- Joined
- Jul 26, 2018
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 5
- Age
- 35
Hello everyone. Last Saturday, 7/21/18 I had an incident with my DJI Phantom 4 Drone. I was operating the drone from a lake-front beach, so it was very open and clear. When I took off my battery was at 70% and the homepoint was recorded prior to take-off. I took off and was flying for a few minutes and everything seemed normal. All of a sudden, my drone started climbing in altitude on its own, I tried to use the joystick to direct it to descend and it would not respond, it kept going up. I hit Return to Home, it did not respond, it kept climbing. I tried AutoLand, it would still not respond. It climbed until it reached 500 meters in altitude, which is the maximum allowed in the settings. I tried Return to Home & Auto Land again, nothing would happen. I tried to change the maximum height in the settings, and this would not make it come down either.
I still had full control of the drone EXCEPT to descend, Return to Home, and Auto Land. The battery was dying and time was ticking, meanwhile the drone was still at 1,640 Feet. I tried to call DJI technical support, but, this was after hours. We were quickly realizing that the drone would likely fall out of the sky once the battery completely drained. We were around many people on the beach and did not want to risk hitting anyone, so, we made sure the drone was above the lake that we were next to and set out in our boat as fast as we could to get near it.
When the battery was critically low, the drone began to descent on its own. I kept receiving low voltage warnings and Not Enough Force / ESC Error messages. The last recorded height in the flight log is 817 Feet high at 18 minutes into the flight, the drone dropped from there and splashed hard into the lake sinking like a rock. We tried to get close to retrieve it but we were not successful.
I have called DJI several times to report this incident and to try to get help. I have flight logs, pictures, and videos of this entire incident happening.
DJI refuses to help because my drone is over 1 year old. What can I do? The drone CLEARLY had a malfuntion of some sort. I tried everything to get this drone down safely and unfortunately I was not able to.
Any tips, help, or advice? Thank you!
I still had full control of the drone EXCEPT to descend, Return to Home, and Auto Land. The battery was dying and time was ticking, meanwhile the drone was still at 1,640 Feet. I tried to call DJI technical support, but, this was after hours. We were quickly realizing that the drone would likely fall out of the sky once the battery completely drained. We were around many people on the beach and did not want to risk hitting anyone, so, we made sure the drone was above the lake that we were next to and set out in our boat as fast as we could to get near it.
When the battery was critically low, the drone began to descent on its own. I kept receiving low voltage warnings and Not Enough Force / ESC Error messages. The last recorded height in the flight log is 817 Feet high at 18 minutes into the flight, the drone dropped from there and splashed hard into the lake sinking like a rock. We tried to get close to retrieve it but we were not successful.
I have called DJI several times to report this incident and to try to get help. I have flight logs, pictures, and videos of this entire incident happening.
DJI refuses to help because my drone is over 1 year old. What can I do? The drone CLEARLY had a malfuntion of some sort. I tried everything to get this drone down safely and unfortunately I was not able to.
Any tips, help, or advice? Thank you!