MOUNT BAKER FLY AWAY TO HELL

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Last saturday I took my phantom to Mt.Baker as I wanted some nice aerial shots of Mt Shuksan and the chain lakes. I went through the start up process ( the last while it has taken at least a three minute warmup). I got the green lights I started the take of nice and slowly like my normal take of.It got to about 3 feet of the ground and started to fly away from me. It was picking up speed as it went heading to the tall trees across from the parking lot.I tried to pull back on the stick to no avail. The only controls I had a left to right and up and down. I had to dodge a number of 60 foot tree as I am running to keep the visibility on the Phantom. I once again dodged a tree and just after it the Phantom went into crazy spin around and around for about a minute all the meantime Im trying to regain control. Then it stopped and took of heading to the chair lift area.I move the stick to the right bringing it back toward the lake. I tried to follow it through the trees to see what the where it was heading next. I could not regain the controls so I shut the transmitter of and there by putting it into the failsafe mode(come home to the place it took of from) nothing doing lost sight as it went behind some trees.
I started running down the trail towards the water. I got to the shore line where I thought it might have come down.I here from a guy behind me saying you looking for the DRONE out of breath I say yes have you seen it? He says yes its right there in the middle of the lake. The light still flashing red..
Ok I say I will go back and get some stuff and go in and fish it out. When I returned there was a family trying to retrieve it. The family dog was circling the Phantom As I got closer they asked if it was mine. I said yes just then there dog dives down and picks up the phantom and start swimming to the shore with it in its mouth.I say to my self can I be so lucky?? NO he drops it.

To make the story short afterwards my wife walked in and retrieved it she was up to her waist.It was a very COLD DRIVE HOME......
Now can anyone tell me what the HELL JUST HAPPENED?????? I have had dozens and dozens of safe flight then this.
DJI has a problem with these drones and they should be working on a fix before someone gets hurt!!!!
The video does tell the story on the crazy flight and the spinning along with the under water spins of the props and the dog trying to get it. the photos came out OK but 1 video was corrupted.
 
I've read where it's always a good idea to do the compass dance before flying in a new area. I wonder if this might have been your problem?
 
Were you in GPS mode? If so, I can see it taking off near the trees if she lost the GPS signal. I had the same thing happen the first time I flew it. After that, I never fly in GPS mode unless I'm in a very large open area. Even then, if it starts to vere in a direction...usually to the right, I move it ti atti mode. Also, I am running v4.0 firmware. :shock:
 
Sounds like a compass calibration issue to me, maybe you had the phantom near a speaker in the car or did the initialization/warmup near something metallic.

If you go somewhere different always best to do the compass dance prior to your first flight. The issues you had on the flight indicated a gps or compass issue so going to failsafe is the worst thing you could do. Best to try atti mode and see if you can regain control and land it if you have issues in gps mode. If its doing random things in GPS expecting the gps to work properly in failsafe is asking for more trouble.
 

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