My crash on the 1st flight of a brand new Phantom 4 Pro V2

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Here is the embarrassing story (and video footage) of my crashing a brand new Phantom 4 Pro V2 on its first flight. I let my excitement get the best of me and contribute to a dumb move. Moral of the story: don't get too comfortable around power lines!
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That is a real shame. I hate to see this type of incident, especially with a brand new unit! I actually had a similar incident flying a Cessna 182. The beauty of drones I think, lies in the fact that we are not sitting inside them if something like this occurs.
 
That is a real shame. I hate to see this type of incident, especially with a brand new unit! I actually had a similar incident flying a Cessna 182. The beauty of drones I think, lies in the fact that we are not sitting inside them if something like this occurs.
Holy smokes! You're not kidding! I've been thinking of taking some flying lessons, and that was exactly what I was thinking. I hope you weren't hurt in your Cessna incident!
 
Sorry for your loss. Send it to DJI. There was a video of a guy who crashed his P4P v2 on his maiden vogaye as well and only got charged like 350 to repair the entire drone. It was in worse shape than yours.
 
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Sorry for your loss. Send it to DJI. There was a video of a guy who crashed his P4P v2 on his maiden vogaye as well and only got charged like 350 to repair the entire drone. It was in worse shape than yours.
Thank you. And, yeah, I already packed it up and sent it to DJI. Hopefully, the Care and Refresh thing will work out. They're supposed to send me a replacement.
 
Easy to misjudge VLOS depth, even when you are looking right at the drone. I sent my P2V+ into a tree when it was moving away from me at eye level and hadn't noticed that it slipped into ATTI mode. Let go of the right stick and thought it had stopped, but couldn't see that it was still continuing forward until it was too late. Good luck with the C&R coverage. Enjoyed the video explanation.
 
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Easy to misjudge VLOS depth, even when you are looking right at the drone. I sent my P2V+ into a tree when it was moving away from me at eye level and hadn't noticed that it slipped into ATTI mode. Let go of the right stick and thought it had stopped, but couldn't see that it was still continuing forward until it was too late. Good luck with the C&R coverage. Enjoyed the video explanation.
Ouch! I hope your Phantom wasn’t damaged as badly as mine. I had VO... I should have just watched the screen and let him tell me how it was looking.
 
What was the VO doing at the time?
I had him watching for traffic since I had my back to the highway. It was totally my fault for not thinking the shot through beforehand. I could have posted him at a much better vantage point.
 
I had him watching for traffic since I had my back to the highway. It was totally my fault for not thinking the shot through beforehand. I could have posted him at a much better vantage point.
Ohh. I thought he got distracted by a hot woman or something.
 
Sorry to hear about your drone. However, your honesty is very refreshing here instead of blaming DJI or on one of those darn fly-aways. As you state, we all get pretty excited when flying our drones and often easy to loose track of our surroundings. Many have found power lines or trees the hard way, the rest of us all have had our close calls. I've never crashed my P3S yet after several years ... not that I haven't tried a few times! Hope you get your repaired P4 from DJI and back in the air very soon.
 
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Sorry to hear about your drone. However, your honesty is very refreshing here instead of blaming DJI or on one of those darn fly-aways. As you state, we all get pretty excited when flying our drones and often easy to loose track of our surroundings. Many have found power lines or trees the hard way, the rest of us all have had our close calls. I've never crashed my P3S yet after several years ... not that I haven't tried a few times! Hope you get your repaired P4 from DJI and back in the air very soon.
Thank you. Yep, this was all me. I was pretty embarrassed about it, but I thought there would be a lot of people who could relate to it. Had to try to laugh to keep from crying, as they say.
 
Here is the video I mentioned earlier, about the guy who also had a run in with power lines on his maiden voyage.

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Here is the video I mentioned earlier, about the guy who also had a run in with power lines on his maiden voyage.

