P4P v2 Flyaway - who do I report it to- Chicago area?

jephoto · Oct 19, 2022

Well, finally happened. I first lost GPS, then connection to controller 3 min into a flight on a clear sunny day.

I'd turned on drone, waited a minute, took off & hovered about 10' until a got the GPS Homepoint lock, then rose to ~140', rotated around to view possible obstacles, (none nearby) as I was at West end of a decent size park, wanted to go a bit further west to show park in foreground. So rose a bit more and backed up a bit - then lost GPS, went into ATTI mode. Line of trees that had been behind me blocked immediate view of drone so I wasn't sure what direction to fly it back and wind was ~15mph.

While attempting to find my takeoff spot in camera, then lost connection, then the screen view went black.
Tried RTH, but of course, with no GPS and no connection to controller, that did not work.
Log says at 3min into flight, I was 311' away (wish I'd seen that immediately) and 178' height AGL. But it was drifting with the wind and by the time I lost connection it could have been quite far from where I was looking.

While totally bummed at losing my P4P, I am more concerned WHERE it went and how it came down.
Kind of dreading the official phone call "Mr. Ellis? Do you own a DJI Phantom 4 pro drone???"......

So immediately tried to find where & who to call to report it. Not an easy thing.
Did call local FSDO for O'Hare airport region. Voice mail. Left messages in 2 places there.
Did an online report with NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System.

And working on my Flight logs now.

What's my next move - as a Part 107 flyer?, I want to do the correct thing in reporting.
First time since I started flying in 2014 I had to do this.

Meta4 · Oct 19, 2022

jephoto said:
While totally bummed at losing my P4P, I am more concerned WHERE it went and how it came down.

Your drone shouldn't be losing GPS if it's out in the open with a good view of more than half of the sky.
But if it has lost GPS and then loses signal, there's only one place it will go.
That's straight down in autolanding +/- a little for drift with any wind there may have been.
From 178 feet, the autolanding should have taken 18 seconds which will limit how far it might have drifted while coming down.

jephoto said:
And working on my Flight logs now.

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 of the flight.
Come back and post a link to the report it gives you.
Or .. just post the txt file here.

jephoto · Oct 19, 2022

Appreciated. I’ll try to do that tomorrow.
Unfortunately being in a big city, while there are definitely some good honest people out there, I’m not holding my breath that it will be returned.
But I will call UIC campus security tomorrow as we were a few blocks west of the campus. Could’ve landed there. Best case…

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

My original question still needs to be addressed, so do I report this to in my area?
Or what site?

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

OK then. This should be the last flight. Have to work this morning so I don
t' have time to look at it - but will be Greatful if you can.
Let Me Know if that isn't the right one.
The top record I should be the last flight:

Phantomwolf · Oct 20, 2022

jephoto said:
Appreciated. I’ll try to do that tomorrow.
Unfortunately being in a big city, while there are definitely some good honest people out there, I’m not holding my breath that it will be returned.
But I will call UIC campus security tomorrow as we were a few blocks west of the campus. Could’ve landed there. Best case…

Think positively. He who thinks positively is happier. At least that's what they say. Good luck.

Capt KO · Oct 20, 2022

As always, did you mark your drone with a phone #.? It's a must. Got mine back that way.

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

Capt KO said:
As always, did you mark your drone with a phone #.? It's a must. Got mine back that way.

Of course. Reg#, Name. Phone & email.
AND- REWARD if Found and RETURNED....

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

Capt KO said:
As always, did you mark your drone with a phone #.? It's a must. Got mine back that way.

And it a possibility its in a tree or on a roof & may not be discovered for a while....

Capt KO · Oct 20, 2022

Smart move. Hope you get a call soon.

jephoto said:
Of course. Reg#, Name. Phone & email.
AND- REWARD if Found and RETURNED....

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

jephoto said:
OK then. This should be the last flight. Have to work this morning so I don
t' have time to look at it - but will be Greatful if you can.
Let Me Know if that isn't the right one.
The top record I should be the last flight:

Update: not sure this is the correct flight log.

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

Meta4 said:
Your drone shouldn't be losing GPS if it's out in the open with a good view of more than half of the sky.
But if it has lost GPS and then loses signal, there's only one place it will go.
That's straight down in autolanding +/- a little for drift with any wind there may have been.
From 178 feet, the autolanding should have taken 18 seconds which will limit how far it might have drifted while coming down.

