Depressing first post.

[J4Berg]

I bought a phantom 4 pro a few months back and it really rekindled my love for photography. I love flying it and taking pictures from an all new perspective.

A couple days ago I saw some dark clouds off to the north and I wanted to quickly fly up and snap a couple pics of what was coming and shortly after getting up in the air it’s like the Zeus decided to unleash his fury. Winds picked up fast and started pushing my drone away from me. I started to panic and tried to get it back over towards me in attempt to land it but the wind gusts were too much and kept pushing it further away and that’s when the a downpour started and I was still trying to push the drone back towards me.

I had hit return to home while signal was in and out. And shortly thereafter it disconnected. In hindsight I should have never even attempted to send it up. When it started to fly away I should have cut the motors off while it was over an area where it would have fell in a non populated area.

Needless to say I looked in the area of last known location. It was last connected over a neighborhood. I looked in the area where the signal was last connected but I couldn’t see anything and I didn’t want to rummage around peoples yards and get in trouble for trespassing.

I guess what I am looking for is any ideas. What should I do? With return the home hit would the drone possibly come back towards me at all? Could it have been pushed further away from last known location? Would the rain fried it and killed it sending it plummeting to the ground in that general area? I have sort of come to the conclusion that it’s never coming back or will be found.

I have this pit in my stomach because I saved forever to buy this thing and now it’s like I just threw the $1500 out the window. A real crap lesson to learn. So much that could have been done in hindsight. Thanks for any help or ideas and sorry for the long winded post.

 

[LarBear360]

I bought a phantom 4 pro a few months back and it really rekindled my love for photography. I love flying it and taking pictures from an all new perspective.

A couple days ago I saw some dark clouds off to the north and I wanted to quickly fly up and snap a couple pics of what was coming and shortly after getting up in the air it’s like the Zeus decided to unleash his fury. Winds picked up fast and started pushing my drone away from me. I started to panic and tried to get it back over towards me in attempt to land it but the wind gusts were too much and kept pushing it further away and that’s when the a downpour started and I was still trying to push the drone back towards me.

I had hit return to home while signal was in and out. And shortly thereafter it disconnected. In hindsight I should have never even attempted to send it up. When it started to fly away I should have cut the motors off while it was over an area where it would have fell in a non populated area.

Needless to say I looked in the area of last known location. It was last connected over a neighborhood. I looked in the area where the signal was last connected but I couldn’t see anything and I didn’t want to rummage around peoples yards and get in trouble for trespassing.

I guess what I am looking for is any ideas. What should I do? With return the home hit would the drone possibly come back towards me at all? Could it have been pushed further away from last known location? Would the rain fried it and killed it sending it plummeting to the ground in that general area? I have sort of come to the conclusion that it’s never coming back or will be found.

I have this pit in my stomach because I saved forever to buy this thing and now it’s like I just threw the $1500 out the window. A real crap lesson to learn. So much that could have been done in hindsight. Thanks for any help or ideas and sorry for the long winded post.

I would suggest uploading your flight log. There's a good chance we can determine what happened and the approximate location.

Click here DJI Flight Log Viewer - Phantom Help and follow the instructions. Then post a link back here and let these guys take a look under the hood.

 

[Fly Dawg]

I had hit return to home while signal was in and out. And shortly thereafter it disconnected. In hindsight I should have never even attempted to send it up. When it started to fly away I should have cut the motors off while it was over an area where it would have fell in a non populated area.

Most likely since you mentioned the signal was in and out, without seeing the data I can't verify, however I would suspect that it was only your downlink that was in and out. That being said and only "assumed" pressing RTH should have begun the RTH process but with the wind and at this point unknown RTH altitude, I suspect that the winds were too strong for the AC to return. The rain would may have had some effect, but more likely simply the wind. There are really too many assumptions to be made without seeing the data to verify.

 

[J4Berg]

I can upload the flight log when I get home from work and I may include the link to a GoFundMe hah.

 

[WV. Rootman]

You have more power in you controlling it than in RTH. You also had a better chance at lowering it before you tried to return home. Rain probably blocked your insignia. Of course that is past. Your phantom can handle wet fairly well. If you find it soon, it could come out OK minus the battery. don't give up. Also the crash?

 

[J4Berg]

Yeah but general panic set it and I was not thinking clearly at all so I was trying everything in order to get it to possibly return home. If I don’t retrieve the drone it will probably be a very expensive lesson learned.

