Battery came out during flight...?

Grotz · Jul 11, 2017

Just had a little bit of a fly away (my fault for losing visual)....got a little freaked out, tried RTH but it was too late. Luckily I had my video turned on and I was able to find my PS....it was in a field, no trees. THE BATTERY WAS GONE. It had to have fallen out and not necessarily on impact because the video ended before I saw the CRASH.....If it crashed while the battery was still in it, I would see the footage of the crash....the video ending when the drone was still about two feet off the ground......so if the video ended when the battery fell out, that brings up a couple of peculiar questions. First of all, the battery is not easy to remove when I go to re-charge, so having it "fall out" is almost not believable. If it was not "seated" properly, it would not have flown.....Weird...

PaulSouthport · Jul 11, 2017

If you upload the flight log to https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/upload/ you'll get a better idea of what happened. The log will end at or just before the power was lost

Grotz · Jul 11, 2017

I will do that when I get home....good idea. Still weird that it came out

Meta4 · Jul 11, 2017

Grotz said:
I will do that when I get home....good idea. Still weird that it came out

It's very common for the battery to become dislodged in a crash - it just takes a little deformation.
It's very rare for a battery to come out in flight.

V tail · Jul 11, 2017

Post the video!!!

Grotz · Jul 14, 2017

Here is the video of the flight. You will see that before the drone crashed into the ground, the video stops which tells me that the battery must have fallen out. The only other reason the video stopped would be if I had stopped the video from my control panel...the only thing is, just prior to crashing, I do not think my response was to turn off the video. The drone was found approximately ten feet from where this video stopped.

I still believe the battery fell out during flight.

I think this is the YouTube link: YouTube

Grotz · Jul 14, 2017

Meta4: your photography is amazing.

Grotz · Jul 14, 2017

Paulsouthport: I just used the DJI upload system to upload my flight record. The flight record seems very incomplete...it only goes up to the first 5 seconds....

Meta4 · Jul 14, 2017

Grotz said:
Here is the video of the flight. You will see that before the drone crashed into the ground, the video stops which tells me that the battery must have fallen out. The only other reason the video stopped would be if I had stopped the video from my control panel...the only thing is, just prior to crashing, I do not think my response was to turn off the video. The drone was found approximately ten feet from where this video stopped.

I still believe the battery fell out during flight.

I think it's highly unlikely that the battery fell out in flight.
I can't see any video but you describe a video showing the Phantom about to crash - which is an indication that the battery was functioning after whatever the problem was.
That the video ends before the impact is because the video file was not properly closed off and this causes a loss of a couple of seconds of the recording.
If you want to get an idea of what happened, the recorded flight data is the key.
Go to https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
Follow the instructions to upload your flight record.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides and someone here might be able to analyse it and give you an understanding of the cause of the incident.

With The Birds · Jul 14, 2017

If there is no apparent issue with battery bay and/or locking tabs on the battery condition this is likely a battery not installed properly before launch rather than falling out during flight problem. The alternative being ejection on impact which is surprisingly common.