https://youtube.com/watch?v=8gGHN-DTk-c&feature=share

Has anyone else experienced this or have any idea what would cause this?

sorry to see you lose your drone like that.  maybe you can post in the fpv section where you may get more constructive traffic.  i don't know much about drone issues and the cause of drone crashes and capturing logs etc but whoever sold you those goofy floats, i would have them pay for your drone since those could have contributed to your crash.

i believe you said your drone is covered with insurance; not sure what that is but if it's dji care refresh, i believe the fpv coverage includes flyaway or crashed drones that are not recovered.  honestly i can't believe someone would put those stupid things on their drone, but you do you i suppose.

the drone seems so unstable, maybe because we are looking at the raw footage.  doesn't appear to be that windy.  understandable if you like fpv flying and occasional picture taking but have you thought about a camera drone for just taking pictures and video?
i've had my fpv for 6 months and after more than 100 takes offs, i've never had one that looked like yours else i would have landed immediately especially before going out over water.

Looking at the footage, it appears your second take-off was from the wooden decking. One cause of that sort of behaviour is the influence of iron or steel on the compass during spin-up. I don't know what was under the surface of the deck, but it may have a steel frame. Always void spinning-up on decks and concrete surfaces.

Geebax Posted at 10-28 13:33
Looking at the footage, it appears your second take-off was from the wooden decking. One cause of that sort of behaviour is the influence of iron or steel on the compass during spin-up. I don't know what was under the surface of the deck, but it may have a steel frame. Always void spinning-up on decks and concrete surfaces.

No steel under the deck. The sea wall has some rebar but I don’t think that should be enough to be a problem. Also I flew it many times from same location without a problem. Take off and initial climb was all normal and controllable.  Once it took off though there was no stopping it.

The Saint Posted at 10-28 13:07
sorry to see you lose your drone like that.  maybe you can post in the fpv section where you may get more constructive traffic.  i don't know much about drone issues and the cause of drone crashes and capturing logs etc but whoever sold you those goofy floats, i would have them pay for your drone since those could have contributed to your crash.

i believe you said your drone is covered with insurance; not sure what that is but if it's dji care refresh, i believe the fpv coverage includes flyaway or crashed drones that are not recovered.  honestly i can't believe someone would put those stupid things on their drone, but you do you i suppose.

I know the floats look goofy but they kept the drone from sinking when it ended up in the water. I was able to retrieve it and send it back to DJI. Unfortunately they say they can’t retrieve the flight dada because of water damage. You would think it would save to a solid state chip that would retain data in this situation. The drone is very stable withe the floats and they are mostly out of camera view except when it goes backwards at max speed and the gimbal tries to stay level. Once it started the uncontrollable flyaway there was no way to control it much less land it .  Very frustrating.

Download the flight logs from the goggles to a phone that has the Fly app installed on it. It may take some time for the logs to appear in the Apps flight history.
Once the logs are on the phone find the appropriate .txt flight logs for those flights and upload the .txt flight logs to
https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/upload/
Post the resulting urls here.

The above assumes that the drone is this FPV, https://www.dji.com/uk/dji-fpv/video

With out those logs all that can be offered is speculation.

You gave the drone a yaw error by launching right on top of those steel screws.
Google "yaw error" and find out what causes that.

Those floats are a terrible idea too

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 10-28 14:30
Download the flight logs from the goggles to a phone that has the Fly app installed on it. It may take some time for the logs to appear in the Apps flight history.
Once the logs are on the phone find the appropriate .txt flight logs for those flights and upload the .txt flight logs to
https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/upload/

Thanks. I sort of tried to get it from the goggles but didn’t look like anything was there but with your info I will look again and see what I can find. Thanks much.

It may take sometime for the downloads to the phone to happen, at times it seems a bit "hit and miss" as to whether new flights are downloaded but that may be just my perception.
Just for the record I got what I think are ALL the previous owner's flight logs off the goggles too.
That struck me as a bit odd and 'off' but at least I know how it was flown....

Labroides Posted at 10-28 14:32
You gave the drone a yaw error by launching right on top of those steel screws.
Google "yaw error" and find out what causes that.

It definitely took off in a yaw once it decided to go. I will definitely look into that. Seems dangerous if a few deck screws can cause this though. Also why did it initially fly normally and then take off. The small bungee that I used to help secure the floats did have small metal ends so maybe you are on to something. Flew many times with floats from that deck without a problem tough. Thanks.

Capt H Posted at 10-28 15:27
It definitely took off in a yaw once it decided to go. I will definitely look into that. Seems dangerous if a few deck screws can cause this though. Also why did it initially fly normally and then take off. The small bungee that I used to help secure the floats did have small metal ends so maybe you are on to something. Flew many times with floats from that deck without a problem tough. Thanks.

