Flyaway solved??

[Mazz]

I don't know of if my cases were an exception but I will explain what happened here and you can decide for yourself or at least have it in your pocket in case it happens to you.

I have a couple hundred flights with my Phantom 2 Vision Plus (adding up flights on all three batteries). After week two of flying every day, and this being one of several quadcopters I have owned in the past seven years, I felt comfortable opening up my controller and phantom to Naza mode. This, in my experience, is what saved my quad.

I was flying in my back yard some time after all of this. I usually keep it in Phantom Mode while I am flying a bit higher and taking video. This day had no wind and great visibility. I was very close to my take off point, about 150ft up and 50ft out, when all of a sudden it said control signal lost, the quad stopped, started to climb and then just took off in the opposite direction of "home" and myself. I started to panic a bit and ran after it just mashing buttons. A quick thought was to turn off gps. I pulled the switch down to naza m and it stopped flying away and just started gliding. It immediately came back under my command and I was able to fly it back to my feet. I was pretty confident I had just experienced a so called "flyaway" and won.

To confirm my theory, at least a month later I had a very similar experience at a radio controlled park and was able to, once again, catch it and bring it home.

I am not sure if this is right or not but my theory is that, since most people use phantom mode, they are in a situation where once control is lost they can not take it back from the "come home" feature. They are stuck until it lands itself. I think that the GPS may get a weird reading and try to take it home far far away in these rare occasions. That seems to be what happened to me. If you unlock your Phantom you are gaining the option of turning off gps even if it is only in the event of that weird emergency. Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[HarryT]

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Why can't people who fly in Phantom mode flip the switch from GPS to ATTI?

 

[4wd]

Yes, you can do that in Phantom mode too surely?
When you moved the switch to naza m(?) that sounds like you mean ATTI which is available in Phantom mode also.

With IOC enabled you do have the homelock which is great for bringing it closer without full blown RTH if you aren't quite sure where it is or where it's pointing anymore.

 

[ryanhoelzer]

Did you switch from GPS to ATTI and back to GPS? Or to Failsafe and back?

I would think either would do the same thing. in my experimentation just to make sure I could go to Failsafe and back to GPS everything worked as expected.

 

[HarryT]

I think personally that enabling Failsafe on S1 is too dangerous - it's all too easy to flip the switch accidentally. If you need Failsafe, switching off the transmitter achieves the same result.

 

[Mazz]

If I remember correctly, I make a lot of mistakes, when I got the phantom, atti was locked out until you opened up Naza mode on the computer. Is that not the case? I assumed most newer pilots do not bother opening Naza mode.

 

[ryanhoelzer]

That's a good point on the switch. I recently switched to NAZA, I think I'll change the bottom position to ATTI..

Yeah, S1 middle should be ATTI in Phantom or NAZA. I'm pretty sure?

 

[OI Photography]

In Phantom mode, all positions of the right switch are "Safe Fly" (same as GPS in NAZA mode)

It sounds to me like the OP's "flyaway" might have been RTH getting triggered without a proper home point recorded first.

 

[Mazz]

In Phantom mode, all positions of the right switch are "Safe Fly" (same as GPS in NAZA mode)

It sounds to me like the OP's "flyaway" might have been RTH getting triggered without a proper home point recorded first.

Thank you. From my understanding the switches serve no purpose before you open them up. Also, like I mentioned, I believe a lot of people never even open up the switches leaving them stuck after they initiate a "return to home" whether it is on purpose or by fluke or fly-away.
Moral of the story, just put it in NAZA mode so you have the option of turning off GPS mode and allowing you to retake control after the RTH is initiated. If you can't handle atti just don't ever use it. It will just be there just in case.

As for the Home Point being recorded, I do make it a point to use proper start-up procedures. I have had way more successful flights. HOWEVER, like I said before, I do make a lot of mistakes and maybe that was one of them. But if I made the mistake or if there was just a malfunction, maybe that is one of the causes other people are experiencing?

 

[OI Photography]

maybe that is one of the causes other people are experiencing?

Yes, I think a lot of "flyaways" are caused by improper actions like that by the pilot, usually driven by a lack of knowledge or understanding.

And you are correct that what you did is the best way to try to recover in that situation...the first thing to try when a Phantom starts going places you didn't tell it to is to immediately switch to ATTI mode, this gets around many of the actual causes by removing the GPS from the equation.

 

[HarryT]

An even better reason to enable Naza mode (IMHO) is so you get Home Lock on S2. When your bird gets so far away that you lose orientation, just flip the left hand switch down to the bottom, put the RH stick down, and back she comes.

 

[Mazz]

And you are correct that what you did is the best way to try to recover in that situation...the first thing to try when a Phantom starts going places you didn't tell it to is to immediately switch to ATTI mode, this gets around many of the actual causes by removing the GPS from the equation.

This is what I was trying to get across with this post. I have read a lot of articles and posts about the Phantom and flyways and I personally never saw this mentioned. I am hoping people see it and it helps in the future.

 

[ProfessorStein]

There's a sticky thread in the P2V forum. Perhaps it should be moved to General, since it probably applies to more than just the P2V

viewtopic.php?t=4938

 

[OI Photography]

There's a sticky thread in the P2V forum. Perhaps it should be moved to General, since it probably applies to more than just the P2V

viewtopic.php?t=4938

Some of it does, but when Mazz made the comment above I put it on my list to add one that applies to non-Vision models (it's definitely a needed reference)

 

[tferrari]

Good point here. In my opinion, this is one of those things that should be understood and practiced as part of any owner's routine with their P2.

This is an absolutely critical process to use if your GPS ever goes wonky.

We should create a sticky with some of the things that should be understood and practiced like, "How to use P2 RTH feature", "How to stop a VRS stall" and even the one covered in this article "How to enable ATTI mode and correct a GPS-induced flyaway"

I'm sure there are many others that some of the experienced members could suggest.

If someone wanted to write some of these procedures/explanations down, it would really help a lot of people as a forum sticky. Just my two cents!