So I have have logged over 20 hours of flight time with my P2V+.  I have the controller in NAZA Mode and have done a lot of reading here as well as a lot of reading from the manual.  Before flight I always go thru the normal preflight checklist, calibrate the compass, make sure I have at least 8 satellites before take off.  I have played around with all the different flight modes in NAZA M and feel very confident and comfortable flying the P2V+.  I actually spent many years flying 5 channel collective pitch Helis.  Just setting the stage for what I'm about to say.

A few days ago I was enjoying flying the P2V+.  I was on my second battery and everything was going well.  I ended up landing her on the backend of my truck cap.  I had noticed the camera was clicking a little bit and moving left and then center, and then left and then center without me doing anything.  It finally stopped.  I went ahead and took off from my truck cap cover and started to maneuver straight down the road when all of the sudden the phantom started shaking and took a hard right turn right into a weeping willow tree.  During the time making a hard right I pulled the right stick to the left and the Phantom was completely unresponsive and I had no control, I didn’t have time to flip the controller in ATTI mode.  It ended up smashing into the tree, and flipping upside down and into a muddy mess.  I spent hours taking it apart and luckily didn't do any damage beside breaking a blade and having mud caked everywhere.

So my question is, did I produce interference when I landed it on the truck cap?  It is aluminum and the truck was off.  I know the manual says not to calibrate the P2V+ in a large parking lot or around structure with metal but I can't seem to figure out what went wrong.

Appreciate any insight on what I may have done wrong.

Not sure about the truck cap but who knows for sure and it is not just the cap, the whole truck is a big a$$ piece of metal....
I tried calibrating my compass once on a huge trampoline in my yard, could not it get to calibrate for the life of me and then i thought..hmm...hmm..what the blank is going on, then i realized the trampoline is basically a big metal frizbee...anyhow, moved well away from it ie. 25' and all was good. As a rule now, i do not take off from anything that is made of any kind of metal...I do land on the trampoline when my dogs think the Phantom is a flying Chicken or something though never take off from it..Just my .02, i would take it back out after checking all of my calibrations and see how it goes...Remember, check those IMU calibrations first....

I wonder if the K index and the solar storms had anything to do with this?
We are in a big one right now. It is winding down.

sdtag@msn.com Posted at 2015-3-18 18:01
I wonder if the K index and the solar storms had anything to do with this?
We are in a big one right ...

Sounds like my latest incident- "Abnormal Update". It is amazing how fast something
like this can happen. We all know it can happen- it is just when. We practice and
practice and mentally prepare ourselves to take the right action and "Poof"- over in
a second. Right now I am thinking my problem was a faulty update but we will see.

Did you test the motors since the crash (without props on)? There have been instances when an ESC is starting to fail that the motor appears to inconsistently perform for a short time before it fails completely. Try starting the motors indoors with no props on and check for even and smooth rotation of all four motors.

While I would avoid landing and taking off from metal structures, you had already started going down the road quite happily before it suddenly started doing strange things, so I don't believe that was the cause.

nom de guerre Posted at 2015-3-18 18:49
I have only just started looking into the magnetic interference side of things and am not completely ...

Guy that's a good app. I also use an app called GPS Status & Toolbox. There is free and Pro version. The free version has ads but if you use an ad blocker you'll never see them. The Pro version has some other features.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eclipsim.gpsstatus2&hl=en

It starts automatically when your GPS is used (Vision App started) and runs in the background. You'll know if it is running because there is a little signal icon in the taskbar. It shuts down automatically too.

If you switch to it you'll see a screen like below. This screen shows a couple of useful parameters.
-In to upper right it shows magnetic field values.
-In the lower left it shows your phone's GPS error. This is important for dynamic homepoints and follow me features.  
-It also shows the GPS sats in view and their fix quality (green is good).

-Dilution of precision parameters (DOP/HDOP/VDOP)
-The other parameter it displays is the barometric pressure which ATTI mode uses to maintain the Phantom's altitude.

Lastly it works as a pretty good compass.

nom de guerre Posted at 2015-3-18 20:14
Thanks Jato

I was going to get the new iPhone 6 but I am now thinking going Android. Any suggesti ...

Guy, I would be suprized if there is not a similar app for the iPhone. But as far Android I currently have a Nexus 5 phone and a Nexus 7 tablet. Both are rooted and run all the Phantom related apps.
This is not a Apple bash but I switched from Apple to Android and never looked back. I switched because I wanted more control of my device, custom ROMs, backups, tweaks etc.

I choose Nexus because it comes unlocked with no carrier bloatware and you get the latest updates (if you want them) sooner from Google. The carriers take forever to roll out updates.

Having said that I'm still on Android 4.4.4 because it works well and I didn't want to deal with all the 5.x issues. Heck I'm still running Windows XP on my Macbook!

If it ain't broke...

jonathan@statt. Posted at 2015-3-18 19:52
Did you test the motors since the crash (without props on)? There have been instances when an ESC is ...

Thanks Jonathan.  Yes, the evening I cleaned her up I tested them motors and they all seemed to spin just fine.  So strange.  I'm hesitant to fly it again.

nom de guerre Posted at 2015-3-18 18:49
I have only just started looking into the magnetic interference side of things and am not completely ...

what app are you using on your iPhone, guy?

Taking off from a metal surface could mess with your conpass and could trow off your IMU. Try to avoid doing so. That's also the reason that you shouldn't cary metal objects and such when doing a compass calibration. Hope you get back in the air soon ;)