Also why did it initially fly normally and then take off.
That's what happens in a yaw error.
It's complicated but has been explained many times for other incidents.
A Google search should bring up some results that explain it.
If you can get the recorded flight data, I can point to the confirming details.

Flew many times with floats from that deck without a problem though.
Did you fly from exactly the same position (to within a few milimetres) ?
That's all it takes to set up a yaw error situation.

The small bungee that I used to help secure the floats did have small metal ends so maybe you are on to something.
Steel ends?
That might be another potential cause of the incident.

Capt H Posted at 10-28 14:03
No steel under the deck. The sea wall has some rebar but I don’t think that should be enough to be a problem. Also I flew it many times from same location without a problem. Take off and initial climb was all normal and controllable.  Once it took off though there was no stopping it.

Rebar is the single greatest contrinutor to yaw error.

Labroides Posted at 10-28 16:16
Also why did it initially fly normally and then take off.
That's what happens in a yaw error.
It's complicated but has been explained many times for other incidents.

Wow. Goggled the yaw error as you suggested and this sounds exactly like what happened. I never would have thought common metal objects could have such a catastrophic affect on a drone. Expensive lesson to learn. Seems like DJI should do a better job of warning about this potential problem. Thank you very much for your replies as well as everyone else on this forum that answered up with such useful information.

Hi there. Thank you for reaching out. Our sincere apologies for the incident that happened to your unit.  You can contact our support team to start up a ticket at https://www.dji.com/support . Also, the warranty can be applied depending on the outcome of the damage assessment including the warranty period of your unit. Thank you for your kind and understanding.

Just too many things to go wrong there. Iron in the launch place and floats that disturb the flight profile. Adding them up is a recipe for failure.

Capt H Posted at 10-28 18:56
Wow. Goggled the yaw error as you suggested and this sounds exactly like what happened. I never would have thought common metal objects could have such a catastrophic affect on a drone. Expensive lesson to learn. Seems like DJI should do a better job of warning about this potential problem. Thank you very much for your replies as well as everyone else on this forum that answered up with such useful information.

Whilst magnetic interference does seem a possibility, and may, indeed, be the cause, it would still be beneficial to post the logs for analysis to find out for certain.

DJI Paladin Posted at 10-28 19:30
Hi there. Thank you for reaching out. Our sincere apologies for the incident that happened to your unit.  You can contact our support team to start up a ticket at https://www.dji.com/support . Also, the warranty can be applied depending on the outcome of the damage assessment including the warranty period of your unit. Thank you for your kind and understanding.

Yes I did send it in for analysis and make a claim. Initially they said that without the flight log there was nothing they could do and the flight log was unrecoverable from the water damaged drone. Today I got an email from support with directions on how to get the flight log from the goggles just like another forum member recommended. I will do that as soon as I get home on Thursday. Thank you.

Capt H Posted at 10-29 11:11
Yes I did send it in for analysis and make a claim. Initially they said that without the flight log there was nothing they could do and the flight log was unrecoverable from the water damaged drone. Today I got an email from support with directions on how to get the flight log from the goggles just like another forum member recommended. I will do that as soon as I get home on Thursday. Thank you.

You are most welcome. Kindly please provide our support team with the flight records so they can check the main reason for the issue. Thank you for your kind and understanding.

BTW switch the phone's WIFI OFF BEFORE YOU CONNECT THE PHONE TO THE GOGGLES.
For mine there was an accursed firmware update forced, and I do mean forced, I couldn't see/find any way to bypass the message other accept the update.
It may not matter if DJI replace the drone as you may get the new firmware version on the drone but the update I am thinking about prevents firmware roll backs. It's something like ?.2.015, I can't remember if the "?" is a number.
This may not matter to you if you routinely accept up dates but I simply do not like being forced to perform them.
In typing this post I have thought of a way that I might have been able to bypass the update, disconnect the phone and use another one with the WIFI off but I don't know if, by then, the googles 'knew' of the update and it was to late.

A google would probably yield more information about the update and any subsequent developments.

Just an update-first of all thanks to all that responded to my post with some great information.  After initially being told by DJI that they could not help me because the flight data logs were unretrievable from the drowned drone, I got an email from support with detailed instructions on how to download the flight data from the FPV goggles.  Once I was able to download this data and forward it to support for analysis, I was informed that my drone would be replaced free of charge.  They did not say what caused the flyaway but apparently they agreed that the drone should not have done what it did.  DJI support was very good.  They responded quickly to all my correspondence and were very helpful. I am obviously very happy with the outcome.

Just as a matter of interest can you post the "detailed instructions on how to download the flight data from the FPV goggles" ? Thanks

Also if you post the log here or on Phantomhelp as suggested in post #6 someone here may tell you what went wrong.