P4P gone. Alien abduction?

[mrirad]

Unhappy that my first post is is an obituary for my drone... Here is the story and the file. Sold my P4 for P4P in January. Many happy flights with no other incidents. Upgraded firmware but still got messages that firmware upgrade required. Did it again with "success" message but still got this warning. Even so, flew without incident probably 12 times after that.

This past Friday evening at Goose Lake Arizona, launched from the roof of my car (soft sand otherwise). On take off, it lunged to the ground. Battery popped out. Props ok. Battery locked back in securely. Seemed sound although rotors were gritty. Resumed flight from the sand, hovered, looked and listened. All seemed fine. Flew towards the lake 100' altitude with clear video. At around 700' got a Class E warning. Moments later, got a lost communication message with DJI Go indicating was auto return to home. I ran towards the shore hoping to reestablish communication. I no longer heard the drone and it never came home. Looking at the flight path, looks like it went into the drink.


I'm uploading the flight data from the final flight. I looked at it and don't have a clue from it what the fatal event was. The log of the 4 second flight which preceded the fatal fight is not available.

My thoughts: 4 second flight with crash into the sand indicated something was very wrong with the drone.
4 second flight with crash damaged something leading to the fatal flight.

Sand in rotors caused overheating and failure.

I realize that most fatal events are human error but hoping for advice and not a spanking.

 

[AeroMirage]

Sorry for your loss.
The only thing that jumped out at me was that after it crashed into the sand you put it back up.
This just screams at me, "Seemed sound although rotors were gritty."
I would have taken it to be cleaned, blown out with compressed air, then take her up to a 6' hover to linger awhile to see if everything's ok.
The fact that you flew it 12 times after FW update pretty well rules that out as a cause. (But not entirely)
I tried looking at that flight record and it may as well be written in Chinese, (If it isn't, it looks that way), yielded no information at all.

I have only had one crash ever. It was with an Inspire. I was following a duck and flew into a small tree. (Lack of focus / attention) My damage was very small, broken props. But after that I babied that bird for about 12+ flights until I was absolutely sure nothing else was damaged. I also made a conscious commitment to pay strict attention when flying.

 

[mrirad]

Sorry for your loss.
The only thing that jumped out at me was that after it crashed into the sand you put it back up.
This just screams at me, "Seemed sound although rotors were gritty."
I would have taken it to be cleaned, blown out with compressed air, then take her up to a 6' hover to linger awhile to see if everything's ok.
The fact that you flew it 12 times after FW update pretty well rules that out as a cause. (But not entirely)
I tried looking at that flight record and it may as well be written in Chinese, (If it isn't, it looks that way), yielded no information at all.

I have only had one crash ever. It was with an Inspire. I was following a duck and flew into a small tree. (Lack of focus / attention) My damage was very small, broken props. But after that I babied that bird for about 12+ flights until I was absolutely sure nothing else was damaged. I also made a conscious commitment to pay strict attention when flying.

Thanks for that. I was impatient to get it in the air as last light was upon me. The only good thing about this is I now know how to download flight data onto my laptop from my iPhone and can view it in a detailed way when uploading it to: Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones It is free and interesting.

 

[Deleted member 62848]

Unhappy that my first post is is an obituary for my drone... Here is the story and the file. Sold my P4 for P4P in January. Many happy flights with no other incidents. Upgraded firmware but still got messages that firmware upgrade required. Did it again with "success" message but still got this warning. Even so, flew without incident probably 12 times after that.

This past Friday evening at Goose Lake Arizona, launched from the roof of my car (soft sand otherwise). On take off, it lunged to the ground. Battery popped out. Props ok. Battery locked back in securely. Seemed sound although rotors were gritty. Resumed flight from the sand, hovered, looked and listened. All seemed fine. Flew towards the lake 100' altitude with clear video. At around 700' got a Class E warning. Moments later, got a lost communication message with DJI Go indicating was auto return to home. I ran towards the shore hoping to reestablish communication. I no longer heard the drone and it never came home. Looking at the flight path, looks like it went into the drink.


I'm uploading the flight data from the final flight. I looked at it and don't have a clue from it what the fatal event was. The log of the 4 second flight which preceded the fatal fight is not available.

My thoughts: 4 second flight with crash into the sand indicated something was very wrong with the drone.
4 second flight with crash damaged something leading to the fatal flight.

Sand in rotors caused overheating and failure.

I realize that most fatal events are human error but hoping for advice and not a spanking.

