Loss of Control Caused by Bad Battery?

Joined
Apr 17, 2014
Messages
692
Reaction score
4
Today I was flying my phantom and i would say about 80' high and maybe 100' away from me, it just started flying further away and descending without any command from me. I instinctually throttled up... but it kept falling anyway and going in a direction away from me even though i wasn't touching the right stick. finally it responding to my throttle up left stick command... i quickly brought it back home.... during this event, I did look at my app and there was no control signal loss message. I also had 9 satellites. And prior to the flight, i had done the compass calibration and of course ensured I had 6+ satellites. Everyone here knows I'm not a nooby to the vision+... So I remembered a few months back, i had a violent wobble and crash.. some here speculated it was a VRS. I somehow doubted that.. but when the crash occurred, I marked the battery i was using #5. I use 5 batteries routinely. Today, I went through 3 batteries no problem. When this incident happened where I lost control, once I brought the bird back, I looked at the battery number and sure enough, battery #5. Question is, why or how could a faulty battery cause a phantom to fly away and descend but still have power? This battery was only 1 bar down when this occurred... I doubt the battery had anything to do with this, but out of 5 batteries, this is a big coincidence if it didn't... Thoughts anyone? Oh, there was very little wind if any... and i was in a very open area...
 
srandall25 said:
Question is, why or how could a faulty battery cause a phantom to fly away and descend but still have power? ..... I doubt the battery had anything to do with this, but out of 5 batteries, this is a big coincidence if it didn't... Thoughts anyone? Oh, there was very little wind if any... and i was in a very open area...

Like you, I doubt it could be a battery issue. The only thing a battery can do is to deliver (or not deliver) power. It has no effect on control issues. If you are using 5 batteries, there's a 20% chance that you'll be using #5 on any flight so the coincidence that batt # 5 was involved isn't unusual.
 
Here is my mission... http://www.flytrex.com/mission/quadcopt ... all-74070/

Look at second 180... that's where my Phantom started flying it's own mission... notice the perfect arch and constant speed increase... I did absolutely nothing via the controller to cause this.. the phantom did this flight on it's own... could the wind have caused this at just 100' high while I'm not feeling a thing on the ground... I didn't notice the phantom trying to fight anything... it just took off in this perfect arch... from second 180 to 192... i exported the data and it showed 10 satellites through this part of the mission...
 
I don't think the battery is the issue. As mentioned, it pretty much has power or it doesn't. As to the odd flight behavior that is puzzling? We rely on the flight controller for stability, RTH, etc... The controller is a computer, and sometimes computers geek out or crash for no apparent reason. Perhaps that was the case here? Or it could be the flight control is failing and this is just an early sign? You have had a lot of flights since your crash so I doubt the two are related, but I would keep a close eye on that bird over your next few flights. :shock:
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,358
Members
104,936
Latest member
hirehackers