Yug Posted at 2015-4-22 10:58
Your mind is not in the gutter like mine sorry.

Yug

I knew what you meant,   but I didn't want the "you know who" to get excited.

At times, especially for the novice user, it is difficult to assess the reliability of the information you're reading.  Unless you've been reading the forum for some time you have no way to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.  Sometimes you can look at the number of "credits" a user has as a measure of their online expertise.  

And sometimes you can't.

Not when they frequently change their username and profile picture.
Not when they like to use emotionally charged, inflamitory and downright insulting words and phrases.
Not when the majority of those credits are from the vast number of incessant rants simply because somebody has a different perspective.  
Not when what little they actually add in the way of anything constructive or in helping other members is tainted by immature behaviour and low impulse control.   

Considering the number of personal attacks directed to Tahoe_ed and others I am bewildered how he has managed to not get himself banned.  All they've ever asked is for you to be respectful and you start a poll "Who thinks this forum is poorly managed by moderators?"  Well guy, would YOU like to see a poll with your name one it?  "Edited for content TE?" (well, of course you would change your user name again in an attempt to disguise yourself)  

Well now, after reading all the bile dispensed in todays thread and that last thread that went on for over 200 responses - VERY UPSET!!! - I'm going to call you on your "Edited for content TE".  

At the risk of being banned myself, you guymacdonald, are a "Edited for content TE".

Please, sell your Phantom like you have threatened to do and find a different forum to darken.

But we all know you're never going to do that, you're just going fire up your self-indignant  rage and sling all the "Edited for content TE" you want.


Me?  I'm just going to go off and contemplate my navel.  Fire away, oooooommmmmmmmmm....

Shazam!

hypocrite

(1) A person who engages in the same behaviors he condemns others for.
(2) A person who professes certain ideals, but fails to live up to them.
(3) A person who holds other people to higher standards than he holds himself.

BTW you missed one (at least) out

j.blankvoort@kp Posted at 2015-1-4 20:41
2014-12-29 01:36
Today my Phantom Vision 2 + crashed.
I was normally flying it, in nice weather (bit ...

Looks like VRS to me.. Bringing down to fast, got caught up in prop wash and fell.. Bring down slow at angle.. I learned that lesson also, but mine wasnt high up and was cushioned by tree branch.

Tahoe_Ed Posted at 2015-4-22 08:35
Ok, props come off in flight because users don't tighten them down.  I fly more than most and have n ...

On the props deal.. When they say there "self tightening" people take it that way. and assume thats what it does when motors are running. Maybie you should rule out the "stupid" by changing the wording and adding a "disclaimer". That has not happened to me yet. But I do check the props before lift off.

Tahoe_Ed Posted at 2015-4-22 08:35
Ok, props come off in flight because users don't tighten them down.  I fly more than most and have n ...

Hi Tahoe_Ed,

This is my first post,

I am new to drones and have done extensive research regarding which one to purchase. The new Phantom 3 seems like a viable option for my needs and price. I'm aware of pilot errors and Vortex Ring States. But these videos & complaints make me quite nervous about investing in DJI. Is this a common occurrence? If I do choose to go with DJI I will be buying it from Irelands only Official DJI dealer. After regular practice and familiarisation I will be a RPAS Course. So what steps can I take to prevent such loss of communication with the drone and can you recommend a flight data recorder? I shall be using a ground stationary camera to video the footage of each flight along with the onboard video recorder. Would this be sufficient evidence if such a fault occurred, in order to get a replacement or a fix under the guarantee?

Kind Regards,

Richie...

inceptionbeatz. Posted at 2015-4-25 05:28
Hi Tahoe_Ed,

This is my first post,

Richie,

You have to take what you read on the forum with a grain of salt.  People don't come here often and say what great experiences that they have had.  People come here with problems.  If you look at the number of "fly aways" compared to the total number of Phantoms in the market, it is a very small percentage.  Of those many are caused by new pilots that do not understand what they are flying.  They get disoriented and it just "flew away".  Now are there some unexplained crashes, sure.  This is not military grade equipment.  There will be a small percentage of failures over time.  It happens, it is unfortunate when it happens to you.  My suggestion is to read the manual several times, take it slowly, do not fly beyond your abilities.  Learn how to fly in all orientations and also in ATTI mode.  GPS is great but you need to learn how to handle the P3 if you loose GPS lock.  If you take your time you should not have any issues.  Have fun and welcome to the sport.

inceptionbeatz. Posted at 2015-4-25 05:28
Hi Tahoe_Ed,

This is my first post,

Richie, I came here to get more knowledge about my Phantom 2. I did not want to see my $2000 investment fly off into no where, or end up falling out of the sky. There are posts about those problems but there are also many posts about the fun people are having with them. It is an expensive hobby. Read everything you can, visit here often, follow strict guidelines before every flight. So far all my flights have been successful and I have gotten some great videos. Good luck. I think the Phantom 3 is going to be a good bird. Hopefully they have improved from previous versions. There are other manufacturers out there as well. I am keeping my eye on 3DR and the Phantom 3 as well.

