I had a crazy-bad flight this evening that may have been caused by weak TX batteries.
Because flying at home is very tricky -- ponds, trees, and other obstacles -- I tend to shoot the Phantom up and away, to get some open air space. On this first flight of the day, I was also using my GoPro 3 for the first time for FPV.
My first indication of trouble was an apparent lack of response from the Phantom when I tried to turn away from a line of 200 foot tall trees. I ripped off the goggles just in time to see the Phantom dive into a giant spruce, at a level about 100 feet above our cabin. I killed the power as it cartwheeled through the branches, landing with a thud on our roof.
The good news is that it survived the crash without any apparent damage, just scuffed up the props a bit.
I did a full calibration, which went OK (the usual Error 26 message disappeared with advanced calibration). But... no matter what I tried, I couldn't get IOC to go to Home Lock in the Assistant. I decided to recalibrate the TX and it wouldn't behave, either -- I couldn't get the "beep" that signals a successful calibration of HL and CL.
Frustrated, I decided to try some very careful low-level flying. This was a fiasco, with the Phantom veering into the bushes and basically out of control. I persisted, however, and finally got what seemed to be reasonable behavior -- and then the TX started beeping continuously.
At that point I gave up. I'd already checked two of the lithium AA's in the TX and they were strong, so I assumed the TX was going bad on me.
In fact, it turned out that the two AA's I hadn't checked (from the same battery package as the strong ones) were quite weak.
Was all of this erratic behavior and crash due to a couple of weak AA's? And by the way... with 4 fresh batteries Home Lock was enabled again on IOC.
A final thought... when my Phantom headed into the tree I had an awful thought: flyaway! Saved by a spruce.....
Because flying at home is very tricky -- ponds, trees, and other obstacles -- I tend to shoot the Phantom up and away, to get some open air space. On this first flight of the day, I was also using my GoPro 3 for the first time for FPV.
My first indication of trouble was an apparent lack of response from the Phantom when I tried to turn away from a line of 200 foot tall trees. I ripped off the goggles just in time to see the Phantom dive into a giant spruce, at a level about 100 feet above our cabin. I killed the power as it cartwheeled through the branches, landing with a thud on our roof.
The good news is that it survived the crash without any apparent damage, just scuffed up the props a bit.
I did a full calibration, which went OK (the usual Error 26 message disappeared with advanced calibration). But... no matter what I tried, I couldn't get IOC to go to Home Lock in the Assistant. I decided to recalibrate the TX and it wouldn't behave, either -- I couldn't get the "beep" that signals a successful calibration of HL and CL.
Frustrated, I decided to try some very careful low-level flying. This was a fiasco, with the Phantom veering into the bushes and basically out of control. I persisted, however, and finally got what seemed to be reasonable behavior -- and then the TX started beeping continuously.
At that point I gave up. I'd already checked two of the lithium AA's in the TX and they were strong, so I assumed the TX was going bad on me.
In fact, it turned out that the two AA's I hadn't checked (from the same battery package as the strong ones) were quite weak.
Was all of this erratic behavior and crash due to a couple of weak AA's? And by the way... with 4 fresh batteries Home Lock was enabled again on IOC.
A final thought... when my Phantom headed into the tree I had an awful thought: flyaway! Saved by a spruce.....