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 of the flight.
Come back and post a link to the report it gives you.
Or .. just post the txt file here.

Do I have to upload 1 file at a time for the DJI viewer? Or can I select several?
From that screenshot it looks like the correct file at the top, but when I just opened it up its a flight from last week I did at a different location.

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

I think this is the correct one. Already uploaded:

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view flight logs from your DJI drones

www.phantomhelp.com

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

Looking at the log it kept getting this :

GPS data error. Please contact DJI Support.

And then:
GPS Position Mismatch.

Finally:
Satellite Positioning Off. Fly with caution.

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

Found this post from 2020. Apparently this is a thing....
It's the Power interface module.
See reply #7:

Phantom 4 pro GPS error

I have found many other posts of this problem but have not found an acutal resolution to the issue, please help. Phantom 4 pro had been flying fine and all of a sudden keeps giving me error “GPS disconnected” and “GPS data error. contact DJI support” and immediately switches to atti mode. I have...

phantompilots.com

Not that it helps me now. But interesting to know. And I looked at my job last week and 10.9 sec into one of the flights I had a few sec of "GPS Position Mismatch.". But the rest of the 17min flight mostly ok.
Although I did have a "Lost Downlink" for 1m 12sec while in Tripod mode but hovering very close to me. I think I remember Go4 crashing and having to restart.

Sorry for obsessing...Hope I'm not boring you all with this stuff. It's a big deal for me at the moment.
Not something that's happened to me before.

7m 57.2s

Tripod

8satellites

11.8ft

4.9ft

0.2mph

248.6ft

71%

15.289V

3.82V

3.84V

3.82V

0.021V

Downlink Lost.

9m 9.4s

Tripod

8satellites

17.1ft

10.2ft

0mph

246.2ft

71%

15.289V

3.82V

3.84V

3.82V

0.021V

Downlink Restored (after 1m 12.2s).

Meta4 · Oct 20, 2022

jephoto said:
OK then. This should be the last flight. Have to work this morning so I don
t' have time to look at it - but will be Greatful if you can.
Let Me Know if that isn't the right one.
The top record I should be the last flight:

The flight log you posted first was the correct (the last) one.
Here is how that looks on the Phantomhelp log viewer:

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view flight logs from your DJI drones

www.phantomhelp.com

There were real GPS problems right from the start.
Satellite numbers were very low, the drone started to get unreliable location data at 0:25.
At 0:35.8 it recorded a homepoint, but sta numbers were still lower than normal

At 1:10.4 satellite numbers jumped from 8 to 11, but 1.5 sec later sat numbers went to zero.
There were lots of GPS Position Mismatch warnings.
Usually these are a false alarm and mean nothing.
But there were also Satellite Positioning Off. Fly with caution messages as the sat numbers jumped between 11 and zero repeatedly.

At 1:51.2 location data was rated as reliable and just after that you started to fly away from where the drone had been hovering, close to where it was launched.
But good GPS only lasted about 10 seconds beforeit became unreliable again at 2:02.0 and for the remaining minute of flight, there was no reliable GPS data.
There was another GPS error message that I've not seen before: GPS data error. Please contact DJI Support.
This is suggesting that the issue was a problem with the drone's hardware?

With errors in the GPS data, the position and speed data are unreliable.
The speed data at 2:17.6 illustrates this.
The drone did not jump from 2.3 mph to 31 mph and back to near zero in a second.
These numbers came from inaccurate position data.
For this reason, the track and position shown by the Phantomhelp log viewer are wrong.
For the last 30 seconds of the flight, the data shows a moderate-high speed that doesn't match the joystick input.
The drone was probably much closer to the launch point than indicated by the faulty data.

It's impossible to tell where it ended up, but I suspect that it's probably only half the distance indicated by the data.
There are a lot of trees in the likely landing area.

jephoto · Oct 20, 2022

Thanks. I’ll go back to the park where I launched in the morning.
All this happened so fast and I’d just moved it up and back past a row of trees when I lost GPS so I couldn’t see where it was to steer it back.
Very frustrating.

Andy9 · Oct 21, 2022

It's not easy to find the drone from the ground if it had landed on a tree. It would be much easier to find it from above. Getting another drone to find yours might be a better strategy.