Tahoe_Ed Posted at 2015-4-25 08:58
Richie,

You have to take what you read on the forum with a grain of salt.  People don't come here ...

Thanks for the reply, all seems logical to me. I have a cottage in the countryside with acres of clear terrain, so that'll be my flyzone for quite a while till I get 100% comfortable in all scenarios. Common Sense does go a long way, I mean you don't jump into the deep end without knowing how to swim.

Raybro Posted at 2015-4-25 10:03
Richie, I came here to get more knowledge about my Phantom 2. I did not want to see my $2000 inves ...

Thanks for the advice pal. I've been watching ton's of videos on how to avoid "flyaways" and "VRS" and people seem to be making the same mistakes all the time. It is expensive and you should treat flying with as much caution as with driving a car. I mean there's plenty of car crash video's online and you don't hear it was the manufactures fault but the driver. So safety first, I may invest in a carbon fibre guard too for the bottom to increase protection on the camera and gimbal.

Tahoe_Ed Posted at 2015-4-22 08:35
Ok, props come off in flight because users don't tighten them down.  I fly more than most and have n ...

Ed,

I appreciate your presence here. Having done medical imaging service (CT, MRI, Xray) for more than 30 years, I have an idea what you are up against. You didn't have to come here, and I respect you for doing so.

Here are the facts of my flyaway:
http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?m ... age%3D1&lang=en

I don't think I meet the profile you outline of the typical user not doing research, reading the manual, or becoming familiar with the software. With all due respect, I did add a video transmitter, and iOSD. I wish I had pictures to show how clean and well done the modifications were, but just take my word, they were well done.

So I was still in phantom mode, and I had programmed the right hand switch to go to failsafe if all the way down. I had put it in naza mode with the assistant software, just to check the options available, but felt it would be risky to use until I was more experienced.

At the end of the day, I can say that the phantom obviously did not perform to specification. I know I had 12 sats, (overlay from the iOSD) and home lock, (flashing green lights before takeoff). So with the phantom 60 meters up, and 50 meters downrange, it should have easily flown back to me if communication was lost, or if I switch to failsafe, or shut my receiver off, which is what I did, in that order, only after it was obvious that I had no control. What happened was, it took off due south, at a high rate of speed. All I could do was watch it fly out of sight. I am sure it will not be recovered at this point.

As I have posted, I understand accepting risk. I dive rebreathers where if something goes wrong I stand to lose much more than I lost this past Thursday. Having said this, the feeling this left me with, along with watching my son cry his eyes out, is just too much risk vs reward. Don't get me wrong, the reward side is great. And if someone could tell me something that I did that had a high likelihood of causing this problem that I could correct, it would be different. But so far, all I have are examples of things I could have done differently, that would help me find it today. This is not something I would like to go through again.

Again, my sincere thanks. I know in the business world it has to always be about the bottom line, but having gone through this, I believe there is a serious issue here with this product.

dmiles Posted at 2015-4-26 00:41
Ed,

I appreciate your presence here. Having done medical imaging service (CT, MRI, Xray) for more ...

Dmiles,  have flown Phantoms for some time.  None of them have flown away or had any uncontrolled actions.  Have you reported this to DJI?  If so what was the ticket number.  I will try to assist you.  Failures do happen, that is the nature of tech.  

Tahoe_Ed Posted at 2015-4-26 03:49
Dmiles,  have flown Phantoms for some time.  None of them have flown away or had any uncontrolled  ...

Ed,

Although I've only flown phantoms for a short time, I have a lot of RC flying experience. In my 20+ flights prior to Thursday, I never had a hint of an issue with control. frankly compared to flights I had done previously, this was literally a walk in the park. That's why this was so unexpected.

I didn't report it because frankly from what I have read, I didn't expect much support. I also don't know how to report it. I have found the web site rather difficult to navigate regarding things like registering equipment, or reporting issues.

If you could be kind enough to advise me on how I should proceed, I would be glad to provide whatever information I can. I would be willing to share with the community any experiences regarding whatever support I do receive in a fair and reasonable manner.

