Hey everyone,

Hoping to gain some clarity on a rather odd occurance I had recently with 2 completely seperate PH4 RTKs on a job.

May 13th Flight - Finishing the 4th mission of a mapping grid and on RTH the drone drops out of the sky at about 11m and 18% battery. No indication in the logs as to what happened that I can see.
Air data link:
https://app.airdata.com/share/dQHQvh

May 16th Flight - New drone right out of the box from DJI shipped up to the site. 4min 12s into flight 1 it drops out of the sky at 122m at 81% battery. Again the log looks the same with no clues that I can see.
Air data link:
https://app.airdata.com/share/haRifb

Additional info:
- No personal injury as we do not fly over people with these units
- 2 completely different units. Second one was 1st flight out of the box.
- Pilot calibrated compass properly before the flights
- Batteries were different
- Base station & transmitter were the same
- The area is a goldmine
- 2 crash locations were about 382m apart

Haven't been able to figure this out yet but looking into interference or jamming possibilities.
I just don't see how this wouldn't trigger RTH or at worst case Emergency Decent rather than a complete blackout.
Trying to figure out how the geographical location could be the cause, gold interference seems a bit of a stretch.

Have been using these rigs with only minor issues since they came out but this is causing a whole new level of distrust.

Any theories or suggestions are very welcome! Hope at least to raise awareness that this type of thing can happen with these things and hopefully find a cause.

DJI aircraft do not drop out of the sky because of interference, and there is no convincing proof that jamming makes them do it either. There are a few video clips around showing jamming devices alledgedly making them land, but these video clips could very well have been faked for the purpose of promoting the devices. In any event, the aircraft did not fall, they landed.

The most likely culprit is these cases is the battery itself, as the P4 aircraft in general have had issues with poor connector contact. Examine the socket inside the aircraft and also the sockets on the batteries themselves to see if there is any evidence of the plastic melting on the connectors.

The airdate logs are not ideal for diagnosis of issues, if you can upload the files at this link: https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/ and come back and publish a link to the resultant file. Then members of the forum can take a look and see what they show.

On a final note, gold does not cause any sort of interference unfortunately, but if it did, I would certainly not be telling anyone where you were flying :-)

Geebax Posted at 6-18 20:12
DJI aircraft do not drop out of the sky because of interference, and there is no convincing proof that jamming makes them do it either. There are a few video clips around showing jamming devices alledgedly making them land, but these video clips could very well have been faked for the purpose of promoting the devices. In any event, the aircraft did not fall, they landed.

The most likely culprit is these cases is the battery itself, as the P4 aircraft in general have had issues with poor connector contact. Examine the socket inside the aircraft and also the sockets on the batteries themselves to see if there is any evidence of the plastic melting on the connectors.

Thanks for the reply I will upload and post links.

The fact that 2 different drones and 2 different batteries that were inserted correctly would disconnect 400m apart, back to back flights is just as likely to me as gold interference lol but yes it is just as possible as anything else at this point (besides gold :p) Batteries and terminals were inspected with nothing out of the ordinary both times.

DJI-GUY Posted at 6-18 20:24
Thanks for the reply I will upload and post links.

The fact that 2 different drones and 2 different batteries that were inserted correctly would disconnect 400m apart, back to back flights is just as likely to me as gold interference lol but yes it is just as possible as anything else at this point (besides gold :p) Batteries and terminals were inspected with nothing out of the ordinary both times.

OK, lets see if the logs show anything.

Haven't been able to figure this out yet but looking into interference or jamming possibilities.
I just don't see how this wouldn't trigger RTH or at worst case Emergency Decent rather than a complete blackout.
Interference or jamming (which almost never happens) would, at worst, only initiate RTH.


Trying to figure out how the geographical location could be the cause, gold interference seems a bit of a stretch.
The simple answer is that short of an angry landowner with a gun, there's nothing about a geographical location that would cause a drone to fall from the air.
Even inches away from the drone, gold would have no effect on the drone.
In the ground, the effect would be even less.

Any theories or suggestions are very welcome! Hope at least to raise awareness that this type of thing can happen with these things and hopefully find a cause.
The usual causes of fall-from-the-sky incidents are incorrectly clipped in batteries or catastrophic hardware or battery failures.
Cell voltages were more than adequate at the end of each flight, so partially discharged batteries were not the cause.

In the earlier flight, as the drone descended, the pilot made a sudden full stick move with the right stick for 1.5 seconds just before the end of the flight data.
That caused the drone to pitch hard forward and then hard backwards.
If the battery was not properly latched, it's possible that could have caused the battery to disconnect.
Not definite, but possible.

In the second flight, there's nothing in the data to suggest anything.
The data just stops with the drone in smooth, stable flight.

There's nothing to link the two incidents.
It looks like a very rare coincidence of bad luck.


DJI may be able to dig deeper with the internal flighty data recorders if the drones were sent back to them.

Please accept my condolence for bad accident. I hope you find main reason.
It would be great to share your experiences with us in order to prevent more crash.