I got the first of several Phantoms in October of 2015, and have many hundreds of hours of trouble free flight on them all, with only a couple of minor exceptions. I sometimes get asked to fly in a specific area to locate something. The area of interest today was the north west couple of square miles of a valley that is mostly pretty flat, with no high obstacles to speak of except the bordering mountains. The object of interest was potential firewood. I was looking for trees that were already down that could be accessed without too much trouble. I knew that it is hard to spot such things if you are too high up, so I planned to keep it reasonably close to the ground. As I mentioned earlier, the place is mostly flat, but rises gently to the foot of the mountain, then steeply at the mountain. In fact, we call it “ The Flats”. It was mid day, and I was wearing goggles. Winds were light, and since I have flown this area often, I was not expecting any surprises. This was the first link in the chain of events that led to a crash. The next was my choice of starting point with respect to terrain features. The home point was far too close to the mountain. I wanted to cover from the foot of the mountain out into the larger section of the grid so as to avoid places you could not drive to easily. Wearing the goggles is great for this kind of thing, as long as you maintain situational awareness. It is properly, and legally, done with a spotter, which, sadly, I did not have, and did not think I would need. It was a routine mission, and I thought I would be home by late afternoon at worst.
I launched the Phantom and headed for the start of the “search grid”. That is my grand and generous term for what was really a seat of the pants flight. Mission planning was minimal. Clear sky, light winds, you could see forever, lets go. The mountain, as with most mountains, did not run in a straight line. It was necessary, if I wanted to stay true to my intent to cover the area completely, that the first leg of the flight change course often by a few degrees at a time. And even though the area is flat, it does have a gentle rise to the base of the mountain that is hardly noticeable visually, but very real. As I flew along, I tried to stay roughly at the same height AGL. I have Litchi set to read flight telemetry out loud every 90 seconds; distance, altitude, speed, battery life, etc. Flying along the base, I soon lost line of sight to the aircraft, and with it, the signal. I took off running for a location further out to try and recover. And I did briefly recover the signal. Just in time to hear the most critical data, which was altitude. I normally have the RTH altitude set at 400 feet, for a variety of reasons related to where I usually fly. But today, because of my last flight, RTH altitude was set to 98 feet. Not having done a proper preflight or plan, I forgot that bit of info. About the time I heard that altitude read out, which was 203 feet, I started to see the glimmer of a problem. That gentle rise had caused me to gain a lot more altitude than I thought. As you will probably recall, the aircraft was RTH because of lost signal. Being a Phantom 3 Advanced, it has no obstacle avoidance. Being above programmed RTH altitude, it stayed there and did exactly as it was programmed to do,
I can not stress this enough; the Phantom performed absolutely flawlessly. At this point, I have enough experience to know what it will do under a given set of circumstances. Had I spent just a few minutes thinking about the flight, I would have seen the potential for trouble and would have made corrections before takeoff. Today, overconfidence was the direct cause of the crash.. Poor choice of starting location, desire to adhere to my self imposed plan for the flight without benefit of thought, neglecting to do a proper preflight and verification of RTH parameters among the many other things that need to be verified were the only reasons for the incident. The Phantom was as perfect as always.
The crash looks quite violent. I had no idea what condition the aircraft would be in, but now and then I would regain the signal as I moved towards the crash location, so I knew the camera still worked, and that the Phantom was able to send and receive data to the R/C. Something I forgot to mention earlier was that I had not downloaded a map of the area before the flight, and was unable to do so now because no cellular signal is or has ever been available there. I used the radar display for my initial search efforts, but soon realized that was not going to work. I decided to head for home and the internet, so I could download the map, get the GPS coordinates from the log and pinpoint the aircraft before going out on the search and recovery again. It was by now getting on in the day, so I was feeling pressed for time. I wanted to recover the Phantom and be home before dark. I jetted back to the area that was the closest point I could drive too, got out of the truck and started for the mountain, with my faithful dog tagging along. She would come to regret that. I had a screen shot from Google Earth on the device with the gps numbers and a pinpoint location on it. It appeared to be a couple of hundred feet up the side of a pretty steep slope that was strewn with lots of loose rock and scrub brush. I guess the slope was more than 45 degrees most of the way. It was a tough hike, made the more so because the Earth is not 2 dimensional. A lot of back and forth, aborted course choices, and other annoying bits of misadventure kept getting in the way of a quick and efficient recovery. When I was surely within 50 feet of the aircraft, the battery on my device died. I was on the side of the mountain, clinging to a spindly bush with loose rock sliding out from under my feet and realizing the sun would soon be gone. This is no place for a night hike. I had only very little water, and my dog was starting to get annoyed with me because of the lacunae in procedure. Dogs are real sticklers for procedures and schedules. I imagine she was thinking, where was dinner and a drink? Regretfully, I decided to let the Phantom camp out on the mountain by itself for the night.
