Hi, I was wondering if any of you who are good at analyzing data might be able to tell me roughly where my Phantom 3 Pro landed last week. After 41 mostly uneventful flights, I made a horrible mistake, which I've since learned never to repeat...hindsight is 20-20. At any rate, I was in Angeles National Forest last Saturday after flying my drone successfully most of the afternoon, was down to 18% on my last battery. As my friend and I were heading down the mountain, we saw this amazing sunset and stopped to take some photos of it in a scenic parking area on the edge of a remote canyon. I hoped to get just a few seconds of video with the drone, wrongly thinking that the RTH feature would automatically return it once the battery got too low.
However, the device didn't attempt to return to home. Instead, it went into auto landing mode. I tried to activate the Return to Home feature on the app, but it didn't give me that option. Failing that, I tried to make the drone land close to where the road looped around approximately 315 feet below the launching location, so we would be able to get to it on foot, as much of the canyon is rocky and inaccessible. The drone began spinning around in circles uncontrollably at this point, dropping at about 10 feet per second and then it lost connection with the RC. At this time, it was traveling about 6.5 miles per hour. Its last reading before losing contact indicated it was at an elevation of -147 feet. The starting elevation in the parking area was 4337.3 feet. The elevation at the foot of the canyon was 4022.3 feet. So the drone must have been about 168 feet in the air over the canyon when the log and video communication stopped working. I watched the drone land in an area close to the road. My friend and I raced down to that location and tried to locate the drone using the "Find My Drone" feature, but we were unable to find it. It landed near a dry creek bed in an area covered with dense vegetation.
I've gone back several times since then to look for it, searching for hours each time in an area full of bees, biting flies, poison ivy, and most likely a few rattlesnakes, but it's nowhere to be found. The good news is that it's a relatively small area.
I've contacted DJI customer service and have uploaded my flight logs, provided them with the serial number, etc. They're currently reviewing them while I await their solution. But in the meantime, I was hoping to be able to figure out where it went down. The winds that day were minimal, and the battery was at 3% when it lost contact, in auto land mode.
Here is the flight data: https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/
Thanks in advance for any suggestions on where it might have landed.
However, the device didn't attempt to return to home. Instead, it went into auto landing mode. I tried to activate the Return to Home feature on the app, but it didn't give me that option. Failing that, I tried to make the drone land close to where the road looped around approximately 315 feet below the launching location, so we would be able to get to it on foot, as much of the canyon is rocky and inaccessible. The drone began spinning around in circles uncontrollably at this point, dropping at about 10 feet per second and then it lost connection with the RC. At this time, it was traveling about 6.5 miles per hour. Its last reading before losing contact indicated it was at an elevation of -147 feet. The starting elevation in the parking area was 4337.3 feet. The elevation at the foot of the canyon was 4022.3 feet. So the drone must have been about 168 feet in the air over the canyon when the log and video communication stopped working. I watched the drone land in an area close to the road. My friend and I raced down to that location and tried to locate the drone using the "Find My Drone" feature, but we were unable to find it. It landed near a dry creek bed in an area covered with dense vegetation.
I've gone back several times since then to look for it, searching for hours each time in an area full of bees, biting flies, poison ivy, and most likely a few rattlesnakes, but it's nowhere to be found. The good news is that it's a relatively small area.
I've contacted DJI customer service and have uploaded my flight logs, provided them with the serial number, etc. They're currently reviewing them while I await their solution. But in the meantime, I was hoping to be able to figure out where it went down. The winds that day were minimal, and the battery was at 3% when it lost contact, in auto land mode.
Here is the flight data: https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/
Thanks in advance for any suggestions on where it might have landed.