Phantom 3 S falls out of the sky at 300 feet

[Meta4]

I see, although I'm surprised the phantom firmware doesn't throttle back under these kind of extreme circumstances?

It tried to but the operator just kept the sticks pushed hard.

 

[lonjsnyder]

Today I took my phantom 3 standard for what was its final flight. I have around 150-200 flights recorded with this drone as I have had it for over a year. I did my usual pre flight procedure and I put it in the air for a few seconds to make sure the props were on good as usual. Once I was sure it was good to go I flew it out about 1500 feet and I was about 300 feet up and traveling about 35 mph. Now the drone was in the air for over a minute with absolutely no issues. Then out of the blue I see it falling out of the sky on my monitor. Then it says disconnected with no signal. I go to look for it and after a while I find it and it's a awful sight. I looked at the flight records and it shows that it hit the ground at close to 60 mph and it landed on hard packed and cold dirt. It is in pieces and there were parts scattered everywhere. One propeller was missing and I'm guessing this was the culprit. I have no idea how it would fly off mid flight though when considering the fact that they are self tightening. Has this ever happened before? And will DJI send me a new drone as this was not pilot error??


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How many charge cycles were on the flight battery?


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[Gearbox]

It seems DJI does though. In this post, I can see you had to pay to get your Phantom fixed.

The whole story is , I watched the Prop fly off , witnessed it , pre flight check they were all tight , flew for over three minutes before Prop came off .
First they said I was flying close to power lines & had a Compass failure , even sent me a photo of the power lines I came close to to cause failure of Compass , well when I replied to them that those power lines were on the first leg of flight & losing the Prop & falling about 25 ', happened about three hundred yards away from the power lines., is that too close to them to cause a Compass failure , I hope not , because I would have had dozens of them so far .
I still do fly around these same power lines & with so many flights with no issues . Even the Power Company had a Drone the day before mine crashed , checking switches on the same Power lines
They came up with another reason , they said I hit something to cause the crash , of which I was less then a hundred yards away & the Drone was in the middle of a clear cut , with nothing around for fifty yards on both sides & a half mile up or down , what could I have hit , that I didn't see.
I said since you had a great photo of the power lines that supposedly made my Prop fly off , do they have one of what I hit to make it crash . They said they were not going to reopen my crash investigation , because I hit something to cause it . .
So , they were not going to admit that a properly tighten Prop would fly off , even if I had a video of it actually loosing up & coming off , the Drone was only three moths old at the time & these were the factory Props that came with it , so if there was a failure , it was their new components that failed , because they were tight & I watched it come off in the middle of a field , with nothing around to hit .
You will get a compass error when the drone is flipping around falling from the sky .

Yes, they will never admit it was a Self Tightening Prop of their's that caused a crash when they can manipulate or use flight data to their advantage . If they find something that caused a failure & they had a run of these failures , they may repair under warranty , even though it a little out of the warranty period , it has happened . Maybe I rubbed them the wrong way , like pointing out their BS or what ever , I know what I saw & they can't change that with some trumped up Data .

 

[JMFinch]

This may not be your cause but it is the season to remind people to upgrade their battery firmware if needed. DJI released a firmware released last winter to prevent the battery from shutting off mid-flight when:
1. The battery temp is near or below freezing
2. The battery is under a heavy load.

I was fortunate that DJI replaced my P3P (still in warrantee) after I applied full throtttle on a 32F morning.

Now I cannot leave my batteries in the car when it is cold because I get a message instructing me to warm the battery to 15C and the motors will not start.

 

[Joe H]

That sucks! Sorry to hear about this.
Which firmware version was it running before the death spiral?

 

[GhostRdrTat]

I may be off here but just a theory, if he lost power due to cold battery and the battery having too much demand put on it in those conditions and the motors suddenly stopped when power eas abruptly cut off to them, the centrifical (I know that's spelled wrong be nice lol) rotation of the prop would have spun it off because the prop would have kept spinning in the direction it spins to remove it while the motor is no longer spinning to keep it tight.

 

[Lobot]

in regards to checking the props, is it enough to just check and make sure they're screwed on tight, or should I take them off and put them back on again before every flight? I'm thinking the latter option would cause more wear.

 

[Philltayl]

Classic case of operator foolishness..........lets just blame DJI

 

[RodPad]

This may not be your cause but it is the season to remind people to upgrade their battery firmware if needed. DJI released a firmware released last winter to prevent the battery from shutting off mid-flight when:
1. The battery temp is near or below freezing
2. The battery is under a heavy load.

I was fortunate that DJI replaced my P3P (still in warrantee) after I applied full throtttle on a 32F morning.

Now I cannot leave my batteries in the car when it is cold because I get a message instructing me to warm the battery to 15C and the motors will not start.

