Major Issue - what happen

[jdawg39]

I have my flight uploaded to healthy drones, and it does not show anything crazy, but this is what happen. I flew out about a mile, things were going fine, but started to get shady signal on the video, so i hit return to home. well 5-7 minutes later, it still has not returned to home. My girlfriend happen to be about where i was flying and she said its directly above me, but said it was going the opposite way of where I was at. Then it started to land, then it started going further away. I jumped in my car and headed that way. I got signal a few times and it showed me the last point on the map, but this thing went crazy. Is something wrong with my bird? I cant tell by looking at the healthy drones data. But when i look through the flight log, i see where it shows mode "return to home" but my baby took off the other way. What happen?

PS. it auto landed in a field and I was able to find it. beautiful site

 

[flyNfrank]

Sounds like a compass/gps issue.

 

[jdawg39]

I did a compass calibration right before the flight. she flies fine when i am flying it right in front of me, but when i have been going for distance she is acting crazy

 

[Tony Perry]

Sounds like it lost GPS signal. It would be interesting to see the log.

I'm glad you were able to recover it!

 

[jdawg39]

Im very happy and lucky i was able to get her back and she didnt auto land in a tree. According to healthy drones, i had some 36 mph wind gusts going on - dont think that is really true, maybe the bird itself was going that speed. you can see in the logs, when return to home was intitiated - it actually started heading diagonal and at a 1mph pace. then started just heading out further. terrible feeling

 

[jdawg39]

also i think gps was green the whole flight, never lost gps

 

[flyNfrank]

Im very happy and lucky i was able to get her back and she didnt auto land in a tree. According to healthy drones, i had some 36 mph wind gusts going on - dont think that is really true, maybe the bird itself was going that speed. you can see in the logs, when return to home was intitiated - it actually started heading diagonal and at a 1mph pace. then started just heading out further. terrible feeling

Without looking at your .txt file flight log, everything will just be speculation. You can zip the file and attach it here as if it was a picture upload. Then I can read the formulas and see what it says. It's obviously related to not being connected to gps.

 

[flyNfrank]

Btw, anytime you are in such situations you should always switch to A-mode and fly it straight to you and land it. Then do not fly it again until you know for sure you have it fixed!

 

[Meta4]

Sounds like a compass/gps issue.

Neither GPS nor compass ... this one is all about headwinds.

It would be rare to lose GPS if you are flying in the open.
If there were winds of 36mph and they were blowing against the RTH direction, that would seriously affect any RTH.
Your Phantom will fly at about 34 mph in still air.
RTH will fly slower .. something like 22 mph.
If you have an RTH Phantom up there doing 22 mph against 30+ winds, it's not going to come back to you.

In an RTH situation you can always cancel RTH and resume control and fly home faster yourself.
Learn to use the radar display to tell where your Phantom is and which way it is facing.

 

[jdawg39]

going to try and upload that file for you to look at right now. I did, but I lost all signal, and when it did come back, i had no control

 

[jdawg39]

here is the attached log

 

[jdawg39]

the guy that posted right above me, that might be the ticket. countering the speed against the wind gusts. i just went outside and thought - man that wind is pretty strong. And I have prop guards on, so maybe those gusts were taking it

 

[Meta4]

the guy that posted right above me, that might be the ticket. countering the speed against the wind gusts. i just went outside and thought - man that wind is pretty strong. And I have prop guards on, so maybe those gusts were taking it

Prop guards are like sails .. they catch a lot of wind.
Don't use prop guards in strong winds.
Do practice using RTH and cancelling it to resume control.

 

[jdawg39]

I think that might be why it was doing that, it could not make it back this way. It even shows in the log that she was pointing home, but flying backwards. I love the prop guards for safety but the wind dont love them

Thanks for pointing that out so i could feel at ease. I just didnt want to think something was wrong with my bird

 

[flyNfrank]

The healthydrones wind readouts are way off. The direction of wind travel is the only part to be trusted.

Ok I just looked over some of the most important data. And have I ever came up with some interesting details. And it's like this, either there is some things being left out about Mr. jdawg39's aircraft setup, or this individual has some serious issues taking place.

