Phantom 4 PRO v2.0 fly away - saved but still crashed - please help understand

Schlamil · Mar 28, 2019

Hello Guys,

Brand new P4P v2 bird flies away. I am pretty sure it's at least partially my fault but I need info from you guys.

In short my side of story is simple. I unpacked and put my bird on the top of the mountain I climbed on and set it up. GPS had some 13-14 GPS satellites locked in so green light here. Everything looked good so I proceeded to auto take off. Birds takes of and in a split of a second before I realized that something was wrong I thought to myself that he is going to hover fairly high as it was continuously going up.
Shortly after I realized that the craft is still going up instead stopping and hovering like I assumed it was going to happen i hit the left control in downward motion to bring the bird back, but the P4P wasnt reacting. I immediately tried to switch modes with my remote to ATTI but I thought i might have gone to SPORT. While the craft continued to go up and I noticed that there was no reaction to my controls on RC I double checked again and switched to ATTI mode. I also hit Auto Land on my tablet but I am not sure if there was any response from my p4p. After switching to ATTI the craft started to react to my controls and started to coming towards me. The craft was going down much faster than I am used to. Anyway at that point it fly by me and came crashing into the ground.

Few things:
p4p ended up with broken landing gear and busted gimble.

Before we consider environment to be at fault I flew from that very same place a week before with my Mavic Air and no issues at all.
I know that there were few things I could've done different but in the heat of the moment where your $1500 "toy" is flying away I panicked.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Also link to my other MC DAT file:

p4p Crash

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Thank you for your help

Nightwolf · Mar 28, 2019

Schlamil said:
in the heat of the moment where your $1500 "toy" is flying away I panicked.

Can't speak for everyone but most of us have been there

Meta4 · Mar 28, 2019

Schlamil said:
Brand new P4P v2 bird flies away. I am pretty sure it's at least partially my fault but I need info from you guys.

There are two issues showing up in the flight data.
1. You were flying in atti mode for most of the flight.
You were aware of it but this means you had no "brakes" or position holding ability, making control difficult.

2. Your VPS is showing a reading of 0 or 0.3 ft for much of the flight even when the IMU is showing that the drone is climbing.
This is the big issue.
You actually had horizontal control but because the VPS sensor was indicating the drone was still on or very close to the ground, obstacle avoidance was causing problems for downward control.
Do you have a "gimbal guard" or something else that's blocking the downward looking sensors?

Schlamil · Mar 28, 2019

Meta4 said:
There are two issues showing up in the flight data.
1. You were flying in atti mode for most of the flight.
You were aware of it but this means you had no "brakes" or position holding ability, making control difficult.

2. Your VPS is showing a reading of 0 or 0.3 ft for much of the flight even when the IMU is showing that the drone is climbing.
This is the big issue.
You actually had horizontal control but because the VPS sensor was indicating the drone was still on or very close to the ground, obstacle avoidance was causing problems for downward control.
Do you have a "gimbal guard" or something else that's blocking the downward looking sensors?

Sooooooo
In an Instant I had an Eureka moment and at the same time I started feeling completely STUPID.

Do I have a gimble guard you ask...? As a matter of fact I thought that if I flip the gimble/camera guard that comes with the drone, and secure it for the flight in the back of the camera, it will protect the landing gear in case of harder landing and I will always have it handy when I need to put it up after each flight.

So what happened was that the gimble guard caused the p4pro to think that it is still on the ground and that is why it was continuously climbing.

Wow ,I feel so stupid.

Thank you for your help!!!!!!

msinger · Mar 28, 2019

Schlamil said:
So what happened was that the gimble guard caused the p4pro to think that it is still on the ground and that is why it was continuously climbing

If you want to use the gimbal guard, you'll need to disable the downward sensors or disable Landing Protection. When Landing Protection is enabled, the Phantom will automatically ascend whenever it detects the ground or a nearby obstacle below.

Schlamil · Mar 28, 2019

msinger said:
If you want to use the gimbal guard, you'll need to disable the downward sensors or disable Landing Protection. When Landing Protection is enabled, the Phantom will automatically ascend whenever it detects the ground or a nearby obstacle below.

Now it all makes sense!!!

Schlamil · Mar 28, 2019

Now, I plan on going home and having a beer maybe even two to think what I did.

Trackerputnam · Mar 29, 2019

I am glad you learned from your mistakes and it you don’t mind I am going to tuck that piece of info alway for later use. Sorry for your loss!

Me_XMan · Mar 30, 2019

Meta4 said:
There are two issues showing up in the flight data.
1. You were flying in atti mode for most of the flight.
You were aware of it but this means you had no "brakes" or position holding ability, making control difficult.

2. Your VPS is showing a reading of 0 or 0.3 ft for much of the flight even when the IMU is showing that the drone is climbing.
This is the big issue.
You actually had horizontal control but because the VPS sensor was indicating the drone was still on or very close to the ground, obstacle avoidance was causing problems for downward control.
Do you have a "gimbal guard" or something else that's blocking the downward looking sensors?

Darn nice diagnosis !!!!

Tenisyn · Mar 30, 2019

msinger said:
If you want to use the gimbal guard, you'll need to disable the downward sensors or disable Landing Protection. When Landing Protection is enabled, the Phantom will automatically ascend whenever it detects the ground or a nearby obstacle below.

This needs to go in my future preflight checklist!