My Phantom was flying between waypoints when it suddently fell like a stone. At a minimum I have to replace the camera. At the time of the crash it had 8 satellites and plenty of battery. The motors appeared to be working after the crash (it ended upside-down on the grass). The Phantom seemed to be struggling at the beginning of the mission -- it rotated around the verticle axis for no apparent reason. My only theory at this point is that there might have been unusual wi-fi interference because I was riding in a golf cart which had a metal frame. There was no unusual behavior on the previous flight when I controlled the Phantom manually without a golf car. Am I right to suspect the golf cart?

I doubt if it was the golf cart. At the beginning of the flight you said it rotated around. That could be a ESU exhibiting problems. With one acting up the other three speed up to try and compensate. That can cause her to rotate trying to right herself. Not 100% sure but something to check. To test it pull props and see if all motors start and stop at same time. Then  start the motors up and idle. See if the are spinning about the same. Rev it up to full throttle and see if all motors follow suit. At same time.. Them power off and see if any motor is a lot warmer than the others. Turn motors by hand and see if they all feel the same and have the same resistance. If one exhibits any difference then you may have the culprit. The other probable cause could be the IMU calibration. If you took s hard landing or crash the IMU may need recalibration. Then the last check would be the RC stick calibration being off causing your plane to turn. Teste are just some trouble shooting techniques to help you isolate the problem. Hope they help.

Another waypoint accident!

Lots of folks here dispute this, but waypoint flying IMHO is asking for trouble. This is why they want you to check the disclaimer and why the P3 didn't come with waypoint  - an neither does the new 3DR Solo.

Too long to go into here, but there are reasons....up to pilots, of course, but it makes me unhappy to see so many people crashing.

I fiddled with waypoints quite a bit when I first reviewed the P2 and decided it was not ready for prime time....for various reasons.

It does sound like your machine was messed up - you should have terminated when it did that first vertical run-round. Probably a compass error of sorts.

Did it fall out of the sky angled at high speed with the props spinning or did it just do a vertical drop?

PanamonCreel Posted at 2015-6-11 21:41
Did it fall out of the sky angled at high speed with the props spinning or did it just do a vertical ...

The bird just dropped straight down, vertically. It landed upside down, with the props attempting to spin.

Question: Is there a way, with the Vision 2+ and IOS, to save and retrieve a flight log?

That's a new one. If it dropped straight down and motors were still going it doesn't sound like it lost battery power. Is it possible the throttle was in detent and the Phantom got disconnected from the ground station?. I had a habit when I first started using Ground Station of accidently leaving the Throttle stick in detent and when taking the Phantom out of autonomous mode with the S1 switch, the bird would start dropping like a rock. Luckily I have had plenty of altitude and was able to take the stick out of detent fast enough to recover.

droneflyers.com Posted at 2015-6-11 11:45
Another waypoint accident!

Lots of folks here dispute this, but waypoint flying IMHO is asking for  ...

BS! I don't hear of too many of these. There are lots of particulars for waypoint flying. It's not for the novice.
1. Your home point. You have to make sure your home point is set on the map before initiating the flight. If not, when the Phantom takes off it will seek the home point, then once there it will fly to the first waypoint.
2. Altitude, all waypoints can be set at different altitudes. You have to make sure you have plenty of altitude at all your waypoints otherwise you will end up in trouble. Also you have to consider the terrain. If you are flying form 1 waypoint to another, the terrain at the other waypoint may be at a higher elevation that the previous.
3. Speed. You can set different speeds at different waypoints. You have to consider the total distance and time the route will take and make sure you fly at plenty of speed to make sure you have plenty of battery.
4. Make your first waypoint close to your home point, particularly if there are lots of obstacles between. On mission start the Phantom will take off from home point and travel to the 1st waypoint slowly gaining altitude as it goes. It does not gain altitude from the home point.

Raybro Posted at 2015-6-14 20:36
BS! I don't hear of too many of these. There are lots of particulars for waypoint flying. It's not  ...

Well, you are - in a sense - agreeing with me on this.

"It's not for the novice" covers a very large percentage of Phantom 2 owners.

I did some extensive testing on it - and I have been a "map nut" for 50 years. I have no doubt I could make it work...

I did almost fly it into a hill once on waypoint - and that indicated that the app is not even smart enough to refer to the GPS and maps and barometer to assure that it's doesn't hit something.

To quote you "there are a lot of particulars of waypoint flying".

Where we really disagree is that I think most people who fly waypoints don't consider all of these and may not understand the increased risk.

It wouldn't take much to have a waypoint app that told you "are you sure you want to do this because I show you flying into a hill?" or "I've checked the wind speed at altitude and you will fighting 20 knot winds" - future versions will likely have stuff like this.

droneflyers.com Posted at 2015-6-14 23:54
Well, you are - in a sense - agreeing with me on this.

"It's not for the novice" covers a very la ...

Yeah and we're going to have cars that drive themselves too and don't forget about people on mars! Can't idiot proof everything. As Ray stated, you probably should be fairly proficient with the Phantom before venturing into Ground Station but it's a great feature for those of us that are willing to study and plan. Doing a 50' waypoint flight (unless it's short and in a flat open field) will probably run you into a hill. My last long 15 point flight was done 3 times starting at 250' just to find the right altitude. The second run was at about 150' and the last at 130'. 130' was about the limit that I felt comfortable doing at the time. Maybe you should use some of your "expertise" to help people learn how to do things instead of offering biased opinions because it's something you don't feel skilled enough to explore further. All just my opinion of course.

Jerry

JtrJr-Droner Posted at 2015-6-15 00:13
Yeah and we're going to have cars that drive themselves too and don't forget about people on mars! ...

Jerry and Drone

while using a different way to say it you are both saying the same thing mostly!

