I have had my P3A for 8 weeks now without any problems. I am very cautious with it as I know sometimes their control systems can glitch/fail. I have flown the P3A once already on the new firmware (1.4.0010) to test out some of the new autonomous features, everything flew fine. The second time I flew it on the updated firmware was this past Monday, (9/14). I was out in the country showing off the bird to a friend. I had been flying for several minutes already and I wanted to show him the RTH feature. I had it up at an altitude of about 300ft and took it out over a large cornfield to a distance of about 2000ft from its home point, then initiated the RTH via the button on the transmitter. It began its RTH sequence and came all the way back to its home point and begun its descent to land. I didn't want to land it as I was just showing that it could fly back home by itself, so I cancelled the RTH and as soon as it cancelled the bird went crazy. Without any input from the transmitter the bird took off back across the cornfield. I tried to pull the bird back to me with the transmitter but with no prevail. Nothing I did seem to affect the phantom's flight path. With no other options I pushed the RTH button again, the drone halted several hundred feet from me and begun its RTH routine. It flew completely fine back to me where it landed within 5 ft of its home point without a hitch. I am just wondering if anyone else has experienced this erractic behavior and how you might go about figuring out what happened or how to remedy it. I did not have any problems with the bird until I updated to the current firmware.

A few details:
- Aircraft and transmitter had completely full batteries when beginning the flight.
- Performed an IMU calibration when the firmware update was initially done.
- I perform a compass calibration each and every time I take it out for a flight.
- Did a POI flight when I first began the flight, but switched back to P-Mode before I took the bird out over the cornfield.

I plan on checking out the flight logs today after work to see if anything seems off. If anyone else has any kind of advice I would really appreciate it.

Man, these stories just scare the s*&t out of me! Glad you got your P3 Back!!

Yeh same here. All these stories simply prevent me from fully enjoying and testing the multi flight functions. I havent even tested waypoint yet. Too afraid.

bradneal24 Posted at 2015-9-16 15:53
Man, these stories just scare the s*&t out of me! Glad you got your P3 Back!!

Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I had an oh s*&t moment when I realized I was no longer in control. I'm scared to fly it anymore. What happens next time when RTH doesn't save me. So thankful that function still worked for me.

Just finished checking my flight data using healthydrones.com

All signals look good, signal map is green across the entire flight, GPS is either excellent or good for the entire flight along with my compass score.

I was able to replay the flight through DJI GO. I examined the controller inputs when the aircraft went haywire. It shows 100% reverse pitch even though no input was given to the aircraft. I have absolutely no idea what happened. Any one else have experiences similar to this?

Did you calibrate the RC again after the FW update?

I would give that a try if you did not.

timmer Posted at 2015-9-16 17:21
Did you calibrate the RC again after the FW update?

I would give that a try if you did not.

no i did not, will do that now. Thanks

I went for a normal take off, was hovering a approx 5 foot for a couple of seconds whilst I was just looking at my screen then without warning it went full right and at full power for no reason, it hit a tree and was downed , it has now been at service place in Germany for seven weeks , don't know if il ever see it again , could have bought a s--t load of chocolate for £1150?????????

I recently purchased a P3A and have spent about 3 hours of flight with it...

I decided to test out the RTH in a large open field near my house.    I start every takeoff on the ground with a green safe to fly on the tablet. I spent about 15 minutes flying the drone in the field practicing control and camera movement I decided near the end of my flight time to test out the RTH button on the remote. i had the drone about 100ft away from its start/home position and at about 2m off the ground.  As soon initiating RTH the drone shot up into the sky and started heading toward some trees near the edge of the field I panicked and searched the tablet for some clue as to what was happening... as the drone became closer to the trees I started to use the controls to try and retard the drones path and some how force it back into the open field.    As I pulled the sticks down I noticed it paused so I continued to try and stop the drone and that is when the drone shut off and fell from the sky.  

in the trouble shooting after after event investigation I realized the procedure I should have performed was to hold the RTH button to cancel RTH command..   the drone hit hard and broke the camera gimble arm and pulled the gimble motor apart... I have not had a chance to see if the drone itself is still flyable or if anything else is damaged..    I am still not sure why the drone headed for the trees and past he home point I had originally set other than I had landed and taken off from another area near the tree line.   also I did not perform a recalibration after a recent update to 1.4.10   so that may have contributed.

it would be really nice if I could just buy the gimble unit and keep the camera... there does not seem to be much support for repairing these drone from DJI I guess I may try to set the camera in a fxed mode and use it as a FPV assuming it will still fly with everything else ..

johnlcrawford Posted at 2015-9-22 07:46
I recently purchased a P3A and have spent about 3 hours of flight with it...

I decided to test out  ...

Sorry to hear about the crash. What good are these things if you can't trust them to fly true? These are way too expensive to just be randomly flying/turning off. I hope DJI can find and fix these problems that so many people seem to be having.

te311909 Posted at 2015-9-22 09:18
Sorry to hear about the crash. What good are these things if you can't trust them to fly true? The ...

Yes I agree in my case I could have stopped the flyaway by holding down the RTH button again and canceling the flight... saddly everything happened so fast I didn't process that in time...

Also it would be good for DJI to update their documentation to give a warning that the unit and motors can be shut down while in flight.   had I read that while reading the manual it may have stuck in my head... although it may not have also...   

DJI has been really good at reading these forums and providing feedback and updating software and documentation so hopefully they can add this to their documentation/videos...

I am not blaming dji for having the remote cutoff feature I think it is important as a last resort to keep form flying into someone/something.  Just that it should be documented better

te311909 Posted at 2015-9-16 16:26
no i did not, will do that now. Thanks

What kind of calibration are you talking about here - compass calibration?

johnlcrawford Posted at 2015-9-22 19:46
I recently purchased a P3A and have spent about 3 hours of flight with it...

I decided to test out  ...

What RTH height was loaded in app that time? May be there was the height about default 30 m and the grone may  fly up to RTH height from 2 m( You said it was about 2 m)
So if  the direction of drone was right to Home point. That's seems to be OK RTH routine

Nemmo Posted at 2015-9-23 13:20
What RTH height was loaded in app that time? May be there was the height about default 30 m and the ...

exactly nemmo, I landed the drone at one point under the trees not sure if that sets a new home point or not but that is the direction it was headed... that is my best guess of what went wrong