Can someone tell me what happened? Scared to fly now.

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I thought it would be a good idea to update the firmware for everything since I hadn't done it in a while. But after this, I'm inclined to leave well enough alone. Anyway, did all 3 batteries, the bird, and the RC. Popped it up for a quick flight, about a minute or 2, and everything seemed to be fine.

Fast forward 2 nights later, I went down to the beach to go fly. I had a compass error, but I figured it was likely due to the fact that it was powered on on a picnic table. I decide to do a calibration anyway. I mostly use Litchi, but the button on calibrating the compass didn't seem to work or it wasn't providing instruction. So I bailed on it and used DJI Go instead. Compass calibrates, bird takes off, and everything is good. Fly an entire battery with no issues using DJI Go.

I was anxious to get in the air, hoping to get a shot of a small cruise ship entering the channel and that's why I stuck with DJI Go the first flight. The second battery, I switched to Litchi. I've never had any issues before and it seemed to be doing alright. All of the sudden I notice this on my feed.

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I high tailed it back to me and it made it back. The entire time I'm watching and waiting for it to fall out of the sky. This was last night. I have no idea if it was the gimbal or if it was the quad itself. It jittered a little more. I don't know if I was hit by a bird or something. There didn't appear to be any damage, but it was getting dark and I didn't take that close of a look.

Here's a link to the HD log. This happened at the farthest point out. I've flown out here a dozen times before.

HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

Someone help me and give me some confidence back please.
 
I've heard it's a bad idea to calibrate on a sandy beach because sand often has iron in it that will interfere with a good calibration. I think Meta posted that once...

That's all I got
 
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I'm fairly new to quad flying but from the footage IMHO it looks like the gimbal and not the quad itself. At least not an out of the ordinary tilt...as far as why the gimbal acted the way it did, I'm sure people more experienced than I, will be able to help.
 
I have no idea if it was the gimbal or if it was the quad itself.
If you upload your TXT flight log here and post a link back here, we can take a look at your flight log data and answer this question.
 
Duplicate thought from above, my bad.
I am only speculating but I would start with a gimbal calibration. I guessing you are thinking the drone was tilting, but if that was the case wouldn't the gimbal have maintained a lock on the horizon. To me it looks like the gimbal was moving, not the drone.


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This happened to me on my 2nd drone p3a was flying at night then suddenly my drone spin out of control 3x then stops lost signal then it return home when I check my video seems like something was wrong with the gimbal looks like it got stock and wants to go back to its normal possession. It was scary.after that Incident I calibrate everything 1st the imu then the gimbal then the compass. Everything works fine now.

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You certainly might get compass error from picnic table launch, the wooden ones often have metal underneath.
The solution is just to move it to a better spot rather than attempt to re-calibrate.
As others have suggested the sudden tilting looks like the gimbal had a funny turn and is not something to be unduly alarmed by.unless it keeps doing it or does it ever more often.
If the quad had done that dramatic tilting it would also have lurched violently sideways.
 
I have sometimes seen this when a strong breeze hits the the gimble is trying to adjust for the drone movement. I normally just hoover to let it calm down.....every time I think crash...and when over water even more upsetting....
 
After a firmware update IMU and compass calibration is recommended.
 
Hi DesignFlaw06, I have had a close look at your HealthyDrones report and everything checks out perfect BUT,
your battery was the problem, look at the first cell it is down to 46% and that caused the Jitters.

I have a Phantom 3 Advance and had exactly the same problem only one cell but in my case it came down to land automatically and also had a fresh battery in it and one cell dropped by 50% and got the same read out in Healthy Drones as you did. I have put the battery aside and have had no problems (the reason this happens is that the 4 cells are out of balance in the power feed to the onboard computer and reads it initially as a total battery power failure until it adjusts itself in my case it landed)

If you do the same for a while and fly with other batteries and do some short flights then check Healthy Drones you will see all is ok with your aircraft.

I really love Healthy Drones and after every day's flying I check everything on Healthy Drones.

Your confidence and aircraft are fine and I wish you well.

Cheers, JV
 
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Posted the clip in a few other places. It was brought to the attention that the the props never enter the shot. With that much tilt and I had a high frame rate because of the time of day, I would have seen the props in the shot and the gimbal would have still tried to auto-level.

IMU, gimbal, and compass calibration are going to happen next, followed by some low altitude nearby flights.

Hi DesignFlaw06, I have had a close look at your HealthyDrones report and everything checks out perfect BUT,
your battery was the problem, look at the first cell it is down to 46% and that caused the Jitters.

So here is a more detailed log view. It does show a 0.161V deviation, but almost right at the start. The part where it started tilting was at the furthest point from home. Everything appears to be normal there.
Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
 
Hi DesignFlaw06, I stick with your battery being the problem. A gimbal is very sensitive to power fluctuation.
Not seeing the props is not relevant I get that too.
 
^ Doink is thinking what I am: you hit the button the bottom of the remote and changed the gimbal setting.

Edit: sorry, the C2 button on the bottom of my remote is programmed to change from FPV to FOLLOW, but yours may not. However, the setting could have been changed.
 
I thought it would be a good idea to update the firmware for everything since I hadn't done it in a while. But after this, I'm inclined to leave well enough alone. Anyway, did all 3 batteries, the bird, and the RC. Popped it up for a quick flight, about a minute or 2, and everything seemed to be fine.

Fast forward 2 nights later, I went down to the beach to go fly. I had a compass error, but I figured it was likely due to the fact that it was powered on on a picnic table. I decide to do a calibration anyway. I mostly use Litchi, but the button on calibrating the compass didn't seem to work or it wasn't providing instruction. So I bailed on it and used DJI Go instead. Compass calibrates, bird takes off, and everything is good. Fly an entire battery with no issues using DJI Go.

I was anxious to get in the air, hoping to get a shot of a small cruise ship entering the channel and that's why I stuck with DJI Go the first flight. The second battery, I switched to Litchi. I've never had any issues before and it seemed to be doing alright. All of the sudden I notice this on my feed.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

I high tailed it back to me and it made it back. The entire time I'm watching and waiting for it to fall out of the sky. This was last night. I have no idea if it was the gimbal or if it was the quad itself. It jittered a little more. I don't know if I was hit by a bird or something. There didn't appear to be any damage, but it was getting dark and I didn't take that close of a look.

Here's a link to the HD log. This happened at the farthest point out. I've flown out here a dozen times before.

HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

Someone help me and give me some confidence back please.
.
...DF, could you please provide the DJIFlightRecord_*.txt FlightLog File, thx...
.
IIIDaemon
www.GasRecovery.net
 

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