Yip sorry to read that hope ya find out what happen and hoping it not land in the drinki always got a nice square takeoff & landin board in car to avoid this,,i never launch off car gives me magnetic interference warning,,,,,,,mayby why roof launch went wrong?????????best of luck gettin sorted

 

[mrirad]

Yip sorry to read that hope ya find out what happen and hoping it not land in the drinki always got a nice square takeoff & landin board in car to avoid this,,i never launch off car gives me magnetic interference warning,,,,,,,mayby why roof launch went wrong?????????best of luck gettin sorted

i didn't see the utility of a landing board until your suggestion. interesting theory about the car... thanks!

 

[MapMaker53]

Multiple Pilot errors were the cause of this loss. First, you took off from your car roof, which is a metal surface and can screw up your compass axis and probably caused it to head straight into the ground. Then, instead of doing some investigating into what went wrong, you decided to immediately launch again -- even knowing that the motors had sand in them.

If you don't know why your bird isn't flying right and are lucky enough not to lose it, NEVER send it back up again until you figure it out.

 

[grin factor]

Bummer mate. If you got sand into the motors I would think that be the problem, or it should have returned home?

 

[mrirad]

i think this is called foreshadowing. i shot this (not with the drone) just a bit before i lost the drone. agree with all comments so far. very helpful. thanks! steve

 

[SRJ_Phantom_4_Pro]

Would that be "Donkey Leather" handbags?

Yea I agree that was a sign of things to come with your flight...launching from a car then relaunch with sand in all the wrong places.....

 

[Pachakuti]

This past Friday evening at Goose Lake Arizona, launched from the roof of my car (soft sand otherwise).

And got heavy magnetic interference from car's metal. Sorry for your loss. Taking off with motors having bad sound, however, was bad idea.

 

[GerryF]

Hello. Sorry to hear about your drone crashing. That must suck. I'm a brand-new p4 pro user and was wondering how are you access the files to find out the information that you were looking at. I can't find it anywhere in the DJI manual

 

[mrirad]

Hello. Sorry to hear about your drone crashing. That must suck. I'm a brand-new p4 pro user and was wondering how are you access the files to find out the information that you were looking at. I can't find it anywhere in the DJI manual

hi gerry, i use the iphone with my p4p. the "black box" is the iphone. in my case, i connect to my mac computer and in iTunes access the the iPhone and look at my apps. i scroll down to DJI Go app and can download my flights. i look for the specific flight (in my case, the last flight) and download the file with TXT format. once i have this, i go to a free website (airdata.com) and upload the TXT format file of that flight. i get so much information about the flight and in my case was able to see that i was over water at the time of fatal disconnection. this told me that the drone was not hiding in the thick brush near the shore. i knew wind condition, battery temperature gps, distance from start point, number of satellites and altitude (probably more in there that i didn't look at).it also logs the warnings. it didn't clearly tell me what the fatal error was. i could send it to dji and i bet they can get more info.

what i got from the responses to my situation:
don't launch from a car (or metal objects)
get a launch pad and use it if on loose sand
if i crash (even if it is a "minor crash"), take the time to really look it over carefully and put it through its paces close to me to see how it behaves.
don't be impatient.

enjoy your drone!
steve

 

[GerryF]

I have the builtin screen. Does that make a difference?

 

[mrirad]

I have the builtin screen. Does that make a difference?

Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones

this may answer your question

 

[GerryF]

Thank you

 

[Pachakuti]

hi gerry, i use the iphone with my p4p. the "black box" is the iphone. in my case, i connect to my mac computer and in iTunes access the the iPhone and look at my apps. i scroll down to DJI Go app and can download my flights. i look for the specific flight (in my case, the last flight) and download the file with TXT format. once i have this, i go to a free website (airdata.com) and upload the TXT format file of that flight. i get so much information about the flight and in my case was able to see that i was over water at the time of fatal disconnection. this told me that the drone was not hiding in the thick brush near the shore. i knew wind condition, battery temperature gps, distance from start point, number of satellites and altitude (probably more in there that i didn't look at).it also logs the warnings. it didn't clearly tell me what the fatal error was. i could send it to dji and i bet they can get more info.

what i got from the responses to my situation:
don't launch from a car (or metal objects)
get a launch pad and use it if on loose sand
if i crash (even if it is a "minor crash"), take the time to really look it over carefully and put it through its paces close to me to see how it behaves.
don't be impatient.

enjoy your drone!
steve

There's cheap and neat landing/take-off pads on Ali which can be folded. Never tried those tho.
In dust/mud/dirt around I take off from Phantom's carry box and land into hands