Again, a sincere thank you for your support in this forum. Trust me, I know how difficult it can be.

dmiles Posted at 2015-4-26 09:43
Ed,

Although I've only flown phantoms for a short time, I have a lot of RC flying experience. In  ...

I responded on the original thread.

Tahoe_Ed Posted at 2015-4-26 12:18
I responded on the original thread.

Try wrapping the prop shaft with 1 wrap of pipe tape,  the white stuff you wrap pipe threads to prevent leaking.  It provides enough friction to keep the props on and easy enough to get off without using the wrench.  Sometimes simple things work a lot better than hi tech stuff.

PS, some of us are having trouble posting pics or charts,  it says they are to big, when a  few days ago, the same pics would be attached just fine.

Gerry1124 Posted at 2015-4-26 12:25
Try wrapping the prop shaft with 1 wrap of pipe tape,  the white stuff you wrap pipe threads to pr ...

It's called PTFE tape

I got my Phantom 2 vision plus  in jan. Started slow and easy. Im 59. not some stupid young kid. I have flown RC aircraft my whole life. I Had 18 perfect flights. Took some great video. Calibrated my compass every flight. Went to video the river near my home yesterday. Was going to be a beautiful flight. Went up about 25 feet and out about 30 feet and flew up the center of the river about 100 yards. Tried to stop and turn around and it started drifting away. No left control, no right control, as it drifted it started going right, i had about 20 feet before i lost site of it.I Flipped  the home lock switch down to no avail, even tried to gain altitude, nothing. Heard it hit, had to swim across a damn cold river to look for it, with a friend. looked for 3 hours. cant find it. heading out in an hour to continue the search. Im sick to my stomach. I had read so many stories about this but chose to believe it was all stupid pilots. Maybe it is and I am? What an expensive lesson.

I gotta chime in, DJI did right by me.  17th flight I was about to land as battery was very low.  Landing point was different than take off point.  While focusing on Phantom hovering a foot above ground about to land, it suddenly shot up and flew over house before skimming tree tops and crashing.  Sent it to DJI, and they repaired it under warranty after providing them video, my extensive and meticulous flight logs, and explained what happened.....What i THINK happened was the bird entered return to home mode, but since I was focusing on the bird, not my Ipad screen, I missed the message.  I have seen this message before, and would have been able to abort return to home and just landed had I known this message was on screen.  An audible prompt alerting return to home is about to initiate would be useful here, even a count down.

Got bird repaired by DJI and did not have telemetry afterwards.  Discovered loose plug causing issue not properly seated during repair.  Plug came loose during test flight and lost telemetry, causing crash into treetops as I lost altitude info.  DJI fixed it again based on this and I will have it back on Tue.  THAT is good customer support.

i got problems and flyaways after IMU calibration...

now i m trying to get a good imu calibration but it's really hard...

i think dji shoud make more attention about thatthe imu problem caused the destruction of camera and gimbal of my vision plus

j.blankvoort@kp Posted at 2015-1-4 20:41
2014-12-29 01:36
Today my Phantom Vision 2 + crashed.
I was normally flying it, in nice weather (bit ...

Sorry to hear that.

Are you recording video while the accident happening? If the video file is corrupted, you can try to repairing it by referring the following link:
http://live555.com/drones/DJI-Phantom-2-Vision+-video-fix/

The video file could be a strong evidence while dealing with DJI.

You can add my drone to the growing list of crashed drones. Actually this is the second crash; first was a battery communications failure where within 3' of landing the screen blacked out and read 'battery communications failure' before suddenly shooting 20' to the left, climbed 20' then turned off the motors and smash.

This time it lost all controls except power. I am very diligent in the start-up procedure, I had 8 satalites and had the copter in atti mode. My only choice was to bring it down hard before it hit the house. It couldn't have been more then 50' away at the time and I had clear line of sight so interference is not the issue. I had all firmware and updates installed. The wind was minimal... Thankfully the power still worked and I was able to get a controlled hard landing and keep the damage to 2 broken prop's, a few scuffed up parts and dirt and debris blown into all the openings and camera housing.

I have very little confidence in this quadcopter at the moment. I got a glitch within the first 30 flights and then another in the following 5 flights... I have contacted DJI but heard nothing. I guess my options are; to consider the $1200 rendered useless or fly it again and wait for a larger wreck (if it is recoverable...) and then force DJI to address the glitching...

I always knew this amounted to beta testing but with the cost and the frequency of glitches, DJI had best stand behind their products before GoPro (and the numberous other drone manufactures) gets their drone up and running and their customers flock elsewhere.

Mike