 

[WV. Rootman]

Yeah but general panic set it and I was not thinking clearly at all so I was trying everything in order to get it to possibly return home. If I don’t retrieve the drone it will probably be a very expensive lesson learned.

I know how you feel. That's why i bought a phantom 4 for 799 $US. The important thing is getting the flight records posted. Very important.

 

[BigAl07]

I can upload the flight log when I get home from work and I may include the link to a GoFundMe hah.

Welcome to the forum and sorry you lost your aircraft. Many of us learn our lessons the hard (expensive) way. Flying in conditions outside of your ability is the cause of loss of aircraft more often than not.

I'd suggest skipping the GoFundMe link as this will get removed expeditiously.

 

[J4Berg]

Thanks. Yeah very expensive lesson indeed. I was joking about a GoFundMe. I wouldn’t ask people for charity when it came to my stupidity.

 

[ROD PAINTER]

I really feel bad about your loss!

 

[J4Berg]

I figured out how to get the flight log off of my phone so here is the flight log from my doomed flight. I see that I didn't realize i hot the switch into Atti mode until about a minute in. Oh brother I feel I performed like an idiot when panic mode happened.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

 

[Fly Dawg]

You changed to ATTI at 17 seconds......according to the the posted data. Will need to download the remainder to say for sure.

 

[LarBear360]

Fly Dawg is the pro here, but I can say from reading many of these before, the drone most likely got caught up in the wind. At 58 seconds, there is a High Wind Velocity warning at just 230 feet altitude. At 1 min 41 sec it started to climb to 455 feet before the RTH kicked in at your direction. At this point the AC speed was reduced to less than 10MPH. It was, albeit slowly, coming home until 2 mins 51 seconds when it started to drift away. The log ends at 2 min 58 seconds with 79% battery. I don't know if there's more to the log.

Let's see what the experts have to say.

 

[J4Berg]

That was the entire log and it had me scratching my head. Disconnected? Overcome with the rain? I have no clue what the heck happened. I had the controller still on. We got in the car and drove to the area on the map. The return to home was still beeping. Drove around the area several times. The remote never reconnected to the drone.

 

[MotorCycle-Man]

Did you have your name address and city and phone number inside or taped securely to the Drone...I have mine in a small packet on the back of the camera and also in the square gaps on the batterys...On them i use the name address stickers we all get around Christmas time for a donation !

One time i had a very scary flight all of a sudden....Things had changed then drastically for my drone flight i checked and found out my finger had hit the Gps / Atti mode switch and i was NOT in GPS mode No More !...So i added a few rubber bands to the switch to prevent it happening again and it is easy to remove if i need to !

 

[Meta4]

I figured out how to get the flight log off of my phone so here is the flight log from my doomed flight. I see that I didn't realize i hot the switch into Atti mode until about a minute in. Oh brother I feel I performed like an idiot when panic mode happened.

Here's what I make of the flight.
You launched in a rush before getting GPS and a home point recorded.
You didn't get GPS until 27 seconds after liftoff but you had hardly touched the left stick so the homepoint will have been fairly close to where you launched.
The strong wind message only means the Phantom had calculated a wind of > 7 metres/sec (which isn't terribly strong).
At 0:49 and 200 ft altitude, you are traveling at 58 mph in attl mode with full right stick.
That suggests a significant tailwind heading out.
At 0:53 you turned back. At 220 ft with full right stick the Phantom was going backwards at 14 mph.
You climbed to 470 feet !!
If you are battling a strong wind, staying high or climbing higher is the worst thing to do.
The wind will only be stronger up high.
It's best to get down as low as is safe to fly to get out of the strongest wind.

It looks like the wind was coming in gusts of variable strength.
When the data ends at 2:58, you are 470 ft up and going backwards at 8-9 mph with full right stick.

Once the Phantom lost signal, it will have slowed to RTH auto speed which means it will have gone backwards even faster than it was with you pushing the right stick.
It still has 79% battery so may have stayed up for perhaps 15 minutes longer and if the strong wind lasted that long it could have blown another 2 miles or more further to the northeast before autolanding due to low battery.

In strong wind situations, never fly away downwind.
Instead, try pushing against the wind going out.
That might be slow but you get an easy trip home again.
If you can't make headway against the headwind going out, give up and bring it back down.

If stuck fighting a headwind coming home, don't stay up high.

