Phantom 2 flyaway - Ships GPS/TX Interference the cause ?

[mangoboom]

Just had my first (and hopefully last) flyaway…

Be interested to hear what you guys think if my assessment of the cause is plausible. video as well to support.

Headed down to the Thames this morning at 6am as with zero winds (5mph) and bright sun thought ideal conditions.

Go through normal procedure, full GPS lock, launch and fly no problem. Running all the latest firmware etc. etc. After about 11 minutes in all fine.Good flight.

So start to bring the Phantom back in. As I’m doing this there’s a large commercial ship passing along the river.

I figure it was maybe 600m away (see pic)

so as I bring it in to me it doesn’t respond and just starts to wander off, you can see from the video this is the activity of it from when it starts to not take the input from the control. It sporadically lets me get control then wanders off again

I’m using a Futaba 14sg fully charged.

I’m in GPS mode the whole time , battery about 35%. You can see I almost get the chance to grab it then it just gets pushed away from me. I should have switched to Atti but i was just too worried about all the water (there’s a moat you can’t see) so I ended up ditching it in the brambles to not take any chances (broken prop only damage), plugged in post crash and all okay , no calibration needed.

My theory - some interference from the passing ship ???? Radar possibly affecting the GPS ?? or TX ? Everything was fine up until the ship came past and it definitely seemed as it got closer the more the marked effect on the loss of control…Does that sound / look plausible ?

http://youtu.be/RLZF48gk820

 

[ianwood]

Re: Phantom 2 flyaway - Ships GPS/TX Interference the cause

From what I can see, the ship had nothing to do with it and it's radar will not interfere with GPS at that range unless it is very broken. What I do see is massive TBE taking place which is a disagreement between the compass and the GPS as to which way to go. When it's bad, you get circling that is very difficult to control. Either you flew over a magnetic hotspot of some sort or have a magnetized/defective compass.

 

[mangoboom]

Re: Phantom 2 flyaway - Ships GPS/TX Interference the cause

Either you flew over a magnetic hotspot of some sort or have a magnetized/defective compass.

Compass MOD is currently around 1500 so I 'd think the compass is okay so that only leaves the magnetic hotspot issue which I guess there is no way of knowing.

The only substantial area of metal that it came in close proximity to was the fence - perhaps it was this ?

 

[ianwood]

Re: Phantom 2 flyaway - Ships GPS/TX Interference the cause

Not unless the fence was made of neodymium! Hard to know. Something disrupted the magnetic field around the compass.