I took the Phantom 4 out to Glenariff Forest Park in Ireland and Made my way to a Mountain top. I flew approx. 300 feet above the valley below, done a 360 rotation and then then switched to Home lock in the intelligent menu then throttled back towards me. All of a sudden “signal lost” and off I watch my little Phantom 4 head to the next Mountain until I could see it no more. I waited 10 minutes on the Return to Home failsafe to kick in but it was clear it was not going to happen. Then the fun part I climbed down the valley found a way across the river and proceeded up the next mountain following a straight line as shown on the DJI GO app. I kept going in a straight line beyond the last point marked on the map only to find my phantom 4 about 0.5 Kilometres past that location last shown in a bush. Thankfully no visible damage to the unit.

  

1st question is what went wrong?

  

When there was no signal why did the drone not return to home as set in the DJI GO App?

  

How do I know if I have a defective product and this will not reoccur?

  

My worry is if it happens again it could sustain damage or I may never see it again. I have lost my confidence in flying the Phantom 4 at this time.

  

  

Kind regards,

  

  

Oliver McDaniel

Hello Oliver,
Sounds like your home point was not set before you took off.

Where was your last home point set before this flight ?

Was the P4 heading towards your last home point maybe ?

Losing signal will not stop RTH, but it will initiate it if you have it set to RTH on loss of signal.

Hi Oliver can you post your flight record on https://healthydrones.com/main?flight=last

This will give some indication as to what caused the fly away. Presumably it was heading to it's last known home position ???

malvern Posted at 2016-5-5 19:50
Hello Oliver,
Sounds like your home point was not set before you took off.

Hi Malvern,

It was the 1st flight in that area. I have a little check card I use before take off,. Calibration was carried out and the Homepoint was updated just before the flight. strange thing is not only did I loose signal but the recording also stopped as it backed away in the opposite direction to a point where I have never been. Tricky spot to climb to be honest.  I double checked and it is set to return home if the signal is lost.

Sorry for ur accident .. upload ur flight data on  https://healthydrones.com and expert will see and give urs question answer

There are a few possibilities but without actual data people are only going to be guessing.
Healtyydrones that some have recommended will only give a very brief summary and no detail.

For the best  flight data, go to http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
Follow the instructions to upload your flight record.

Come back and post a link to the report it provides and some of the experienced people here will probably be able to analyse it and give you an understanding of the cause of the incident.

Aardvark Posted at 2016-5-5 22:42
Hi Oliver can you post your flight record on https://healthydrones.com/main?flight=last

This will g ...

Hi Aardvark,

Thanks for this sharing healthyDrones with me much appreciated.

See Below:

https://healthydrones.com/main?f ... d=SENSORSSignal_Map

If you have a look at point J I turned and faced the camera to where I was standing, after that it just backed up and flew away to point (K) and beyond. The change of direction after point J is where I lost signal and watched the P4 fly off.



Kind regards,

Oliver

olivermcdaniel Posted at 2016-5-6 10:29
Hi Aardvark,

Thanks for this sharing healthyDrones with me  much appreciated.

HealthyDrones dowsn't show very much real data.
See my post #6 above

Looks like his homepoint was set

Hello Oliver, I'd suggest you to sync your flight record and  download the flight data from the drone and then send them to support.eu@dji.com. We will do a data analysis if you provide the data for us.You can download the data via DJI Assistant 2.

Well, first thing you need to do is raise your altitude limit. On my first flight, i didnt change it, and when I hit max (which you did, shown in the warnings from your HealthyDrones upload) my tablet crashed AND i lost all signal. RTH worked, but that may have contributed to your wonky experience. Glad your drone is ok.

No mention of a home point being set in that log.. Poor GPS initially also..

sploodge Posted at 2016-5-6 14:22
No mention of a home point being set in that log.. Poor GPS initially also..

Hey Sploodge,

Home point and my location are shown in the screenshot I submitted above.  it also shows my location (The Controller) the blue circle, I had 11-15 satellites for most of the flight.  Healthydrones doesn't seem to mention home point in the logs I uploaded but does show some GPS errors.

I took the P4 out today and it behaved nicely. I was cautious but happy with the outcome   
Who knows what really happened and hopefully never again

FatedFilmsNC Posted at 2016-5-6 14:02
Well, first thing you need to do is raise your altitude limit. On my first flight, i didnt change it ...

