Flyaway survey responses needed!

[Spork]

What I would like to see is a way to check where the Phantom thinks the last "home" position was.

It sounds to me like the phantoms are losing connection with the transmitter and switching to RTH mode, but the "home" location is somehow getting set wrong, resulting in them trying to fly off to some unknown location.

When working with mapping and lat/long stuff, I've seen bugs where you'll get back a result of 0,0 as coords, which would potentially explain this, but I would hope they would put in a distance check, and say if home is farther than a couple of miles away, just land instead of trying to get back since the battery wouldn't last that long anyway.

Just some speculation, but seems plausible to me.

 

[CameraGuy]

I think a better survey, how about people posting how many time the RTH saved them from losing their Phantom... Bet more people have recovered theirs, than the actual amount lost from flyaways.

From my reading, and personal experience, most people try the RTH somewhere during their panic. I know I did on the second one. On the first one, I tried ATTI and tried to increase the throttle to lift it up until I could get control. The experience was like pushing it into the water.

D

 

[Roadkilt]

RTH needs a good battery too, as it responds, waits, then rises 60 feet, a big draw on a depleted battery, then translates to its original GPS coordinate, which against a wind (always stronger above the ground than where you are feeling it) takes more juice than you'd think. Then waits, then descends. For me the whole process took about a minute and a half of nerve wracking patience. Even though I gave myself 5 minutes regular flying time with a big safety margin of two minutes i needed two more minutes to get back. 9 minutes and i was on vapours. It was in auto descent at that point because it didn't have enough power to execute a full RTH. Got back more or less, bounced a few times on a hard landing. That flyaway was likely my fault in hindsight as I've flown in that area many times since with no issue.

 

[mroberts]

Here's an interesting note regarding the Wookong-H that may be relevant for us:

"Please be advised we at ... STRONGLY advise that you remove all vibration from your copter - this includes static and dynamic balancing of the motor and all the Main and Tail rotor blades - Dont mount the GPS MAG pod close to a buzzing vibrating tail !! ... as a manufacturer of IMU ourselves we recommend using proper quality PU GEL mounting materials for the IMU (not the default DJI tape unless you are at expert level in balancing) - We are not experiencing any issues in daily flying but we maintain a video level of vibration free platform. Be advised that uncontrolled prop or motor vibration will saturate the IMU sensors with junk data and spikes in sensor data from uncontrolled prop vibration are considered the main risk to DJI CPU errors. The same applies to the GPS MAG compass pod which must be mounted on Gel foam tape away from RMI or magnetic interference. If you attach a GoProHD2 camera set to 1080p30fps directly to the airframe - there should be NO gello in the video. This will indicate that the airframe has no resonance nor latent hazardous vibrations. This advice pre-dates and post dates the DJI MAG recall. Please dont make any assumptions that motors or blades come pre-balanced to this level as that will be your first mistake to assume - Please dont route data wires (RC Rx->CPU) near ESC or FPV equipment. Do a FULL range check with any FPV equipment installed and running. Set your failsafe properly. Please check everything for vibration isolation. Never assume."

Some of this also backs up my EMI/EMC concerns.

 

[VIV]

Just had a flyaway. Hard crash, destroyed the Phantom 2 and gimbal bracket. GoPro [Hero 3+] is ok. I have flown this particular unit some 25 times. 20 of those were using the wi-fi feature between my iPhone GoPro app and the GoPro on the Phantom. On another Phantom 2, which I flew some 60-70 times, I used the wi-fi feature 90% of the time, this time using a Gopro Hero 3. The US dealer who sold both to me, never warned me of this potential problem. It was very scary...people could have been severely hurt; and/or property could have been damaged.

 

[Great Pumpkin]

My only flyaway happened when my P2V took off from a manhole cover. Yeah, dumb, but I was a rookie and didn't really know. Fortunately it flew only about 100' and then turned just before hitting a tree, and controlled was regained immediately.

 

[houldsworth1]

Very interesting - thanks for taking the time to do that.

 

[Texas Ranger]

I just experienced a flyaway.

I was in the middle of the country in a field. I thought at first everything was okay but then it just became unresponsive and started flying away from me. It went about 50 yards when I finally was able to kill it mid air and it dropped into some fluffy grass. I was very fortunate.

This device has me very nervous with how unstable it can be. I have invested a lot of money into this thing and this is the second time it has done something like this. The first, I had to buy a new gimble after the crash.

 

[Wind_Shear]

Has my first flyaway last week in the mountains. Phantom 2 NV V3, 3-axis gimbal, GoPro 3 Black, NEW V2.1 ESC's.

Had flown for 20 minutes or so as various altitudes up to 300' over a large field in a very rural area. Was about to land when it launched itself to the left and down, crashing upside down into a sand pit in an empty playground. At the least, I'll need to replace my motors, as they are full of sand.

I had just upgraded my ESC's per the board's recommendation as I had another equipment failure before leaving on my trip. I was flying at 60' and suddenly lost power for about 1 second, recovered, flew back towards home, and the same thing happened twice more before finally causing me to crash into some tall grass.

I have flown roughly 200 other flights on this quad, which I purchased new in January (to replace my original which dropped straight out of the air from 300' and was destroyed in December).

Very discouraging, but I'm going to replace the motors with the hope the NAZA isn't failing (all the internal connections are perfect). No more over-water flying for me for a while.

 

[bk1]

went through customer service hell with dji, but the headaches turned out to be worth it. after reviewing my flight logs they determined no pilot error, they replaced my flyaway phantom.i`ve had new one for about two weeks now, so far so good

 

[mrcrane2u]

Well lucky you for getting dji to replace your fly away i had a fly away and got two free batteries for my p3p that bought to replace the standard