I headed out at first light, full charge on the device and, being optimistic, I had my hard case backpack with spare props and batteries inside. And my poor dog elected to come along as well. Ha! Fool. To make a long story shorter, I found the Phantom after a reasonable amount of effort and sweat was expelled. I only had my whole life flash before my eyes a few times before I was able to arrest my fall with a handy bush or rock. I realized that I had come within about 20 feet of it on both previous attempts. I knew that because of the footprints all over the place. My footprints, along with my dogs. But even with the gps readout, I still was not able to see it until I was 5 feet above it, because it was wedged on its side between a dead tree and the ground. I would have never found it without the gps.
We made our way back to the truck, which I had borrowed from a friend, as my car is not suitable for extreme off road activity. Did I mention, this truck has no reverse gear? Or parking brake? I probably did not mention it because I did not know of it until it became painfully obvious. I got stuck, badly. High centered on the universal and not a tool or jack or shovel in the vehicle. Please allow my use of the phrase “ damned vehicle “ here. It is quite justified and apt. Restrained, even.. So, already weary from the previous days events, plus the strenuous hike up and back from the location of the drone, for basically the third round trip, I set out on foot, once again with faithful hound trailing along, whining the whole way. About 3 miles later, a friend loaned me a shovel, but she was elderly and has a disease which is fairly debilitating, so I did not ask her for any more assistance. I did get water for the dog and myself, thankfully. We hiked back and I dug out of the mess we were in and returned home after first completing the mission with the Phantom, having only had to replace one single prop to repair the damage. That was truly the most amazing part of the whole story. Dji has done an incredible job of building this product. The only issue I noticed was that the distance to the aircraft was reported at being around 2000 feet even though I was within 20 feet of the craft several times. It never reported less than 1900 or so feet until I recovered it, though the battery was still on for quite a while after the crash, with the motors off. So I had sporadic contact with the aircraft during the initial search. I attribute this to the extreme angle that Phantom was at on the ground, along with the terrain. Pine needles and such are very hard on radio waves at any time, not to mention trees and rocks and mountains in general. On the flight after the crash, everything was back to normal with no ill effects aside from that one prop..
I leave it to the readers to point out my many errors in this mishap. Having been a member of this board for quite a while, I know that not many here are shy about doing so. I am hopeful that my humiliation will serve as a bad example for others to not follow.
Happy flying.
Hello there Kneepuck. I am sorry to read and to watch what happened to your DJI Phantom 3 Advanced and thank you for reaching out. Since this unfortunate event happened on your DJI Drone. I would recommend you to contact our DJI support team at https://www.dji.com/support?site=brandsite&from=nav for further assistance. We will do there best to help you and give out the best resolution for this issue. Thank you.
I read every word but agree, it could definitely be shortened
If that video is what you saw in the goggles, surprised you couldn't see that you were flying into the hillside??
Labroides Posted at 9-12 22:05
How about editing that opus to explain what happened in just a couple of short paragraphs.
Paragraphs ... looks like you don't know about them?
May I ask, have you modified your P3A so that you can use goggles with it? Mind you, after your experience I'd be reluctant to use them as you appear to lose all perspective!
I believe one has to add an HDMI port in place of the normal USB.
Wow! So good to hear from you again! Another one of your classic flights. I remember that time, way back when, that you almost got split in half by a phone (or electric) cable. Those were the days.
Good to see you got your bird back in good shape. Our Phantom list has really declined since the Mavics were introduced. Looking forward to more flights and better situations.
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