I have purchased a Phantom 2 Plus V3. Having used Groundstation on my F550 for sometime I am conversant of how it should work. On the Phantom when taking off and flying within 10mtrs, I switch to Courselock and it performs as it should. However if within the 10 meters I switch to Homelock I expected it to remain in courselock mode. It dosn't, it responds and flys as if ioc was turned off. This is not the case with my f550  which, if in Homelock mode flies as if in Courselock whilst it remains within the 10 mtr radius.  I have checked in the Phantom assistant and verified that it is switching correctly from off to Courselock and Homelock. Is this a fault or is it the norm? I have not tried to switch to homelock outside the 10mtr range in case it fails to work correctly and I loose orientation and possibly crash it. I have also yet to check failsafe operation.

Gerry1124 Posted at 2015-2-19 01:44
If you are coming home in home lock, when you get to about 10 meters from your home point, it will a ...

gerry, he knows that, i think he is saying that when he is inside that radius that COURSE LOCK isnt how it acts.

yes, and mine does that properly so i dont have the problem he does.  in fact, even knowing it, i got confused one day because i had TURNED the way i was facing by 90 degress while walking around.  so while i expected course lock to give one result, it gave something else which SEEMED neither like course lock OR homelock.  
i meant to tell folks the other day that when you are in a stadium or track/field type situation, you have a frame of reference to remember which way is 'forward' for courselock.  but when you are out in a field or park and are moving around, it is easy to forget which way is 'forward' in course lock.  to remember that, i now always launch my phantom facing NORTH.  that way, CL forward is always north and backwards is always south.  might sound stupid but that one day it confused the shit out of me and sort of freaked me out at first.

Thanks for your input guys but no solutions unfortunately. Since posting I have tried several remedies and after an advanced IMU calibration then another in the field compass calibration I got a message on my iphone saying "compass error maintenance required"  Unfortunately it does not say what maintenance needs to be carried out. I can only go back to square one and redo everything again. If the problem persists I can only assume that I must have a faulty compass. Any comments would be gratefully received.

replacing compass doesnt sound very hard (hadnt done it personally) so might be something to try.  i agree that  a bad compass would certainly give you the results you are getting (except that one might think you'd have worse flight behavior in all modes not just CL/HL wihthin 10m).  keep us posted on progress and come back with ?s too!  good luck!

Thanks gnixon, yes it is an easy job, costing about £12 but after spending £999 I don't expect to have to diagnose and remedy a problem that should have been found by testing before it was sold. I will keep posting until the problem is resolved so it may help others who encounter the same problem. It could be the root cause of some unexplained flyaways experienced by other owners but dismissed as pilot error.

It gets worse, after resetting everything carrying out advanced calibration and field calibration and manually setting home point the same problem still exists. Only now, since resetting the BTU I can no longer get a picture on my iphone from the phantom's camera.
Help gratefully  accepted.

For an unknown reason after connecting PV2 to my PC for the umpteenth time the camera picture now reappears on my phone as it should.

Well after starting again from the beginning, resetting everything, it now works as it should. I can't explain what the problem was or what may have caused it. Thanks for your interest and comments. Happy flying guys.