My sob story

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So I’ve had the Phantom for 3 months now and have flown it a couple hundred times. I had one incident where it lost connectivity to the stock radio twice in one day and I did report that here. That was uneventful as it properly went into failsafe mode. But it was very close to me at the time and the primary reason for buying a Taranis radio and help with signal lose. I worked out the bugs in that over the past week and had flown with that radio a dozen times. I’ve had a few rssi warnings but nothing bad. The model I’m using has a switch to check db’s every so often. Last night just at sunset it was dead calm and went out to burn a battery in fpv mode. I flew from my backyard to the front of the house, as I’ve done a gazillion times, and was about 20m up and 60m away from me. Just hovering and looking down at the street. All of a sudden she says “telemetry lost” no rssi warning and the phantom just flips over and screams to the street. Gopro3 is smashed to bits along with goodluck gimble. Phantom body has many cracks and not sure what else is gone there. It’s always depressing to read about somebody else having this and I’m not surprised this happened. Perhaps one thing I’m not sure of is if fail safe was set correctly. I’m definitely new to all this open source stuff but from what I read, naza should just take care of it. I could really be wrong here though. Also, my personal feeling or opinion is that the 2.4ghz band is really a horrible place to be considering everything else on there. Can anyone tell me if a Range Link or other 433mhz module will work with Taranis? If’s that a bad idea, then please let me know that too.
 
Holy crap, I felt it just by reading your story. Sorry to hear about it :(
Does 'Telemetry Lost' mean it has lost its contact to the receiver or only to its telemetry subsystem?
Take a deep breath and recollect the parts.. I'm sure you'll put up a better Phantom by the time this is all over!

ps: I have a Taranis on order too (should be here early next week)..
 
LeoS said:
Holy crap, I felt it just by reading your story. Sorry to hear about it :(
Does 'Telemetry Lost' mean it has lost its contact to the receiver or only to its telemetry subsystem?
Take a deep breath and recollect the parts.. I'm sure you'll put up a better Phantom by the time this is all over!

ps: I have a Taranis on order too (should be here early next week)..

One thing that was kinda unnerving is that if you put the Tx too close to the Rx ~ within a foot, she will start barking telemetry lost, telemetry found over and over. The Rx LED will change color fro green to red as well each time so it's very real that it lost communication when she says so. But I read somewhere that's it's common to have that if the Tx is too close and not to worry about it.
 
Dave, it sounds to me more like you had a full power loss on the Phantom, not just a break in the link with the transmitter...even if that had happened, and RTF had failed, it probably wouldn't cause your bird to just flip and drop like that.

Did you lose FPV signal as well right when it fell? I guess it's possible too that just the X8R lost power or failed, but if it was still working and just lost signal from your Taranis, it would have either triggered failsafe or continued sending to the NAZA the last control input it had received (depending on how you set your F/S on the Rx).

If you haven't already, inspect the solder joints along the power chain. If one is loose, it could have been a result of the crash, but could also be the cause.
 
Something similar happened to my week old 1.1.1. It just dropped out the sky (after seeming to start a flyway in GPS mode).

I opened it up afterwards and found the main power wire solder had come away from the board. I took it back to the shop and the guy there said it was a cold solder. They sent it back to the dealer, and they expect I'll get a new one (they rarely do straight exchanges in Switzerland)

Did you check if either of the power solder joints looks like it's just 'popped' away from the board? It should be covered under the warranty if it did.
 
Interesting..... but I didn't loose fpv signal and felt like I was in a washing machine while looking in goggles. But once I heard it hit the ground, I took the goggles off and ran out into the street to get it. All the motors still run and I took a visit to uavdirect which happens to be just down the street from me. They were very helpful in advising me on what I should check as well.
 
I suspect you didn't loose telemetry (even tough that was conveyed) I suspect 1 of 2 possibilities - #1 - as mention total loss of power -ie: cold solder joint etc or #2 - WiFi interference. Either one would bring it down as you described.
 
Same thing happened to me in September. Phantom 1, and I had a couple hundred flights. I knew what I was doing and how to fly. On my second flight that day, when it was about 50 feet high, it started to wobble bad, then just flipped into the ground. Destroyed my GoPro, cracked shell, and damaged gimbal. No reply ever from DJI...
 
I checked F/S mode with Naza assistant. It clearly went into to fail safe when powering off radio while watching my screen view. So today I tested it in a fluffy field. Flew it 50 yards away at 6' high and turned off radio......... immediate dump into field. Not even a hover and think about it, just flip and burn. Again, can someone suggest how to setup fail safe? Much appreciated!
 
Davek said:
I checked F/S mode with Naza assistant. It clearly went into to fail safe when powering off radio while watching my screen view. So today I tested it in a fluffy field. Flew it 50 yards away at 6' high and turned off radio......... immediate dump into field. Not even a hover and think about it, just flip and burn. Again, can someone suggest how to setup fail safe? Much appreciated!

By your description it sounds like it's in manual mode. That or your NAZA is going bad... ???
 
Your fail safe should be automatically set up as long as you have compass calibrated and GPS lock on at least 8 satellites with a flashing green at lift off.
 
EMCSQUAR said:
Davek said:
I checked F/S mode with Naza assistant. It clearly went into to fail safe when powering off radio while watching my screen view. So today I tested it in a fluffy field. Flew it 50 yards away at 6' high and turned off radio......... immediate dump into field. Not even a hover and think about it, just flip and burn. Again, can someone suggest how to setup fail safe? Much appreciated!

By your description it sounds like it's in manual mode. That or your NAZA is going bad... ???

No I'm for sure I'm gps mode and finally got one little detail that after you bind with Taranis, your suppose to hit the f/s button once quickly on the x8r receiver to setup failsafe. it's also the button you bind with. I thought for sure that was the problem today. My model that I'm using has failsafe set to "no pulse" to let auto pilot take over and Naza assistant is definitely set to return to home, NOT land. This is important to know since it does 2 different things at f/s mode. It's a consistent failure when Tx is turn off. It rolls over and crashes. It has to be a Taranis problem. Stock radio worked fine. So I go out and test this again..... it's not fun crashing on purpose and my garmin keeps falling which I forget about until the next day. So again, 50 yards away 6' up and turn off Tx. Instant flip and not pretty. But there is one other test that I tried. The model has the left 2 way switch set to fail safe. I was curious what difference that made was surprised but still confused. I landed instantly. Not rth.

The problem is consistent and clear. I just have no freaking idea and I'm usually pretty resourceful here.
 
BigSky said:
Your fail safe should be automatically set up as long as you have compass calibrated and GPS lock on at least 8 satellites with a flashing green at lift off.

Not to be picky, but its 5 satellites. Green flashes and one red will record home. All green = 6 or more.
 

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