 

[African wildlife]

J4Berg: We usually fly in a mountainous or mountain plateau area, 5,500ft above sea level where wind is a common if not constant issue. We fly a P4P+. We’ve been up to the maximum height of 500m or just above 1,500ft on a number of occasions - so an overall altitude of 7,000ft above sea level. The high wind velocity warning commonly pops up on screen, but we’ve always found the drone has handles high winds well. Obviously, if it’s really really windy, we don’t fly.

As has been said above, the wind speed usually increases the higher you go. Every 500ft elevation makes a noticeable difference.

Perhaps the biggest cause of irrational thinking and associated behaviour that leads to messing up is being emotionally swamped. The negative, unhelpful emotion “floods” your brain. Panicking is included in this. Aircraft pilots, for example, get good training in the risks of this so-called human factor. If you feel yourself panicking, breath deeply and slowly and keep trying to be logical. Let go of the RC controls until the initial surge of emotion has started to subside, just letting the drone hover.

We always wait before taking off until the green GPS signal has been confirmed - even if we are in a hurry, such as being faced with an unusual wildlife opportunity. And, usually, we wait until getting confirmation that the home point has been updated.

I would urge you to begin saving for another P4P. You already know that the quality of the camera delivers. Yes, it’s a tough and expensive lesson to - hopefully - learn.....but now it’s onwards and upwards (or not so upwards in high winds). What has happened is now in the past, which will fade with time.

Almost everyone underestimates the value of “be prepared” because it applies to so much and on so many levels. It’s one of the essential thinking skills to be successful in just about any area of life - along with “never give up” as another. Most so-called “accidents” in life are unnecessary more accurately best described as “incidents” - and could have been prevented with better preparedness.

 

[Nightwolf]

View attachment 103759 Did you have your name address and city and phone number inside or taped securely to the Drone...I have mine in a small packet on the back of the camera and also in the square gaps on the batterys...On them i use the name address stickers we all get around Christmas time for a donation !

One time i had a very scary flight all of a sudden....Things had changed then drastically for my drone flight i checked and found out my finger had hit the Gps / Atti mode switch and i was NOT in GPS mode No More !...So i added a few rubber bands to the switch to prevent it happening again and it is easy to remove if i need to !

I don't care who ya are that's funny right there

 

[WV. Rootman]

J4Berg: We usually fly in a mountainous or mountain plateau area, 5,500ft above sea level where wind is a common if not constant issue. We fly a P4P+. We’ve been up to the maximum height of 500m or just above 1,500ft on a number of occasions - so an overall altitude of 7,000ft above sea level. The high wind velocity warning commonly pops up on screen, but we’ve always found the drone has handles high winds well. Obviously, if it’s really really windy, we don’t fly.

As has been said above, the wind speed usually increases the higher you go. Every 500ft elevation makes a noticeable difference.

Perhaps the biggest cause of irrational thinking and associated behaviour that leads to messing up is being emotionally swamped. The negative, unhelpful emotion “floods” your brain. Panicking is included in this. Aircraft pilots, for example, get good training in the risks of this so-called human factor. If you feel yourself panicking, breath deeply and slowly and keep trying to be logical. Let go of the RC controls until the initial surge of emotion has started to subside, just letting the drone hover.

We always wait before taking off until the green GPS signal has been confirmed - even if we are in a hurry, such as being faced with an unusual wildlife opportunity. And, usually, we wait until getting confirmation that the home point has been updated.

I would urge you to begin saving for another P4P. You already know that the quality of the camera delivers. Yes, it’s a tough and expensive lesson to - hopefully - learn.....but now it’s onwards and upwards (or not so upwards in high winds). What has happened is now in the past, which will fade with time.

Almost everyone underestimates the value of “be prepared” because it applies to so much and on so many levels. It’s one of the essential thinking skills to be successful in just about any area of life - along with “never give up” as another. Most so-called “accidents” in life are unnecessary more accurately best described as “incidents” - and could have been prevented with better preparedness.

It seems like an off beat example. I have admired Stonewall Jackson. He taught artillery. He would made his students do classroom till they could hardly take anymore. After they learned everything about the physic's of artillery they couldn't wait to do hands on, they thought. They practiced artillery till they could do it in their sleep. They day of reckoning came at Bull Run. The north was supposed to walk all over Jackson and the Confederacy. All hell was breaking loose. Jackson's men were so methodical and undaunted by the onslaught from the north. They kept doing what they could do in their sleep. So much so, that they claim that Jackson's men was a major reason the south won that battle. General Lee called Jackson his right arm.
Prepare well, before everything comes flying at you.

 

[MotorCycle-Man]

WV Rootman........very well said....I agree 100%......Thanks for the above..