Devastated, flight number 124, Phantom 3 at the bottom of the ocean

[Flying Dutchman]

I hope you get some resolution. Not knowing is the hard part, so you can learn or make adjustments for any future flights (if and when you get another drone).

@Rumbaar yes that is the hard part the not knowing what went wrong. And for sure I will get another Phantom. Will not miss it for the world. Its too much fun and a great hobby.

 

[ELCHEAPO]

thank you @ELCHEAPO Its a brand new battery, and yes I always charge my batterys after flight. So it was laying around for three days. I think I did not fly to agrassively, I never fly full throttle all the time. But when it was a battery faillure should the Phantom than not be blacked out? In the movie we can see the copter go down. I dont now maybe you are right. My hope is at DJI

I'm not sure to be honest - I'm thinking those voltages are too low after 31 seconds of flight & you flew a further 7mins..I hope you find answers bro
Some more people on here will chip in & give advice

 

[Mark The Droner]

I'm not an expert by any means, and I don't even own a P3, but here is what I see FWIW. It appears you have a relatively new battery that's been through 16 cycles, right? At the 31 second mark, you've got nearly 100 mv difference between the highest and lowest cell. That seems like a lot. At the 55 second mark, the cells are apart by 100 mv.

None of my four 3S batteries are that far apart at any time. So maybe that is what caused your battery to shut down.

We can see the temp climbs pretty rapidly to almost 100 degrees F. My batteries typically drop in temp during flight when I'm flying in cool weather. They start at 60 F and go down to the 50s and even the 40s.

Finally - the initial capacity shows only 4438 mAh. That seems low, doesn't it?

You say you didn't fly for a week. Let me ask you this - and this is important: When was the last time you charged that battery? What day did you last charge it - exactly?

Looks like a battery problem. But it certainly appears the fault lies more on the battery than on you.

Thanks for posting. Sorry for your loss.

 

[dirtybum]

Having been in your shoes many times, one which was the famous p3 battery cutoff which dji is fixing and others where i ran it down to 0% on distance runs, others where it dropped with camera rollin prob from motor failure or bird strike. I can offer this, if you could watch it fall it still had power and prob had a motor stop. Ive had one land in the river and coulnd get it back, so i dont fly over water now. Since then ive crashed 3 birds on land & was able to recover them and rebuild

 

[AIRNUTS]

I feel for your lost, every time I take off I get butterflies on my stomach, thinking that something mat happen, so far so good but you never know
Did you get a chace to switch to ATTI when you noticed that there was a problem ???

 

[ELCHEAPO]

There's nothing on there that could explain what happened as far as I can see, looks a very healthy flight until you go down.

Hopefully DJI will step up. Best of luck.

You might need to check your battery voltages when you fly as it doesn't look like a 'very healthy flight' as far as this battery is concerned.

 

[Keith Lampman]

 

[4wd]

That was sad, but we have to accept a chance of some sudden failure every time we fly.
Considering the location I wonder if a sea bird hit it?
Maybe a motor failed. It looked as though power stayed on as it fell so I guess battery was not implicated.

 

[msinger]

You might need to check your battery voltages when you fly as it doesn't look like a 'very healthy flight' as far as this battery is concerned.

I don't think a battery could cause the Phantom to fall like that. It most likely struck a bird, a motor died, or a prop flew off.

 

[ELCHEAPO]

That was sad, but we have to accept a chance of some sudden failure every time we fly.
Considering the location I wonder if a sea bird hit it?
Maybe a motor failed. It looked as though power stayed on as it fell so I guess battery was not implicated.

Possible especially after 120+ flights - I've just found a couple of hairline cracks at the rear of both arms. Similar flight numbers. Still going with battery though.

 

[TacAir42]

DUDE! This sounds exactly like my flight the other day and you have a ton of compass errors in the last few seconds of flight. Exactly the same situation here. Even your video looks the same as mine and I did not get hit by a bird. I have seen a bird strike in a hover and you typically see their wing or feathers as a result.

Here is my thread on my particular crash...I did not recover the P3P either.

