Phantom 3 advanced down - battery issue or operator error?

pszem · Jun 30, 2017

Hi,
My ph3a has crarashed, I manually took it up and everything was normal during almost whole flight.
No wind, no obstacles between me and a aircraft, original brand new battery (only 5 charging cycles 100% health)
I decided to land at 25% battery, First time "rc signal lost" status was at 38,5meters AGL and 12 meters distance to me, drone has started RTH procedure and has rised its altitude to 45,3meters (120m AGL was safe enough to go over a church

, then I have decided to cancel RTH and took controll, I have decreased altitude, but I have lost rc link again at 37,2 meters. In my opinion it was much safer to land immediately than a RTH procedure (alt 120m up and 50 straight to a homepoint and again 120m down) after that drone increased an altitude a little bit to 39,1m, cell voltage lvl was about 3,51v, if baterry would be ok, drone would go home safetly in my opinion. There's no doubt that it's a battery issue 20% battery level isn't a critical level. In the last period of flight, a few seconds before crash I have pushed my left stick front and right back, to avoid collision. But German DJI's support says that it was operator error... because "Remark: no Warranty - Flight-Logs read: 1. The aircraft was controlled by pilot in gps mode. 2.t=1315s,h=35m,d=51m,RTH by RC lost.Return height:120m 3.t=1322s,h=42m,d=36m,aircraft crashed during RTH.Before the crash pilot was pushing throttle stick upward and pitch stick backward" So is it correct? Should I stay and watch my drone is hitting a church during RTH? That's insane. There was no wind, great weather conditions. I'm not a fist time pilot, I know how it works and I'm trying to fly safetly, I'm not trying to Hit alt or distance records, I'm just a Photographer and my phantom is a flyin camera, so I do not have to fly far

I was standing quite close to my quad, it was distance about 12 meters. During flight i was moving to keep an eye on it... there are links below to my crash and a flightlog Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
video

Meta4 · Jun 30, 2017

pszem said:
There's no doubt that it's a battery issue 20% battery level isn't a critical level. In the last period of flight, a few seconds before crash I have pushed my left stick front and right back, to avoid collision. But German DJI's support says that it was operator error... because "Remark: no Warranty - Flight-Logs read: 1. The aircraft was controlled by pilot in gps mode. 2.t=1315s,h=35m,d=51m,RTH by RC lost.Return height:120m 3.t=1322s,h=42m,d=36m,aircraft crashed during RTH.Before the crash pilot was pushing throttle stick upward and pitch stick backward" So is it correct? Should I stay and watch my drone is hitting a church during RTH?

I can't see you taking this any further as it had nothing to do with the battery.
According to your flight record at 19:17.1 - Signal Lost. Aircraft Returning Home.
Your signal was blocked by the tower between you and the Phantom so it initiated RTH.
This is quite normal behaviour.
What you should have done was to cancel RTH when you had signal again and flown clear of the obstacle to get home.
You didn't cancel RTH but were working both joysticks to bring the Phantom back.
It's not a problem with the battery - it worked normally.
It's not a problem with RTH programming - it would have worked normally to climb clear of the church and come home if left to do its thing.
It comes down to the person working the joysticks in a way that flew the Phantom into the church building.