Drone isn't saying GS is going to cause a crash or he if "fearful" of doing it. I think he is saying, like you , the many variables and thoughts that are NEEDED to make GS safe are NOT always known about or thought about by many users. Especially new flyers.

I have read able folks setting GS and flying into houses and trees upon take off etc. It not that GS is bad.

It just may be to easy to set up a flight plan to fail and NOT know it.

remember just because you/we/I know something don't mean every flyer does.

Take care , good luck, and have fun flying what ever way works for each!


BTW self driving cars are soon to be in the showrooms.

kirk2579@aol.co Posted at 2015-6-15 03:21
Jerry and Drone

while using a different way to say it you are both saying the same thing mostly!

Kirk,

All good points. My real contention is that these things will obviously occur (cars/mars). It's an evolutionary process. The technology is certainly there for successful GS implementation. When I was in the service back in the 70's we were successfully testing UA jets at a base I won't name here. If we were using military-grade electronics and systems we wouldn't even be having this discussion. As with most any human created product, evolution of the product stems from it's use. In my opinion, a Ground Station System will evolve that's less prone to failure and more user friendly. However, I have seen nothing within these pages that support the idea that GS flying causes more fly-aways or failures as some have stated. Or the idea that flying over water creates some greater risk of failure???

Now I try to be as cautious as I can be but I am well aware that one time my bird probably won't come home. That's the risk I choose to bear in an effort to get the most that I can from this experience. My personal experience with Phantom failures/errors have been 100% when free flying. I have not had a single GS failure (yet). I have had situations where my input was necessary to avert a possible GS failure and I've been able to do so successfully. In the one instance where I had an opportunity to do the same while free flying the craft was unresponsive to my commands (s1 & s2) and crashed. Can't explain it to this very day.  

Two things I just don't like. Kicking a man when he's down, whether due to his own error or not (in this case, the OP) and making claims as if they are fact when there is nothing factual to base the claims on in the first place. There are a few people around here that come across as though they are self-proclaimed "experts", very rarely offering little in the form of actual help. Yet they become very vocal, often in a degrading and offensive manner, when someone (in a stressful situation already) contends that they had a major failure or loss and they don't understand why. I just plain don't like it and I think it's wrong, hurtful and mean. When I see it, I'm going to call it out. Again, just this man's opinion.

I do appreciate your note. Sorry for the lecture. Obviously, most of this isn't directed at you. You just provided me the opportunity to say my piece!

Jerry

JtrJr-Droner Posted at 2015-6-15 04:30
Kirk,

All good points. My real contention is that these things will obviously occur (cars/mars).  ...

fair enough,

for what it is worth I have no fear of GS in and of itself myself!

with that said I do NOT trust our smart batteries enough to fly more than 10-12 minutes mostly.

It s the battery I worry about when on gs route that maybe goes against wind etc .  but you know those things as I do... many do not YET!

I think that maybe our phantoms may be smarter than some users, and that's simply a fact now that they are consumer products---see story about sams stocking drone etc.

Off topic:
how do you like win 10 ? been running for months on a i7 I had , just updated last week to enterprise preview and its been all good for most part.
have set all my house pc's to update when ready, love the price.

kirk2579@aol.co Posted at 2015-6-15 12:54
fair enough,

for what it is worth I have no fear of GS in and of itself myself!

I was on another forum and I thought this might be appropriate to add here,

http://www.phantompilots.com/thr ... our-missions.45033/

kirk2579@aol.co Posted at 2015-6-15 12:54
fair enough,

for what it is worth I have no fear of GS in and of itself myself!

Kirk,

I wrote you a note early this morning (about 2:00am) but by the end of it realized it was way too long so I abandoned it! I seem to be writing blogs instead of posts these days, I probably ought to try to ease up a bit. Your flight times are consistent with mine, I'll stretch to 14 minutes on occasion. I also agree that the battery is the weak link and I typically won't do any GS stuff without having everything fully charged. I'm also with you on the "consumer product" issue. I guess Best Buy is selling the Solo now as well. Say a "first flight" video this morning, at the local playground, kids zooming around, pilot, wife and a kid sitting on the park bench, they all had to duck as it flew over their heads. You can't fix stupid. I must admit, before I started investigating this hobby, that's what I had pictured in my head. Wow, kind of hard to admit!

Off topic:
It's a far cry from 8 or 8.1! I've got the 10 preview running on two of my more powerful pc's. Very stable so far. Got the start button back, kind of. I'm a Win 7 fan, thinks it's the best OS MS has put out. I've been operating a fairly robust home/business network with over 100 devices and Win 7 has been pretty rock solid for years now. Seems like I spend more time trouble shooting routers and VPN's than anything else these days. That will be the true test for me, the networking stability. Obviously, I'm concerned about some of my legacy hardware. The price is great but I'm still waiting for the "catch". MS isn't known for providing things for free! Hopefully, it's truly an attempt to see the err in their ways with the release of "Windows H8" but for some reason I have my doubts. We'll see soon enough, July 29th, so they say!

JtrJr-Droner Posted at 2015-6-15 23:43
Kirk,

I wrote you a note early this morning (about 2:00am) but by the end of it realized it was w ...

While I too am in IT and have similar small network with server etc here I have truly NEVER learned to type...

so I go short and sometimes curt.  ,maybe to short !

I am going with it when it get here. just ordered a ssd drive for this pc to clone before the update.
its older but for 50 bucks the ssd  and win 10 should give it a newer feel  for a while.

JtrJr-Droner Posted at 2015-6-15 23:43
Kirk,

I wrote you a note early this morning (about 2:00am) but by the end of it realized it was w ...

2 am!!

I thought I was the only 60 ish nut up that late.

hec,  my 30 year old neighbor in bed at 9

lol

it must be the IT thing