane mode", just in case somebody calls in the middle of flying??

No, but I think I will from now on....thx for the advice!