I don't know what happened it just took off.

[brad90631]

Well after about 150 flights it happened. I was over the street in front of my house. I saw the light blink red once telling my battery was starting to get low. I started to bring it back and it took off before I could turn the receiver off it had made a circle and was heading back home when it crashed into a roof skidded across and then onto the ground. but I never got to turn of the transmitter.

I pre flight my phantom every time it goes up. I never take off without green lights no red. the only difference this time was it took a long time to get GPS lock, and I got the 20 green flashes twice. I updated firmware before my first flight, and I just Calibrated the ICU

I have flown it every day in the last month and half and had no problems no crashes and it handled perfect every time.

both upper and lower shells are cracked, props are gone, but everything else looks ok. my problem is I don't know what cuased it to take off in the first place. good it have been a battery failure. The phantom went in nose down hit the right front arm first.

any body have a battery failure and if so what happened?

 

[brad90631]

update to damage, looks like it broke the board for the left rear ESC. I checked the battery that was in it and it was low but still was at 11.4. i plugged it in and all the controls for the transmitter seemed to work i was able to calibrate without any trouble. i was getting a beep from the engine that had the broken ESC.

Looks like about 100.00 worth of damage. i hope i can figure out what happened so i can make sure it does not happen again. i can not explain the feeling to see my phantom take off on its own and then crash.

 

[Gizmo3000]

scary to hear.

might be a good idea to test it out on a less than full battery next time just to make sure that if for any reason it flies away, it won't travel far

 

[martcerv]

Did you also redo the GPS calibration as you just did the ICU calibration and I thought you needed to redo compass after calibration. GPS out of what should give the GPS error but as it took a while to get GPS before your flight and if you were in an open area your issue may have been compass related.

I have never had a flyaway but I think if it starts to do weird things then you may be better off first trying atti mode to see if you can regain control. The weird issues seem to be GPS related most of the time and losing GPS signal or getting a bad reading could cause the phantom to do unexpected things. In this case if you turn off your radio it will likely make things worse if its the GPS that caused your issue relying on RTH may be a bad idea at that point.

Also accidentally flicking IOC switch to course or homelock mode without realizing it will also cause it to do things you dont expect and you may think its flying away when infact you have just switched to home lock which may make you think you lost control. Also if for some reason your getting poor GPS reception then it will switch from GPS mode to atti mode and if you havent realized it has done this and there is wind around it will take off in a hurry.

 

[FrankB]

I had something similar happen: I accidentally inserted a partially used battery and then had the Phantom turned around so I could take pictures, and didn't notice when the red battery warning light came on.

Suddenly, I noticed that the Phantom was behaving strangely- I couldn't get it to rise up, and then I think it must have gone into RTH mode and tried to fly back to its starting point, but lost power about 7 metres above the home location and dropped like a stone. Fortunately, the craft stayed upright and neither the body or the GoPro were damaged. Moments earlier, the Phantom had been above really rugged terrain- and would have been lost forever if it had crashed.

 

[GeneL]

Also accidentally flicking IOC switch to course or homelock mode without realizing it will also cause it to do things you dont expect and you may think its flying away when infact you have just switched to home lock which may make you think you lost control. Also if for some reason your getting poor GPS reception then it will switch from GPS mode to atti mode and if you havent realized it has done this and there is wind around it will take off in a hurry.

I haven't seen this point made, and it strikes me as an important observation. The Phantom seems to be able to pick up pretty quickly if allowed to with ATTI mode. If you're already jumpy about from flyaway reports, AND the Phantom doesn't control the way you expect it to, AND it starts accelerating, then it's easy to assume the worse and to start trying rapid control inputs to see what makes it come back. And, at that point, the desire to make it come back can start to be overwhelming. I've experienced that to a degree, and I remember that I had to first take control of myself, and then regain control of the Phantom.

 

[brad90631]

This was the fourth flight of the day. I have been racking my brain thinking back and here is what I know. I was at the end of my flight about 6 min into it. I was about 50 feet off the ground facing away from me I never touched any switch and just pulled the stick back to come back and land. When I did it went forward and climbed very fast yes at that point I panicked turned told my wife I lost control of it. Before I could turn off transmitter it was headed back to me fast when it just dove for the ground. At that point I was giving no input to the phantom. I may have backed off the throtles but what would have caused it to go forward climb turn around and dive at the ground?

Compass had been calibrated the night before. Thank god it happened at home. My other 3 flights wasIin downtown LA and in Long Beach at the light house so I was over the water a lot

 

[Fpvpilot]

This was the fourth flight of the day. I have been racking my brain thinking back and here is what I know. I was at the end of my flight about 6 min into it. I was about 50 feet off the ground facing away from me I never touched any switch and just pulled the stick back to come back and land. When I did it went forward and climbed very fast yes at that point I panicked turned told my wife I lost control of it. Before I could turn off transmitter it was headed back to me fast when it just dove for the ground. At that point I was giving no input to the phantom. I may have backed off the throtles but what would have caused it to go forward climb turn around and dive at the ground?

Compass had been calibrated the night before. Thank god it happened at home. My other 3 flights wasIin downtown LA and in Long Beach at the light house so I was over the water a lot

Does your Phantom use Naza M or Naza M-V2?

 

[brad90631]

i am using the Naza M-V2. i sent a message to DJI i told them i was NOT looking for warranty or free parts i just wanted help to understand what happened so i can try to make sure it does not happen again.

the only time that i know the phantom can dive at the ground like it did is when it is in manual mode. Mine was not. it was set on GPS, the 3 flights i made the same day was also in GPS. When i took off i had 2 flashing green and NO red lights for at least 10 sec's before engine start up.

 

[freelanceshots]

Sorry to hear about the damage. Sounds like you are like me where I am meticulous about my things so a big crash that has the power to break things is awful to experience. I've come to the realization that flying in general is just a risky thing. For any given day there are things that are just out of the pilots control. I lost my Phantom and I was heart broken not to mention the monetary loss.

 

[will27]

I had a similar thing happen a couple of weeks ago. I was flying in an open field when it just took off an flew towards the woodline on the opposite side of the field. I lost sight of it over the woods, but then saw it as it flew from left to right into a large tree. I saw it tumble through the tree then lost sight. I'm still searching. The wooded area is full of briars and is so thick not even machete will get you through it. I was able to climb the tree but couldn't find it. I'm sure it hit the vegetation below. The vegetation is well over my head. I just picked up another phantom with an FPV set up to look for it. The one in the woods has a Hero3 camera in it's waterproof case. Hopefully what I find is still salvageable.