Hi All,

Just in the hope that somebody might find her / do a bit of searching around.

I've just lost my DJI Phantom 3 Advance in the Huddersfield (Fartown / Birkby) area.  If anybody comes accross it I would greatly appreciate if you get in touch.

Many thanks,

Paul.

Up load the log and hopefully "endotherm" can help translate it for you.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/ZPWQWI4CU1QGV8O3GXDU/

alphacrust Posted at 2018-3-18 04:31
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/ZPWQWI4CU1QGV8O3GXDU/

During Go Home it kept drifting away from you. Looks like it wasn't able to struggle the winds:
Wind on March 18, 10:00h

There are two hospitals with heli pads in the flight path. You don't wanna fly in such areas.

alphacrust Posted at 2018-3-18 04:31
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/ZPWQWI4CU1QGV8O3GXDU/

It looks like you didn't want to see your Phantom again.
1st you launched with a partially discharged battery and the % indicator is giving you a false reading.
At startup the battery showed 93% and 4.19V per cell.
But under the strain of climbing, it was down to 3.4V at only 9 seconds.

2nd.  When the Phantom was 150 feet up at 1:16, it's unable to hold its position and is already being blown away at ~2 metres/sec.
That should have been a warning to you to bring it back right away or fly into the wind.
But you left it to drift further.
At 227 ft (2 mins), with no input to the joysticks the Phantom is being blown away at 6-7 m/sec while it's trying to hover.
At 2:08, RTH was initiated but the Phantom can't make headway against the wind and gets blown further away.
And what did you do?
Take it up to 393 ft and leave it to drift even further away.
The wind was gusty and the speed of drift was 2-6 m/sec.
All the time your 1/2 flat battery is getting weaker.
At the end of data, the battery is down to 3.5V per cell, the Phantom is 1.2 km away and going further at 2-6 m/sec.
We don't know when, but it will have drifted further and autolanded when the battery got to about 3.3V per cell.

You had ample opportunity to save the Phantom but allowed it to be blown away.
You should have brought it down where it could have made headway.
You could have switched off RTH and taken control to fly faster.
You could have had a fully charged battery to start with.

Good luck searching.
Your Phantom is further away from the last recorded location but it's not possible to say where.

Eric13 Posted at 2018-3-18 04:56
During Go Home it kept drifting away from you. Looks like it wasn't able to struggle the winds:
Wind on March 18, 10:00h

I didn't intend to fly anywhere near the hospital.  The idea was to get some hight and take some static shots over the playing fields where I initially took off from.  Unfortunately like others have commented I completely miss-judged the wind speed and she drifted away quite badly.

alphacrust Posted at 2018-3-18 08:05
I didn't intend to fly anywhere near the hospital.  The idea was to get some hight and take some static shots over the playing fields where I initially took off from.  Unfortunately like others have commented I completely miss-judged the wind speed and she drifted away quite badly.

Sorry to hear about your a/c Alpha.

I always advise pilots to have insurance and if you have not got any, then I hope the following might help.

To protect yourself in the case of an accident, insurance is a good idea. e.g. (BMFA) British Model Flying Association (UK). It costs £35 at the time of writing. Click on the link to view their web site :-

Members Insurance

You can also insure your UAV against damage : -

Drone Insurance - Phantom Flight School

Best of luck

I really can't add a lot more to the analysis posted Labroides, which sums it up nicely.

As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the recorded flight path represents about one third of the battery duration between 93% take-off voltage and critical landing at 10%.  Seeing that most of your flight was at idle and just being blown at the mercy of the wind, it would be reasonable to assume it would continue to discharge at a similar rate.  Assuming it continued on a heading of approximately 246°, it likely travelled 3 times the recorded 1300m before commencing autolanding at 10%, somewhere SW of Quarmby.  From that altitude (400ft) it would take about 2 min to land, all the time being influenced by the wind, taking it another 400m or so and landing in NW Longwood.   Now draw a really big circle around that point and that would be your initial search location.


This looks like a case of not having a plan to deal with how to tackle high winds when the aircraft is being blown away.  Not sure why you didn't just land or at the very least descend close to the ground (where the wind would be weaker) instead of drifting towards hospitals and beyond.