P4 - strange behavior

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My son is heading back to school this weekend so we took advantage of a reasonably sunny and warm enough day to go shoot some outdoor hoops at the elementary school around the corner from us.

I thought I would take the phantom 4, float it up a little bit, 30' maybe and just let it hover and film us a bit. No big deal.

So i turn it and the controller on, same process as always. Go to do the circle dance as it is a new place for me to fly from and while I am rotating the rotors start up! I was holding the controller, not sure why, I usually place it on the ground next to me when performing the calibration. Perhaps I accidentally pushed on the throttle?

So I shut it down and placed it on the ground to figure it all out.

While on the ground and me messing in the menu, the rotors start up again , on their own, this time I'm sure I did not engage anything.

So I shut it down and took props off and packed it up for the day.

Now, looking in DJI go, I see in the flight log it has two errors:
- Satellite positioning off, fly with caution
- The aircraft is in a warning zone (class D), fly with caution here. (nearby smaller airport, with automated authorization available)

So, what steps to find out what happened, why the props/rotors engaged at least once, possibly twice without me doing anything.

Phantom has never performed in odd way for me previously, have owned for 3 years now.

Thanks in advance,

Steve
 
The incident is puzzling and I can't think of why it happened, it's quite puzzling.
But I can comment on this:
Go to do the circle dance as it is a new place for me to fly
There is no need to recalibrate the compass when flying at a new location.
There's almost no need to recalibrate the compass ever, unless you modify the drone.
 
I appreciate your point of view, you are a respected voice here. I have seen both sides of the topic, some say, no harm to do it, others like you have said not needed.
Yip not needed everytime its turned on to fly a new home point be set,I used to do compass every flight but was not needed . Your issue though is a very scary one and can understand one depending on screen size could hit auto take off by mistake but surely not twice,you probably have to upload this flight to see what happen, neither errors you have wont cause this
 
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I appreciate your point of view, you are a respected voice here. I have seen both sides of the topic, some say, no harm to do it, others like you have said not needed.
An understanding of what compass calibration actually does, makes it clear that there is no need to recalibrate for new locations.
Calibrating the compass does just one thing.
It identifies and measures the magnetic fields that are part of the drone so that they can be ignored.
It has no relation to your location or distance from anywhere.

I've logged >3000 miles on my #1 drone in the last three years.
I've taken it on long trips, even internationally and still haven't calibrated anything.
It still flies as accurately as it did on day one.
 
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An understanding of what compass calibration actually does, makes it clear that there is no need to recalibrate for new locations.
Calibrating the compass does just one thing.
It identifies and measures the magnetic fields that are part of the drone so that they can be ignored.
It has no relation to your location or distance from anywhere.

I've logged >3000 miles on my #1 drone in the last three years.
I've taken it on long trips, even internationally and still haven't calibrated anything.
It still flies as accurately as it did on day one.

thanks, worded like that, makes sense
 
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help me with what I need to do, I've seen people post the steps over and over but I have never paid attention :)
The data is good for showing what happens after but I'm not sure that the recorded flight data will show what happened at the startup time.

The process is to go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
That will give you a detailed report on the flight data.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides
 
@blmeanie The .txt log starts at motor start. To see what happened previous to that you will need the device .dat file.
See this link and upload the file here. Retrieve a V3 DAT From Mobile Device

In the flight records folder there was no .dat file for the date I had the incident, but there was what I would guess is a partial file with name of _DJIFlightRecordDeletList94e613e2eb4caea0 but it won't allow me to add to this site (my mac restricting for some reason?).

However, on the phone I also so another folder flightlogs and in it for that day was a file I've attached, don't know if that is any way what is needed
 

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I once had a similar problem. Now what I do is wait a few minutes after turning everything on, wait until I hear Homepoint has been updated and wait about 30 seconds and no problems since then. Not sure if that is what helped, but like I said, no problems since I became more patient.
 
so just now I fired it up inside the house, no props, just to see on screen if errors pop up and ESC errors popped up, after quick search here it seems like these are less understood and restarting may or may not clear the issue?
 

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re -reading my original post I see one detail I forgot, when the bird activated the props while I was calibrating, one of the props flew off. I have no idea if I didn't "lock" it in properly, usually very **** about that. Would that be related to the ESC errors?
 
the props need to be on, with no resistance you will get a error message

ok, good to know, kind of afraid to put props on though without knowing if I accidentally hit auto take off (never have used it) while doing the calibration

guess I will bite the bullet and put props on while outside, thx
 
ok, good to know, kind of afraid to put props on though without knowing if I accidentally hit auto take off (never have used it) while doing the calibration

guess I will bite the bullet and put props on while outside, thx
Me myself would recalibrate everything like I just bought it and make sure you wait until it says homepoint updated and I wish you the best of luck. Let us know how that goes and I/m sure a Pro here can advise you if that does not work. Best of Luck and hope you have a great New Year!
 
However, on the phone I also so another folder flightlogs and in it for that day was a file I've attached, don't know if that is any way what is needed
Follow the instructions in Post#8. And share a link back here to the upload and we can tell you which .dat file you need.
 
Now, looking in DJI go, I see in the flight log it has two errors:
- Satellite positioning off, fly with caution
- The aircraft is in a warning zone (class D), fly with caution here.
You stated this, so there should be a .txt file, assuming that the motors started.
 

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