Hi Everyone,
I lost my drone 2 days ago. Basically I lost control of it and it started moving away until a point where the connection was lost. At that point the battery was 22% which means it would have flown further away. I tried to search in the area around for two days but couldn't find it. Please see the link of the flight log and suggest which direction aproximately it might have landed?

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/7MCR4GKC2Y5H3543OVTV/

7m 49.6s        Go Home        19satellites        458.0ft        9.9mph        2,539.7ft        30%        14.089V        3.511V        3.531V        3.534V        3.513V        0.023V        Motor Overloaded. Aircraft will decelerate to ensure safety.

5m 15.6s        Go Home        19satellites        524.9ft        13.7mph        1,172.5ft        47%        14.153V        3.525V        3.55V        3.547V        3.531V        0.025V        Motor Overloaded. Aircraft will decelerate to ensure safety.

Sorry for your loss, you can click Find My Drone and refer to the location to search the drone. I would also recommend you contact our support, they'll start a case for you. Kindly use this link: https://www.dji.com/support?site=brandsite&from=nav

Hello there. We apologize for what happened. I highly suggest to start up a case online and let our engineers help investigate what happened to your drone. You can send an email to support@dji.com

Was there a strong wind at the time you were flying?

It kinda looks to me like the wind got you at that altitude.  One way to tell if you have a wind problem is by looking at your viewing device readings.  Point the little red triangle back at your position either by looking at the round Radar circle or switch to the map view.  Apply forward throttle.  Then watch your range indicator.  It should be decreasing. Phantoms don't normally fly backwards on their own.  If it is increasing, you have a wind problem.  Get down to a lower altitude quickly.  Of course, none of this will help you now.  But it might in the future when you get your new drone or find the old one.  A bad situation would be if the triangle was pointed at your home position, your range was increasing, and the Horizontal speed was showing movement...you got a problem.  Fix it quickly before it gets out of hand, or out of sight!  If you can't get it to come back, land it where it is by pointing the camera straight down and start video recording.  You might be able to maneuver it a little until you lose signal.  Select Auto Land, otherwise when it loses signal it will go back up to altitude and try again to come home.  Looking at those readings can tell you a lot about what is going on in the air.

At time and date of your flight there were 3-4 Bft southerly [Edit: northerly!] winds at your location at ground level.
At the height you were flying that turns easily into 5-6 Bft.
And you were flying exactly downwind. BAD Idea.

Your drone sailed away from you at an incredible speed considering it was in Go Home mode.
In the last 15 seconds alone it covered a distance of 553 feet.

Good luck searching a huge area - and don't forget to check all the roofs around.

Here are some details on the wind speed and direction at Melbourne Australia on July 4th.  Note that the wind speed shown is at the surface.  Winds aloft would be significantly higher, of course.  Give the page a few seconds to load.  

https://www.wunderground.com/his ... c=5&reqdb.wmo=94868

Mark The Droner Posted at 2018-7-6 12:08
Here are some details on the wind speed and direction at Melbourne Australia on July 4th.  Note that the wind speed shown is at the surface.  Winds aloft would be significantly higher, of course.  Give the page a few seconds to load.  

https://www.wunderground.com/his ... c=5&reqdb.wmo=94868

He wasn't flying on July 4th.

That sucks. Sorry to hear about another wayward drone...

I hope that you find it, or if someone else does, they find you... wishing only good luck.

Fingers crossed in your favour.


RedHotPoker

Eric13 Posted at 2018-7-6 13:36
He wasn't flying on July 4th.

Okay.  That's great information.  Thank-you.  

May I ask what day was he flying?  

You climbed straight up from close to the home point.
Once the Phantom reached 90 metres altitude, it was no longer able to hold position and started drifting at 4-5 m/s.
At 4:42.1 you started to fly with the right stick .... but flew away in the direction the wind was blowing (bad mistake)
By this time the battery is already down to 3.6V per cell because you launched with a partially discharged battery (bad mistake #2)
At 4:54, you go to RTH.  The Phantom is 125 metres high and 689 metres from home with the battery at 3.6V per cell.
To get it home against a strong headwind, you will need to bring the Phantom down to a lower level where the wind is less and push it hard.
But you don't. (bad mistake #3)
Instead, you leave the right stick alone and climb to 160 metres where the wind is even stronger. (BM #4)
Note .. RTH is a slow driver and just wants to cruise at 10 metres/sec.
You can drive for yourself at 16 m/s (still air speeds)
Leaving RTH to do the driving is always going to end badly in a strong headwind situation.
The Phantom is now going backwards at 6 m/s while trying to RTH and running the battery down toward 3.3v (critical low voltage level).
You kept the left stick pushed full forward even though you were at your altitude limit.
You started to bring the Phantom down at 5:38 and now 1500 metres away.
You bring it down to 124 metres but that's not enough to get it out of the wind.
You still leave RTH to do the driving until 6:05  (1600 metres away) when you push the right stick forward.
The wind is gusting.  For a short time you manage to make headway at 0.5 m/s with the stick full ahead.
But you give up on the right stick at 6:32 and continue to be blown further away (1750 metres)
Strangely, you take it back up to 160 metres again and then back down to 120 metres wasting more battery (now showing 33% and 3.5v)
Distance = 2320 metres drifting at 3 m/s.
Another climb to 140 metres - drifting 6-7 metres/sec, battery falling faster 30% now.
Then up to 160 metres !!!!  ... and back down to 130 metres.
The recorded data ends with you finally using the right stick.
The Phantom is now 4635 metres away and you are flying east now, rather than north at 11 m/s and 130 metres up.
The battery is showing 22% and about to go into autoland.
Once you lost contact the Phantom will have pointed towards home and continued drifting south.
It's not possible to pinpoint it's final resting place but it will be further to the south near Monash University.

