I've been following the forums and you just hope this doesn't happen but then it does, still I'm very, very lucky. I would appreciate your support in trying to understand what happened.
Great conditions at dusk, little wind, second flight with the DBS antenna. Took off with 95% battery, flew almost 3km out, then about halfway back. I paused to take a couple of pictures, unfortunately no video of the incident because of that. Then turning the bird to fly it back home and without any warning it fell from the sky. I saw a couple of messages flash on the screen but only after it started falling. I had the critical low voltage error (also described in this post:
Phantom 3 PRO Crashed with "Critically Low Voltage" message | Page 3 | DJI Phantom Forum ) and I also saw something with velocity but I don't recall exactly what and I don't see that mentioned in the flight log.
I was about 200m / 650 feet up when it happened. Because trying to take control didn't do any good I did the only thing I could think of: press RTH. I just watched it tumble through the sky in the app. And then... it stabilized, probably around 50m or so in height. It had initiated auto landing because of the critical low voltage error. I looked down for a suitable place, steered it clear from a couple of trees and around 15m in height I lost the connection. This all happened about 1.5km from where I was standing, so I jumped in my car and drove to the landing site. I found the bird about 10m from where I had intended to land, upside down, also about 10m from the waterline of a small canal next to it. Everything in one piece just a little dirt on the propellers. Phew...
So I feel I'm definitely the luckiest Phantom pilot of the day, but I'm a bit scared to take off again before I understand this. I did an IMU calibration yesterday (level surface, cool bird), I rechecked it just now, it says it's fine. When looking at the log the only thing that is abnormal is the number of cell errors on the battery, but then again I did not have any warning in the app before it came tumbling down. I'm 100% sure the battery was properly secured.
Any ideas?
The log can be found here: HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters
Thanks
Great conditions at dusk, little wind, second flight with the DBS antenna. Took off with 95% battery, flew almost 3km out, then about halfway back. I paused to take a couple of pictures, unfortunately no video of the incident because of that. Then turning the bird to fly it back home and without any warning it fell from the sky. I saw a couple of messages flash on the screen but only after it started falling. I had the critical low voltage error (also described in this post:
Phantom 3 PRO Crashed with "Critically Low Voltage" message | Page 3 | DJI Phantom Forum ) and I also saw something with velocity but I don't recall exactly what and I don't see that mentioned in the flight log.
I was about 200m / 650 feet up when it happened. Because trying to take control didn't do any good I did the only thing I could think of: press RTH. I just watched it tumble through the sky in the app. And then... it stabilized, probably around 50m or so in height. It had initiated auto landing because of the critical low voltage error. I looked down for a suitable place, steered it clear from a couple of trees and around 15m in height I lost the connection. This all happened about 1.5km from where I was standing, so I jumped in my car and drove to the landing site. I found the bird about 10m from where I had intended to land, upside down, also about 10m from the waterline of a small canal next to it. Everything in one piece just a little dirt on the propellers. Phew...
So I feel I'm definitely the luckiest Phantom pilot of the day, but I'm a bit scared to take off again before I understand this. I did an IMU calibration yesterday (level surface, cool bird), I rechecked it just now, it says it's fine. When looking at the log the only thing that is abnormal is the number of cell errors on the battery, but then again I did not have any warning in the app before it came tumbling down. I'm 100% sure the battery was properly secured.
Any ideas?
The log can be found here: HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters
Thanks
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