Another lost P2V+, and a miracle

[Monkeyleg]

I was out flying my P2V+ this morning in my favorite area. It's a field about 300 feet by 500 feet. There's a bank of trees on the west and south sides, but it's open to the north and east.

I was doing figure 8's, and on the southbound loop of one I overshot the turn. It was headed straight for the middle of the trees, and a strong northerly wind wasn't helping. I pushed up on the throttle and it cleared the trees just in time, winding up on the other side of them. It was then that the battery warning horn started. I didn't know what was on the other side of the trees. I flipped the switch into ATTI mode, as it looked like it was going into auto return. Problem is, it wasn't facing the way I thought it was. I started running to the other side of the trees to see if there was a spot to land.

I didn't occur to me to use Course Control. I always start my flights in that field heading north, so pushing forward on the pitch stick would have brought it back. I have to practice drills with that.

I got to the other side of the trees, but couldn't see it. I looked at the app, and it showed altitude of 300+ feet and distance of 1300+. How did it get there? The wifi signal had been lost. Then the GPS signal went. It was gone.

I figured it lost GPS when it lost all battery power, so I looked at the Where's My Phantom map. It was quite some distance away. Satellite view showed it lost signal over a subdivision. I drove over there and looked through yards.

I looked for a couple of hours. There's tons of trees and high grass behind the homes. I was fully expecting to have to contact Hunch to see if he had another for sale.

Then I found it. There was a concrete culvert behind the homes, and I walked along it. The Phantom missed the culvert and had landed in some grass. The trees must have broken its fall.

Incredibly, there was very little damage. The gimbal had separated at the roll motor shaft, and the three-wire ribbon cable to the gimbal main housing had torn off. The propellers just had some marks; but no chips or breaks. I'd recently bought a new top shell from Hunch, and it just had a couple of lines in the matte finish.

I put a fresh battery in it, and it started up just fine. No sign of motor or ESC damage. I won't know until later what, if any, damage was done to other electronics.

For the last two weeks I'd been telling myself to order an RF-V16 GPS tracker, but kept putting it off. I just ordered one.

My guardian angel came through for me for the 10,000th time in my life today.

 

[yorlik]

great you found it! Buy a lottery ticket quick!

I am curious tho why you flipped to ATTI right away instead of relying on RTH instead?

 

[Monkeyleg]

It looked like it was landing on its own because of the low battery. I wasn't sure if that was tied to GPS mode or not. I just wanted to get it back close to me without any of the GPS stuff involved in case that would burn up more power. Obviously it had plenty of power, though, as it went another 600 to 800 feet.

Tack on another miracle. As I said above, the camera broke in two pieces: the camera, pitch motor, and roll arm with the magnet; and the roll motor housing, yaw arm, and gimbal base. I glued the roll motor shaft into the hole in the magnet housing, and added a new ribbon cable. The camera and gimbal work fine. I thought for sure I'd have to buy another.

 

[RoyVa]

Normally on low battery if you have it enabled it will do a RTH and land. On critical battery it will autoland and make no difference where what's under it.

 

[Monkeyleg]

I know that it will go into RTH mode. My altitude for RTH is 200 feet, and my fear was that there wouldn't be enough power. As it turned out, there was enough power for it to fly several blocks. It wasn't acting like it was returning to home. It seemed to be acting like it was going to autoland.