Bad day today.I am currently in the jungle in Ecuador and my Phantom 3, at 1 min 10 seconds into the flight, started to fly eratically out of control.
It starting spining, lost alot of altitude about 100m in few seconds, flew about 50m further, again spining, and out...
We are currently looking for it, but it may have landed in the river.  No sign of it so far.
Based on flight data it went "out" 193m away from me at about 45 degrees (NE) from the home point.
Clearly something failed.

I got awsome pictures with it durring the 63 flights, 8hr.43min. I had it.
Sure glad there was no one below in the area it went down.

Not sure what to do next.
:-(

Anyone have any suggestions?
Just lost perhaps the best toy I ever owned.

So sorry man. We love our mission trips to beautiful Ecuador.  Hope you find resolution of some kind. I love my P3A, but I swear it's nerve racking.

I had my P2 w/gopro in Ecuador.  Sorry you lost it.  Keep trekking and find it.

Sorry Man. Lost or busted beyond repair, it is a blow to the heart.

Sorry to hear of another Phallen Phantom  :-(

Without more information it seems hard to say "Clearly something failed" because there are a number of other possibilities.
Lots of wildlife flying around in a jungle.  Possible collision with wildlife.
Could also have been some kind of transmission from nearby.

You should be able to get the last coordinates from the app.
Post up your logs and lets see what we have here.

You should try to find the Phantom.   Chances of a good outcome drop off sharply without a bird to send back.

Just look out for Pirhana if you go wading in the rivers.

once you encountered abnormal during flight immediatly switch to atti mode, to disabled compass and gps.

Sounds like the infamous P3 toilet bowl effect. Did you check compass mod value before flight?

I fly exclusively in attitude mode now. Once you done about 10 flights or more with it, it's hard to go back to GPS assist. And you won't have to worry about as much going bonkers.

Drone found!  Its not in great shape though and it spent the night below water.
It crashed right on the edge of a river.
The camera is broken off but was found together with the drone.  One of the props broke off, but the other half was also with the drone (i.e. on impact).
The body/arm or one of the motors seems to be warped.  The prop now impacts with the body when it is turned.   I assume that it is from the impact.
We had visual on the drone when it became unresponsive.  It was very close (50m), but high up (300m).  Saw no large birds.
It was 300 meters up when it became "unhappy", there is not much here in the jungle in terms of EM interference.
I have the parts in a box of rice to try the suck the humidity out of it.
I did not recalibrate compas before flight as I flew numerous flights from same location in the previous hours.
How do I post logs?
Any suggestions?

Regards
Nick

Pictures of recovered P3 Pro.

NickT Posted at 2015-9-13 16:11
Drone found!  Its not in great shape though and it spent the night below water.
It crashed right on  ...

Which date did you fly ? K-index has been very high last days

It could be possibly that your P3p went bonkers because of GPS interference from high kp levels ? I know here the last two days the kp index has been very high (6 & 7)

NickT Posted at 2015-9-13 22:42
Pictures of recovered P3 Pro.

or the prop could have broken off b4 crash!! they look like 3rd party props? do u check props regularly, like b4 each flight?
lets not jump to the usual, must have been, gps or compass,.

The props are Carbon fibre and were in great shape.  I don't use them much and have never had a hard impact.
Until I found the other piece of the prop, I thought the same based on the loss of the stability the drone showed during flight.  Now I'm thinking engine failure?
The broken prop was found together with the drone next to it.  Looks like impact damage.  They came with the drone from Drone-World.
Live video during the flight looked like it might even have inverted in flight, and it started to spin.
K index???  Kip levels?
I flew yesterday 10:46am local time.

Regards
Nick

NickT Posted at 2015-9-14 03:52
The props are Carbon fibre and were in great shape.  I don't use them much and have never had a hard ...

yea if u found the other piece nearby then probably happened on impact.
go to uavforecast.com and see what the k-index was in your area. you can also download solar sphere on ios app store.

NickT Posted at 2015-9-14 03:52
The props are Carbon fibre and were in great shape.  I don't use them much and have never had a hard ...

according to the forecast you only had a k-index of  3 today, Sunday 13th

Yeah but it has dropped overnight significantly. My current Kp is 4 in southern Manitoba and that is right at the threshold of when my p3a behaves. Yesterday during the Kp 6 time I took off to my preflight altitude to make sure everything is functioning normally and the poor bird was doing the toilet bowl move. So I decided to land it and it was easily the hairiest landing I have had. It jumped up at least 2 feet after the initial touch so I aborted a ground landing and hand caught it.

The worst part was telling my client that conditions aren't right to fly at the moment even though there was only a 5mph wind at that spot and bluebird skys above. I showed him the Kp index and explained how the gps and glonass are extremely sensitive to this kind of interference. He understood afterward but having it all good to go and in the air only to abort in the very last of the checklist was annoying for everyone.

Guess I send the drone back to DJI now and hope for the best...
It dropped about 100m in 10 seconds when the trouble started.  I was still trying to get it to go up.