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Oh, yeah... I saw that one, too. I subscribe to that guy's channel. Cool stuff. I like how he shows the good, the bad and the ugly with his drone missions. I think I found out about him from the Ken Heron channel.
 
Here is the embarrassing story (and video footage) of my crashing a brand new Phantom 4 Pro V2 on its first flight. I let my excitement get the best of me and contribute to a dumb move. Moral of the story: don't get too comfortable around power lines!
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

The only thing worse than seeing your Phantom crash and into pieces (yes been there, done that) is to see your Inspire 2 crash and in pieces. :) Chalk it up to experience, learn, and pay the piper :)
 
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The only thing worse than seeing your Phantom crash and into pieces (yes been there, done that) is to see your Inspire 2 crash and in pieces. :) Chalk it up to experience, learn, and pay the piper :)
Yessir, watching your Inspire 2 crash would be horrifying! The lessons can be expensive when it comes to drone crashes!
 
Here is the embarrassing story (and video footage) of my crashing a brand new Phantom 4 Pro V2 on its first flight. I let my excitement get the best of me and contribute to a dumb move. Moral of the story: don't get too comfortable around power lines!
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Funny story....

I have been flying RC a long time (since the mid 80's). "Mapping" has become my bread and butter. On a recent out-of-town gig my partner and I ran into problems when the bird wouldn't enter into Intelligent Flight Mode about a mile from a Class D airport. For the record, we had permission to fly there. While flying any DJI product within an NFZ can be impossible, I have hacked the bird past NFZ restrictions, but unbenounced to me, despite being able to fly MANUALLY in Class D airspace, Intelligent Flight Mode is disabled in Class D airspace. Grrrr...another hack for another day. So I'm stressing out because my partner and I just traveled 90+ miles to get to this mapping gig, and we're dead in the water. So I'm wresting with the iPad and the app trying to figure out WTF is going on, and he says, "You know you have power lines right over your head, right?" Sure enough, literally directly over the bird was 3 or 4 power lines...right there...plain as day. Call it divine intervention or whatever that the bird wouldn't launch. Had the bird launched successfully, I have little doubt that I would've missed those power lines. I have cat-like reflexes, so I MIGHT have been able to exit Intelligent Flight Mode in time....or I MIGHT have caught the bird on its rapid decent back down to Earth. But the fact that I could make such a stupid mistake really made me pause. I haven't crashed in YEARS and NOT because I'm lucky, but because I'm cautious, VERY cognizant of my environment and a good pilot. But for whatever reason, on that one day, I simply failed to look up. Lesson learned.

Still haven't hacked the IFM NFZ restriction, but we're working on it.

Oh...and we were able to map by flying the flight lines manually while manually clicking the photo button on the remote. This is definitely NOT an ideal way to map, but it worked. Fortunately, the plot of land was small - about 30 acres as I recall. I was able to fly the entire thing in under 2 hours, which would normally take about 30 minutes. Fortunately, I took enough photos that my partner was able to create a good map.

D
 
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Wow, that's a very fortunate outcome! It sure is easy to overlook (or "underlook, as it were) even the most obvious dangers when we get focused on the flying/filming/photographing and not so much on the environment. I'm glad to hear you found a work around for the job, even if it was more of a hassle. The technological developments are progressing in such unpredictable ways that it can be hard to anticipate what any drone will do from one day to the next.
 
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Wow, that's a very fortunate outcome! It sure is easy to overlook (or "underlook, as it were) even the most obvious dangers when we get focused on the flying/filming/photographing and not so much on the environment. I'm glad to hear you found a work around for the job, even if it was more of a hassle. The technological developments are progressing in such unpredictable ways that it can be hard to anticipate what any drone will do from one day to the next.

The hoops we jump through from concept to finished products is pretty amazing. Something as little as an overlooked spot on the lens could render days of prep work a complete waste. Amazing how fragile the work flow is. It's a miracle we get anything done at all.

D
 
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