I was up in Canada shooting footage for a ski show. Probabaly due to a cell tower near the base of the ski area my quad took off and did not stop at six feet like I usually do as a flight check. Instead I immediatly lost control upon take off and it went up to the 60 feet, hovered for about 30 seconds and then drifted into some Aspen trees and crashed.

I saw where it went in, fell and walked the 80 feet over to my quad but I did not see it. The night before we got about four feet of fresh powder so I looked for entry points. I checked out all the obvious ones and when that failed I got a shovel from the ski partol and dug enlarging the holes by about two feet around. No Luck and I looked around four hours until dark. It was sad because I could see recordings from the flash drive and location from the gps.

At dark through the camera I could see the lights from the led's. It was -10 degrees F and I only had anout 6% battery left. I looked all over for the lights but no flashing and I gave up when the quad's batteries died.

Over the next 7 days we had around 10 different people search the 8 X 10 foot search area for a grand total of about 12 man hours. We even spent about two hours searching with a metal detector to no avail because there were too many hits. I thought it had been sealed into the base of the ski slope by a snow cat. My crew started calling her MH370 after the lost airliner. Never had so many people looked in such a small area for such a relitevly large object.

On the seventh day the snowpack had dropped about two feet in the search area and there was no longer snow in the trees so I knew it was not hung up there. I was able to conduct the search once again by myself with the metal detector. After about two hours I got a good hit at the base of the tree it hit and put a shovel into the snow and saw a camera lens in about a foot of snow. I put down the shovel and saw that I had hit the lens of the camera dead center with the shovel. I took pictures and dug her out.

To make a long post shorter because of travel, work and on purpose I did not start her up for another seven days which is tonight. She seems to be fine but the props are off of her because I am in a hotel room. It will still be another 48 hours until I can fly again.

DJI needs to put a "Find My Quad" feature on their pahntoms. What that would entail is a way to shut the quad's batteries off and on to preserve battery for future search attempts and to be stealth. If your quad is up in a tree in a park the last thing you want to do is leave it flashing for everybody else to find while you drive home to get a sling shot. Another great thing is to make the loud speakers make noise so you can find it by sound.

I think I am going to paint half of my quad a dark color so it will be easier to find in the future.

We got what the shots we needed with a Phantom 2 and had two flyaways with that quad. Nothing like experiencing three total flyaways in seven flights. Both times she went home and landed on the emergency helicopter pad built next to our TV truck which was the first GPS lock. I think that quad thinks it is bigger than she really is or is hoping to grow up ;)

glad you got it back.
is the heli pad made of metal.. if it is cal the compass away from anything metal. locking the gps is fine, but its your compass calibrating that might , and i stress MIGHT be causing your flyaways. keep the quad in flight away from power lines, strong wifi singals etc etc..
no one knows for sure what cause's the flyaways. but contributing factors include , metal structures when calibrating the compass, stong wifi, signal towers, you get the picture.
i would have brought something like an external gps and put it on my quad. i know there not cheap but may save you a few days in locating it the next time. the find my quad feature in the dji app software does work , as long as the battery is on .

I have one of these on mine..   http://www.loc8tor.com/uk/
while not the best out there, if u have line of sight of where it is flying too, this may help in the general direction of where its headed.

happy flying.

The heli pad was made out of snow and is temporary. After the event it was plowed over.

There had to some frequencies somewhere. Some people were saying it could have been the Euro or Russian team radios, I have not researched that possible issue yet. Thanks for the tip whyley, perhaps when I am shooting blind I will put a tile and a loc8tor on her. That with the gps off of the quad itself should help allot even if I have a more sever fly away or crash.