I pre-ordered this from Amazon, who originally showed a release date of April 21, 2014, which quickly came and went without any notification from Amazon, so luckily my local hobby shop got 4 in, and I purchased it there. I also own 2 other DJI Phantom's, including the original Vision, and one with an H3-2D gimbal / gopro setup, I'm very experienced in flying these, and count the number of crashes in 200+ hours on one hand.
The first week with the Vision Plus was awesome! Accompanied with the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer's, the overall FPV experience with a stabilized 3 axis gimbal is incredible! Today however wasn't so great. I took it to a local state park, which has 3 areas to it that I drive by everyday on the way to work. I've flown in 2 of the 3 areas many times, more on the area I flew in today later. The P2V+ was flying great, weather conditions were drizzle, and light breeze, overcast skies with a very low ceiling (the state park is Sky Meadow's up in the mountains) that I would approximate at roughly 500 feet. I made several passes through the rolling meadows, and was just about to end the flight, when I decided to fly accross the street to the area of the park I fly in more frequently. The P2V+ suddenly and violently lost all control. It was difficult for me to grasp at first, as I was flying FPV with goggles on, and the stabilization of the camera's picture is so good it takes longer for the brain to compute there's an issue.
I immediately took off the goggles and located the Phantom with LOS, but still had absolutely 0 control of anything, I then switch to ATTI mode, still no response whatsoever. The Phantom is picking up speed, loosing altitude, and flying towards a highway with cars, I really begin to panic when the P2V+ momentarily seems to correct itself at about 25 ft. At this point I had turned the controller completely off to hopefully activate bird's "safety" feature of returning home. The Phantom slows down, hovering but not entering the GTH feature, I turn back on the controller in GPS mode and make THE SLIGHTEST movement forward in my direction when the Phantom completely looses control again! This time however it maneuvered itself back over the state park, before violently crashing into an open field. The entire ordeal lasted maybe 1 minute from start to finish, but that 60 seconds was easily one of the most stressful of my entire life.
I was literally shaking when it finally crashed, thankfully away from anyone or anything. The camera broke at one the axis's, I was videotaping at the time, however the mp4 file is corrupted, trying to recover it now. The props broke on it which I've since replaced, and after inspecting the Phantom thoroughly, an advanced calibration on the flight controller via desktop program, and calibrated the compass, before taking off and the entire same thing happened again!
I usually don't fly in this area of the state park, because the only other time that I did was with my original Phantom Vision, and the EXACT SAME THING happened with that bird. At the time of the crash of the original P2V, I really wondered if something environmentally caused it to lose control and crash, but dismissed it after returning it to Amazon.com for a full refund.
What could have caused these sudden navigational control issues? Here's a link to the State Park on Google Maps. Any guess's on what could be causing this, and how I can fix it will be greatly appreciated.
DJI had better come up with a solution for this, or someone is going to get hurt. To have such an expensive machine just completely loose control is unacceptable IMO.
I'll post the video here as well if I can recover it.
The first week with the Vision Plus was awesome! Accompanied with the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer's, the overall FPV experience with a stabilized 3 axis gimbal is incredible! Today however wasn't so great. I took it to a local state park, which has 3 areas to it that I drive by everyday on the way to work. I've flown in 2 of the 3 areas many times, more on the area I flew in today later. The P2V+ was flying great, weather conditions were drizzle, and light breeze, overcast skies with a very low ceiling (the state park is Sky Meadow's up in the mountains) that I would approximate at roughly 500 feet. I made several passes through the rolling meadows, and was just about to end the flight, when I decided to fly accross the street to the area of the park I fly in more frequently. The P2V+ suddenly and violently lost all control. It was difficult for me to grasp at first, as I was flying FPV with goggles on, and the stabilization of the camera's picture is so good it takes longer for the brain to compute there's an issue.
I immediately took off the goggles and located the Phantom with LOS, but still had absolutely 0 control of anything, I then switch to ATTI mode, still no response whatsoever. The Phantom is picking up speed, loosing altitude, and flying towards a highway with cars, I really begin to panic when the P2V+ momentarily seems to correct itself at about 25 ft. At this point I had turned the controller completely off to hopefully activate bird's "safety" feature of returning home. The Phantom slows down, hovering but not entering the GTH feature, I turn back on the controller in GPS mode and make THE SLIGHTEST movement forward in my direction when the Phantom completely looses control again! This time however it maneuvered itself back over the state park, before violently crashing into an open field. The entire ordeal lasted maybe 1 minute from start to finish, but that 60 seconds was easily one of the most stressful of my entire life.
I was literally shaking when it finally crashed, thankfully away from anyone or anything. The camera broke at one the axis's, I was videotaping at the time, however the mp4 file is corrupted, trying to recover it now. The props broke on it which I've since replaced, and after inspecting the Phantom thoroughly, an advanced calibration on the flight controller via desktop program, and calibrated the compass, before taking off and the entire same thing happened again!
I usually don't fly in this area of the state park, because the only other time that I did was with my original Phantom Vision, and the EXACT SAME THING happened with that bird. At the time of the crash of the original P2V, I really wondered if something environmentally caused it to lose control and crash, but dismissed it after returning it to Amazon.com for a full refund.
What could have caused these sudden navigational control issues? Here's a link to the State Park on Google Maps. Any guess's on what could be causing this, and how I can fix it will be greatly appreciated.
DJI had better come up with a solution for this, or someone is going to get hurt. To have such an expensive machine just completely loose control is unacceptable IMO.
I'll post the video here as well if I can recover it.
