aopisa
Second Officer
Flight distance : 430686 ft
United States
Offline
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Had my first crash today.
Up until now I was borrowing an iPad mini 2 cellular with IOS 8.4.1 and DJI GO 2.2.0. I have had 70+ flawless flights with that combination.
I finally had a chance to get out with my new iPad mini 4 cellular. I took it to my favorite test flight area which is a mostly wide open field of at least 5 acres. Performed all pre-fight checks. I recalibrated the compass prior to this flight as I had some minor drifting issues in the last few flights. After the calibration compass Mod readings were 1496-1502.
The flight with the first battery went well. At 1:05 minutes into the second battery the screen flashed a compass error, the app announced ATTI mode, the aircraft yawed 180 degrees and sped off into the nearby trees. I have some experience with ATTI mode, but everything was happening so fast and the aircraft was pretty much unresponsive to my feeble attempts at control. It crashed into a tree, made a horrible noise, fell about 15 feet, made another horrible noise and came to rest with the motors trying to spin with the Phantom tangled in branches and vines.
After reading many crash stories, I ran to it expecting to see a camera separated form a broken gimbal and several pieces of the aircraft lying about. Instead it was intact! I quickly turned it off and extracted it from the vegetation. Everything looked OK except for a little dirt here and there.
I test flew it for a few minutes after thoroughly inspecting it. It flew fine with the camera and gimbal working as expected.
I cannot explain the reason for the compass error and fly away. The variables that are different from all my other flights are the iPad, IOS and app versions. I did have only 16 satellites where I normally get about 19-20, but I am pretty certain that did not have anything to do with the erratic behavior.
I did luck out this time. I was also lucky that all of this occurred only about 100 feet away from me and 30 feet in the air. Not sure what I should do at this point.
iPAd 64 GB mini 4 cellular
IOS 9.0.2
DJI GO 2.3.0
Phantom 3 Advanced, remote and batteries latest firmware upgrades. |
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