Actually the fact of the matter is Mr. J landed his aircraft after experiencing odd behavior. After selecting the RTH around 6-7 times it finially worked, or worked well enough to land. At this point which was near 4.5mins, the A/C's battery ahad went from 98% down to 10%. So this explains the landing mentioned in the field. What it doesn't explain is why the battery drained that quickly. My only real guess is I believe he may have installed a battery for a Phantom 2.

He replaced the battery with a proper battery, re-calibrated the compass, and appeared to have the rest of the flight perform normal.

Had this been explained I would not have had to spend a couple hours diagnosing the flight. Anyway, as long as the A/C has the correct battery he shouldn't experience any of the problems that took place.

I'm now off to go across the state and pick up a new puppy for the family.

 

[jdawg39]

How would i have put in a battery for a phantom 2? I bought an extra battery when i bought my phantom 3, which is the only drone i own. the battery never went from 98% to 10%, it started out at 98%, but it took the full flight and at least 17 minutes to drain down to 10%, in fact when i got it out the field it actually was still on and still had 9% which was 7-8 minutes after it landed.
I think your flight log reading skills needs some work.

To add, there is no mystery and there is no problem. my drone is fine, it flies fine. the wind was the factor as was pointed out it was very windy, i had prop guards, it could not return at the slow speed as the return home. And the return to home worked every time i pressed it, not finally worked. I cancelled it when it didnt start to return, so that part was on me. all is well, nothing to see here.

 

[Meta4]

My only real guess is I believe he may have installed a battery for a Phantom 2.

The problem with that theory is that a P2 battery is 11.1V and the P3 battery is 15.2V.
A Phantom 3 won't fly at all with a P2 battery.

 

[flyNfrank]

How would i have put in a battery for a phantom 2? I bought an extra battery when i bought my phantom 3, which is the only drone i own. the battery never went from 98% to 10%, it started out at 98%, but it took the full flight and at least 17 minutes to drain down to 10%, in fact when i got it out the field it actually was still on and still had 9% which was 7-8 minutes after it landed.
I think your flight log reading skills needs some work.

To add, there is no mystery and there is no problem. my drone is fine, it flies fine. the wind was the factor as was pointed out it was very windy, i had prop guards, it could not return at the slow speed as the return home. And the return to home worked every time i pressed it, not finally worked. I cancelled it when it didnt start to return, so that part was on me. all is well, nothing to see here.

If I misread your flight log, then I had to have misread it a great deal. The main thing is, if I said anything, it was because it shows it that away on the file attached. It would be pretty jacked up for me to spend time fabricating a story that was not true with the flight data attached here, don't you think?

As for the part about the battery, I believe I stated it being my only real "guess". I referred to it as a guess because I could not see any other reason how a battery that appeared to be good on the 'starting out stats' drain in 4.5 seconds. And now you're saying the battery lasted the Full Flight at least 17 seconds. I do know that P2 batteries don't work on P3's, but I went ahead with what I said due to you never know what kind of modifying some people do anymore. As is cutting the tops off a battery and wiring in a different setup, and so on.

I'm not going to spend the time producing images from the flight log that shows the things you say don't add up.

Btw, did you know the flight log shows 2 totally different battery serial numbers and product dates, from each battery used?

The A/C was auto landed near the 4.5 second point of flight. It then took 24 seconds for a completely different battery to be loaded that was fully changed and cycle ran from 97%-33% end of flight. 1st battery temp range start to stop was 85.7 - 92.3 degrees. The 2nd battery temp range 86.6 - 91.4 degrees.

So jdawg39, as I tried mentioning in the last post, if the flight data did not add up, then you have some serious stuff taking place.

 

[jdawg39]

but logs against what actually happening is not true. i dont think anything major took place. you complained about spending all kinds of time on my half story, but i didnt ask you to spend any time, in fact you did that all on your own. and your reading and assumptions are way off. my advice to you is stop giving advice to other people - cause your accuracy is not good enough for me to act on. thanks for your "help"

 

[bedford]

Hey jdog at least he was trying to help,you start a thread saying major issue when it's not,your bird is safe,others have lost there's