I would like to see your flight log, on that crash day.

Rod

 

[RodPad]

I may be off here but just a theory, if he lost power due to cold battery and the battery having too much demand put on it in those conditions and the motors suddenly stopped when power eas abruptly cut off to them, the centrifical (I know that's spelled wrong be nice lol) rotation of the prop would have spun it off because the prop would have kept spinning in the direction it spins to remove it while the motor is no longer spinning to keep it tight.

My name is Rod and I agree with this message

Rod

 

[Kirby Johnson]

You were clipping around up there pretty fast , if you slowed in a hurry & the Prop (S ) threads were not up to it , the breaking action from the Motor (s) could have loosened it as has been said .
I think thats what happened to me , I was WOT & slowed very quickly & I watched the Prop fly off & the Drone fall . Mine was 3 months old & DJI came up with three or four reasons ( excuses ) not to pay for the fix under Warranty , I had to pay for a new Gimbal assembly.
I check the Props every flight & I still lost a fairly new one . I don't take them off unless I need to & still check them just walking by my Drone & I don't slow too quickly , even if it had nothing to do with loosing a Prop .

All this silliness about motors slowing and unscrewing propellars is nutty guys. The motors do not have braking implemented as it is on a machine tool like a lathe or end mill. The motor controller simply reduces, (Not even eliminates) power to the motors. Given the rotating mass of the metal parts of the motors, and the corresponding rotating mass of the light plastic propellars, reducing the power output of a motor is highly unlikely to spin a propellar off. Remember the propellar always has a substantial load on it IE: air resistance. while the primary load on the motor armature is the propellar (and it's air load). It appears these are small three phase motors, and if they are, a controller malfunction could in theory reverse a motor, and that is more plausible than believing that if you let up on the accelerator your wheels will fall off going down the freeway. My 2 cents

 

[Andreas Pashiardis]

I agree. Especially considering the fact that I was going in a straight line


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[lonjsnyder]

I agree. Especially considering the fact that I was going in a straight line


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Andreas: how many charge cycles were on your flight battery? Is it likely your battery was at the end of its useful life?


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[RodPad]

All this silliness about motors slowing and unscrewing propellars is nutty guys. The motors do not have braking implemented as it is on a machine tool like a lathe or end mill. The motor controller simply reduces, (Not even eliminates) power to the motors. Given the rotating mass of the metal parts of the motors, and the corresponding rotating mass of the light plastic propellars, reducing the power output of a motor is highly unlikely to spin a propellar off. Remember the propellar always has a substantial load on it IE: air resistance. while the primary load on the motor armature is the propellar (and it's air load). It appears these are small three phase motors, and if they are, a controller malfunction could in theory reverse a motor, and that is more plausible than believing that if you let up on the accelerator your wheels will fall off going down the freeway. My 2 cents

Ok, I was looking for a post where somebody stated that the P3's or something like that did actually do some kind of breaking, I will keep looking, but I did come up with some stuff to share on this thread.

Video:
Prop-wash question

Help figuring out why i crashed

Self tightening props?

Rod

 

[Andreas Pashiardis]

Andreas: how many charge cycles were on your flight battery? Is it likely your battery was at the end of its useful life?


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It had done 84 cycles. The thing is that it didn't turn off and the motors kept spinning while it was falling. I could see them on the monitor. Also when I found it one prop was misssing and I walked a 2 mile area around the crash and could not find it. I was at 300 feet so I had plenty of time to look at the monitor and see that the motors were spinning. Also all the other propellers were attached when I found it and one was completely missing. The propeller fell off 100%

 

[Philltayl]

It had done 84 cycles. The thing is that it didn't turn off and the motors kept spinning while it was falling. I could see them on the monitor. Also when I found it one prop was misssing and I walked a 2 mile area around the crash and could not find it. I was at 300 feet so I had plenty of time to look at the monitor and see that the motors were spinning. Also all the other propellers were attached when I found it and one was completely missing. The propeller fell off 100%

Just how did you see the props spinning on the monitor?????

 

[Andreas Pashiardis]

Just how did you see the props spinning on the monitor?????

I could see them because I have my camera adjusted so that it can go up 30 degrees higher and I tilted it up before the crash and also it was doing like front flips on the way down so I could see them the whole time

 

[Philltayl]

I could see them because I have my camera adjusted so that it can go up 30 degrees higher and I tilted it up before the crash and also it was doing like front flips on the way down so I could see them the whole time

Suspect!!!!!!!!. How did you do the camera adjustment?????

 

[RodPad]

Its in the app.

Newbie question

Rod

 

[Philltayl]

Its in the app.

Rod

30 degrees from horizontal up but the OP said 30 degrees beyond that????