Thanks for the tip

Reading stuff like this makes it terrifying for me to fly my inspire pro, I don't think I couldn't  bare watching $4500.00 fly away into the great unknown.

DJI-Paladin Posted at 2016-5-6 04:39
Hello Oliver, I'd suggest you to sync your flight record and  download the flight data from the dron ...

Much appreciated DJI Paladin. Email has been sent with the flight log. I will keep you posted.

olivermcdaniel Posted at 2016-5-7 05:50
Much appreciated DJI Paladin. Email has been sent with the flight log. I will keep you posted.

If you want to find out what happened, I told you how to get answers up in post #6

If you can provide the flight data, someone may be able to answer your questions and explain what happened like they did in this post:
http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?m ... 3&fromuid=10818

DJI aren't good at giving explanations and if you have any dealings with them, it's to your advantage to know what happened.

labroides@yahoo Posted at 2016-5-6 21:23
If you want to find out what happened, I told you how to get answers up in post #6

If you can pro ...

My apologies Labroides I missed your post.  Appreciated the help.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/B8V5813R6JPV6ROHSGC9/#

olivermcdaniel Posted at 2016-5-7 09:43
My apologies Labroides I missed your post.  Appreciated the help.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogV ...

Thanks Oliver.
That site shows much more detail and gives us somewhere to start analysing to see what happened.
The first thing that I note is you said you "switched to Home lock" but the flight record shows that you were in Course Lock from 3:29 (83% battery) and not Home Lock.

You said "All of a sudden “signal lost” and off I watch my little Phantom 4 head to the next Mountain until I could see it no more. I waited 10 minutes on the Return to Home failsafe to kick in but it was clear it was not going to happen."

In this case signal lost is referring to the video signal from the Phantom to your controller - but the control signal to the Phantom and flight data from the Phantom were not lost and that's why we can see more details of the flight.
RTH did not initiate because the Phantom still had a clear control signal from you and you should have been able to bring it back at any stage, except that it was in course lock and could only continue along the course that now was taking it further away from you.

It would appear that your Phantom operated as it should have and it isn't defective.
It's good luck that it's all OK.

I'd suggest more practice with the various modes and especially RTH to understand how it operates, how to initiate RTH and how to cancel it and resume control.

Happy Flying

also make sure you have it set to return to home incase of signal loss,  you may have it set to hover or land.     can check/change in main controller settings---> advanced settings   remote controller signal loss (Return-to-Home/Land/Hover)

labroides@yahoo Posted at 2016-5-6 20:03
Thanks Oliver.
That site shows much more detail and gives us somewhere to start analysing to see w ...

Good analysis. The phantom was facing home point  when CL was initiated that is why it moved further away when Oliver pulled the stick towards him.

Edit - the screen shot that Oliver posted also shows CL.

Cheers,

Thank you all, good to know there is great help out there. I had thought as posted that I was in Home lock not realising I initiated coarse lock. Lesson learned.

olivermcdaniel Posted at 2016-5-5 20:29
Hi Aardvark,

Thanks for this sharing healthyDrones with me  much appreciated.

Am I seeing this right in HealthyDrones, or were you in CL (Course Lock) when this occured? How many times have you used course lock? If your using Course Lock, and you are far away from yourself, and turn the drone around to face you and try to fly it forwards (as it is sitting in the sky) back to you, it will go the opposite direction and away from you. I noticed one of the last Tips you got was that you enabled Course Lock. That might explain some of the weird behavior. And for the record, All PhantomHelp's log uploader/viewer shows you is what your bird was doing/saying every .1 seconds, but was extremely unuseful in trying to diagnose what went wrong. HealthyDrones shows you so much more information than PhantomHelp, The people pushing PHantomHelp in here must either work for them or know a person who does and is trying to help promote it, because what can you see on PhantomHelp that you CANT see on HealthyDrones, besides a useless list of everything my P4 is doing every .1 seconds?

jaycee Posted at 2016-5-6 23:25
Good analysis. The phantom was facing home point  when CL was initiated that is why it moved furthe ...

dang it you beat me to it. lol I described the same thing below, albeit replied to the wrong person. Good eye.