I could end with the relevant points but if you've read this so far, you should be able to work them out.
The mistakes made meant this Phantom was not going to be coming home.


As for searching, two words come to mind. Needle and Haystack
Your only hope is if you had your contact details on the Phantom.

DJI Paladin Posted at 2018-7-6 03:27
Sorry for your loss, you can click Find My Drone and refer to the location to search the drone. I would also recommend you contact our support, they'll start a case for you. Kindly use this link: https://www.dji.com/support?site=brandsite&from=nav

Find my drone ???
That would be 100% useless and only show where contact was lost - not where the Phantom ended up.

Do any of the moderators know anything about flying a Phantom?

DJI Wanda Posted at 2018-7-6 03:28
Hello there. We apologize for what happened. I highly suggest to start up a case online and let our engineers help investigate what happened to your drone. You can send an email to

Hello there. We apologize for what happened. I highly suggest to start up a case online and let our engineers help investigate what happened to your drone.

Sorry DJI Wanda ... but this is useless advice.
DJI have nothing to apologise for in this incident and there is no point opening a case.
The cause of the incident is obvious and thoroughly explained in post #13.

I'm sorry to have to ask this but do any of the moderators know anything about flying a Phantom?

Mark The Droner Posted at 2018-7-6 14:27
Okay.  That's great information.  Thank-you.  

May I ask what day was he flying?

Here you go :-)

Yeah this would be about impossible to find.  Even if one somehow calculated the time & distance point where it would auto-land, how would you know that's accurate since he launched with 70% battery.  A series of critical pilot errors such as this will always lead to a lost drone.  

Eric13 Posted at 2018-7-6 13:36
He wasn't flying on July 4th.

I was flying drone on 3rd of July.

Mark The Droner Posted at 2018-7-6 14:27
Okay.  That's great information.  Thank-you.  

May I ask what day was he flying?

On 3rd of July

As stated above, if found by an innocent bystander, hopefully they have the where with all, to search for you.
Or perhaps post a found drone notice, for you to respond.


RedHotPoker

Eric13 Posted at 2018-7-6 09:34
At time and date of your flight there were 3-4 Bft southerly winds at your location at ground level.
At the height you were flying that turns easily into 5-6 Bft.
And you were flying exactly downwind. BAD Idea.

The winds were actually northerly, to be exact, NNE and of considerable strength on that day.

Yes.  Some people get confused with wind direction.  I think it's kind of generally understood that a direction associated with the wind is referring to the direction it's blowing from.  

So a North wind would be blowing from the north to the south.  My understanding is that this wind would be considered a northerly wind.  

Mark The Droner Posted at 2018-7-6 16:28
Yes.  Some people get confused with wind direction.  I think it's kind of generally understood that a direction associated with the wind is referring to the direction it's blowing from.  

So a North wind would be blowing from the north to the south.  My understanding is that this wind would be considered a northerly wind.

You would not believe the cold north wind we get in the middle of our Canadian winters.

Freeze the balls off of a brass monkey, they said...
Oh yeah, but the record low in the deep South, Antarctica, was recently analysed, at -94,7*C.
Coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth in Antarctica: -94.7C (-135.8F)

Newly analysed Nasa satellite data from east Antarctica shows Earth has set a new record for coldest temperature ever recorded: -94.7C (-135.8F).

It happened in August 2010 when it hit -94.7C (-135.8F). Then on 31 July of this year, it came close again: -92.9C (-135.3F).

The old record had been -89.2C (-128.6F).

Ice scientist Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre announced the cold facts at the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco on Monday.

"It's more like you'd see on Mars on a nice summer day in the poles," said Scambos. "I'm confident that these pockets are the coldest places on Earth."

However, it won't be in the Guinness Book of World Records because these were satellite measured, not from thermometers, Scambos said.

"Thank God, I don't know how exactly it feels," he said. But he said scientists do routinely make naked -73C (-100F) dashes outside in the south pole as a stunt, so people can survive that temperature for about three minutes.

Most of the time researchers need to breathe through a snorkel that brings air into the coat through a sleeve and warms it up "so you don't inhale by accident" the cold air, Scambos said.

Waleed Abdalati, an ice scientist at the University of Colorado and Nasa's former chief scientist, and Scambos said this is likely an unusual random reading in a place that hasn't been measured much before and could have been colder or hotter in the past and we wouldn't know.

"It does speak to the range of conditions on this Earth, some of which we haven't been able to observe," Abdalati said.

RedHotPoker

Geebax Posted at 2018-7-6 15:54
The winds were actually northerly, to be exact, NNE and of considerable strength on that day.

That's what I meant. 'southerly' was wrong...