Strange Crash: P3P Lost, Compass Went Haywire | DJI Phantom Forum
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

I am contacting DJI today.

I am, ore should I say was, the proud owner of a Phantom 3 Advanced. I began flying Phantoms in 2012 , started with the number one and worked my way up to number three. And what a machine that is. The technology took a big leap the last few years.

Last week I went for a flight. I did not fly for a week because of the weather here in Holland. But it cleared so I went out for a fly. I have four batterys and I had already used three so I was into my last flight for the day. Prior to the flights I had updated my firmware to the latest version v1.6.0040. Calibrated the MUI and compass after updating. I always fly with the original DJI app (2.4.3) and I take good care of my airplaine. Check the Phantom and her props between flights, never take off with a battery lower than 100 procent and change the props if nessesary. As far as I now, I really did nothing wrong.

So I took of and everything looked fine, no strange warnings. No buildings, no interference. But suddenly after 7 minuts and 6 seconds the airplane went bizarre and crashed. Black screen, pushed the RTH but I already new, I lost my phantom. Unbelieve, angry all kind of different emotions I went threw. And now I am sad. Very sad. I now it can happen, always be prepared loosing your Phantom, but so fast after I bought it. I cant send it back to DJI because its on the "bottom" of the sea. This part of the waddensea fells dry with low tide but its like quicksand, I really tried but its to dangerous.

I hope DJI is gone help me, its fuc.. up to go home with only your RC.

Here is the flight:

Dropbox - 2015_12_29_12_23_52.mp4

And here is:

HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

 

[ELCHEAPO]

I don't think a battery could cause the Phantom to fall like that. It most likely struck a bird, a motor died, or a prop flew off.

Look at the battery voltages after 31 seconds after take off. Then 7 more minutes of steaming around. Battery

 

[ukglyn]

I'm also no expert but if it was a battery failure you would not see the bird go down in the video, the video feed will just stop? no?

I am no expert either but that seems like a very good & valid point to me.

 

[RudydG]

Wow, sad, i feel with you.
Had a crash some weeks ago, but my battery died, went from 4.2 v tot 2.9 in just some 60 seconds, plane went down at the border of the "Schelde", you know ;-) In my cas, everything stopped at the same moment, video, motors, drop down.
I had the luck to be able to take it out of the mud (after 1 hour searching in the rising water), and after repairing the gimball, and not using that battery anymore, i am flying again.
After that flight, i start using healthydrones. (should not be neccesary, but is now my standard procedure)
What i see in your case, 2 things, 2 critical battery errors in less than a minute, but, more important i presume, the compass errors. You compass i (was) really all over the place.
Did you check that with "good flights" also?
And the behaviour of that battery, find the same thing in the past with the same battery?

Hope DJI will give you a new one.

 

[RudydG]

Sorry, after checking again, the compass error is probably during the crash. But just check anyway on earlier flights.

 

[robinb]

Why was it switching between gps & atti mode at 7 min mark ?

 

[TacAir42]

Why was it switching between gps & atti mode at 7 min mark ?

That is what mine did as well, then crash.
My log:
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

 

[oakmeadows]

Hello and im gutted to hear what has happened to you , i have the p3 pro and i would be so sick if that happened to me no words anyone can say will make you feel any better but hopefully one day you may get another and this will be a distant nightmare good luck


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[oakmeadows]

Hi again i see someone mentioned goodflights what exactly is this any help would be very grateful


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[Deanster]

A crash after Critical battery error on a cold-weather flight after a battery lies around for several days...

A familiar pattern here on the forum.

I'll defer to the experts here, but it's increasingly clear that there's a serious problem with how batteries report capacity when not charged same-day in cold conditions.

I had my P3P force itself to a landing under similar circumstances last month, scared the hell out of me.

The update from a few weeks ago supposedly addresses this issue in part.

OP, sadly my guess is you won't see much help from DJI, in part because you're running old firmware. I hope I'm wrong!

My new mantra is that I top off all batteries on the DAY OF FLIGHT. If they weren't on the charger within 12 hours of flight time, I'd consider not flying that battery.