It's not a very good feeling when you hear the best quadcopter ever being beat to death as it falls 100ft of tree branches and hillside. It's been freezing crazy here for a long time and I was finally getting to fly to a warm 31 degrees. I started out flying almost into direct sunlight so I was relying on readings from the Nexus 7. I paused at about 1/8th mile away and adjusted the tilt on the camera. Got things where I wanted them and continued on and paused again at 1/4 mile. I just began to climb up a little and the infamous connection broken screen appeared and 10 seconds later I could actually hear it going through hell and finally became silent. The 1st thing I did was remove the nexus 7 and went into the app setting to use the "Locate My Phantom". And I can vouch it does work well. From the experience the app records the last transmitted signal and marks it on the map. In this case it does not matter if the battery is in tact or not. The GPS then uses your tablet or smartphone location as a live indicator on the app map. I thank the developer of the app so much for this feature. It helped speed up the retrieval time a bunch.
Ok so in speaking about the rertrieval, making a long story shorter, my P2V hit tree tops on 40ft tree's on top of a 60ft hillside. In searching I lost my footing and slid some 40ft straight to the bottom. I busted up one of my knee's along with scrapes from gravel and other junk in a small stream at the bottom. I spotted my P2V on my way out. I made it home and got my wife and friends she had that were getting ready to come after me, to not go to hospital. I cleaned myself up some and went back to get it because I didn't want the battery sitting out all night knowing it would get ruined. Took flashlights and rope to lower a person down the hillside. I made it back home where I have since stiffened up a lot. I'm really stupid for doing any of the retrieval because I'm permanently disabled from an accident some years back and this deal very well could have done me in.
So as you see in the pic's below it knocked the camera off, the battery was totally out 5ft away, and 3 chewed up blades. I put it back together with parts I had on hand but it has a short in camera wire harness which I will try ordering a replacement rather then soldering iron.
One of the sad parts is I spent most of the afternoon, before going out to fly, talking by email with Tony at "FPV Long Range" about better antenna's.
Ok so in speaking about the rertrieval, making a long story shorter, my P2V hit tree tops on 40ft tree's on top of a 60ft hillside. In searching I lost my footing and slid some 40ft straight to the bottom. I busted up one of my knee's along with scrapes from gravel and other junk in a small stream at the bottom. I spotted my P2V on my way out. I made it home and got my wife and friends she had that were getting ready to come after me, to not go to hospital. I cleaned myself up some and went back to get it because I didn't want the battery sitting out all night knowing it would get ruined. Took flashlights and rope to lower a person down the hillside. I made it back home where I have since stiffened up a lot. I'm really stupid for doing any of the retrieval because I'm permanently disabled from an accident some years back and this deal very well could have done me in.
So as you see in the pic's below it knocked the camera off, the battery was totally out 5ft away, and 3 chewed up blades. I put it back together with parts I had on hand but it has a short in camera wire harness which I will try ordering a replacement rather then soldering iron.
One of the sad parts is I spent most of the afternoon, before going out to fly, talking by email with Tony at "FPV Long Range" about better antenna's.
