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On Friday may 1st I was going to fly my Phantom 2 visionplus over the Smith River in Northern Calif.This would have been my 19th flight with my Phantom that I had for 3 months. I had taken some great videos and was getting more confident with my Phantom. Everything looked normal, set up and pre flight was normal. Compass calibration was normal. I took off from the road side which is about 25 feet higher than the river, flew out tothe center of the river and dropped down to about 20 feet. Everything was perfect.I then started flying up the river slowly. I got about 150 feet away and made a slight right turn, then went about another 25 feet. At this point I released control to come to a hover ,but the phantom continued forward and to the right.There was a rock outcropping on the other side of the river where I was heading and I had to act fast. I tried to move left but nothing changed, I flipped thes2 switch to home lock and tried to bring it back to me, again nothing, at thispoint I lost sight of it so I tried to gain altitude. Nothing, so I turned off my controller. I never saw it again and could swear I heard it hit, even though it was a long way off. I rushed home,about 7 miles away to get my wet suit and ask a friend to go with me. We were back at the river within an hour. I swam across very cold water and searched the other side for 3 hours, never seeing anything. I went back every day for 7days, 3 hours a day, snorkeled the river, scuba dived below the last spot I sawit. Nothing! After7 days ,a bad case of poison oak and total exhaustion, I took a few days off. Every night I went to bed and woke every morning wondering where the heck it was? I looked at the "find my Phantom" app on my phone and it showed " home" as 20 miles away? So did it try and go back there? If it did it was on the side of a steep 500 foot mountain. Did it crash? Exactly 2 weeks to the day afterI lost it, I was on face book and saw a message from someone I didn't know. It said "call my dad he found your drone" ! I thought someone was messing with me. I called the number, and was shocked to hear that someone was traveling through, stopped by the road side, looked down and saw my drone. It had somehow flown up and back across the river? He had to have found it during the hour I was preparing to go back and look that first day! He's going to send it to me, I guess it is damaged. I cant wait to see it again, something I never thought I would do.The guy that found it is a pilot and the same age as me ,59 and lives 400 miles away. Im lucky.
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lvl.3
Second Officer
