Was flying my phantom 3 advance on 5/30/15 ( just got it on 5/19 )everything was going great. I was about 10 to 15 minutes in flight just cruising my neighborhood. With 56% battery life left I decided to bring it in as I never really let the battery go to 30% mark. As I was hovering the drone goes haywire and rocks back and forth side to side 175 feet in the air until it hits the ground. I was pissed. It lands the next block over in a neighbors yard. I have a bent arm so the drone is useless. Well was doing some research and come to find out that other pilots had the same situation happen to them on PhantomPilots.com  under Phantom 3 malfunction and crash and saw there is two other people who have had their drones do the same exact thing. You think the videos are the same, but thanks to dji and their flight data recorders it not only shows they're different videos from the satellite images but also shows the decent that the drones took all in a similar fashion. I would like to know if any other pilots have had this happen to them or any close calls similar to what I just described to step forward and bring this to DJI's attention. That God for the flight recorder has it would have been their word against mine. As it would be easy for dji to say you hit a tree. But thanks to the flight recorder when my drone goes down I was 175 feet in the air. Also thanks to the app it also shows stick movements before,during and after. Here is the video I made from my flight data via the dji pilot app.    And here is the link to phantom pilots forum http://www.phantompilots.com/thr ... video.42904/page-13

Is there any way you can pull up the battery voltage field during this event? It could be that you were calling for power, but the battery controller refused the command.

The only thing I saw in your stick commands before the event was that it appeared you pulled back on throttle seconds before the uncontrolled flight experience.

Electronics are great when they work and a pain in the ass when they don't.

I had 56% battery life left. So no problems there.  It's just been another video posted on phantom pilots website of somebody else's drone doing the same thing. This is beginning to be a safety concern. I'm just starting this thread to bring it to light. I've analyzed my footage and Everything was going great no problems. Maybe I'll make a full length video and speed it up so other people may pick up on something I missed

mmm sad to see and hear this...

Keep us upto date on how you go?

On a side note.... I would never fly my RC planes over houses or people.... just too risky.... and I have the same view with my PH3A... Open area's only for me personally.  

Regs Chris

Looks like some elements of the flight/crash could be a classic Vortex Ring State crash without recovery...  And may be supported by your stick display video. Those being a substantial downward verticle descent immediately prior to excessive throttle as a reaction to the downward wobble, and wobbling descent/crash in spite of full throttle (full throttle is an exacerbating reaction and makes a VRS worse rather then better) .  Looked at one of the other videos, which also showed a substantial downward throttle immediately prior to crash.  Vortex Ring State affects full sized helicopters as well as RC, and is well known by pilots (less known by drone flyers).  You can search google for good explanations/videos of symptoms and recovery...  I know that won't help you in this case, but might help others...  One video of such a thing described can be found here:
Best advice to avoid VRS is to avoid rapid verticle descents.  If you recognize you've entered such a thing, do not use throttle, but instead, full forward or side pitch.

Not an expert opinion, but you can search Vortex Ring State and see if this matches your experience.

My least favorite type of forum thread...
I hope DJI can get this problematic incident from happening too much more often.
It must be a software glitche...

Yes, please keep us informed.

Thanks and best wishes.

RedHotPoker

No doubt "cruising the neighborhood" is a safety concern because every drone will fall from the sky sooner or later.
I'm with Chris in that I only fly over open areas - fairgrounds, conservation land, parks with few or no people, etc. etc.

I've had burps with my P3 flying on my cul-de-sac (8 houses with no one outdoors and they all know me - and 100 acres of conservation land around us).....these were disconnection errors and a VPS error that told me to land. I never had these problems (yet) flying in open areas.

I think the P3 may be even more subject to outside (wireless) jamming than previous models - just a thought based on my experience and some other stuff I have read. Perhaps the Lightbridge and other stuff in the 2.4GHZ range in combination with more and more houses having wireless networks is messing things up.

Not enough data - having one or two other people claiming it happening. Although it does appear one similarity is they are over crowded areas.

I hope DJI is able to see something from the logs. Ideally, these should go into RTH even if they are being jammed by wireless and other signals.

Well I'm not sure what happens and if it was that VRS or not. I wait to see what dji rep says in the morning

To me it looks like a prop went off or at least it became loose. Thise behavour is exactly when a prop falls off or a motor/ESC went to crap.The bad thing is there is no proof for that even with the flight recorder because there is no camera that films the phantom3 while its in the air. What about your cached video on your smartphone? and the video on the SD card?

All four of my props were still intact. I don't see what a video would show or prove because you wouldn't be able to get any useable footage anyway. just up to the point before it went down. Ive owned the vision, P2 v2.0, and now the P3 all of which ive bought directly drom dji and have never even came close to what happen with my drone. I've lost gps signal before on my other crafts and no big deal, because im pretty proficient in flying in atti mode which is the mode I do most of my flying in. This was something totally out of my control the way this thing started to violently sway and rock in this fashion.I'm glad no one got hurt on the ground including the two dogs whose yard I landed in as well.

toddstevenson Posted at 2015-6-1 06:41
Looks like some elements of the flight/crash could be a classic Vortex Ring State crash without reco ...

Thanks for that very informative explaination of why these drops may happen and suggestion on recovering.

hey i got my phantom 3 for only 2 weeks...now i dont know what to do because i spent so much money on it...and it did the exact same thing...im still in shock and clueless on what happend. i just lost a lot of money