Phantom Crash-Drone Went Crazy After Returning Home

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Hi,

I'm new to this forum, so I appologize if I'm not posting properly or in the correct area.

I wish I came here with better news, but unfortunately, I just crashed my Phantom 4. I'm sure many people post about thi on the forum.

In my case, the drone was flying great and I didn't receive any errors/warnings on my log. I pressed return to home and the drone started the process and was overhead. At this point, I got a high wind velocity warning and the drone went crazy and crashed into a tree. Luckily the damage didn't appear to be too significant. My question is how likely is it that I will be able to return the drone?

During my 20 minute flight, I didn't receive any warnings, until the drone was over my head. Further, at the end, there were about 4 or 5 errors on the log. I've attached the flight record for review. From now on, I guess I can't rely on return to home :(. You guys think those leg caps can be purchased?
 

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I got a high wind velocity warning and the drone went crazy and crashed into a tree. Luckily the damage didn't appear to be too significant
After RTH was initiated, your log doesn't show any errors until your Phantom crashed into the trees. According to your log, you steered your Phantom toward the trees as it was auto landing over top of the home point.

Which leg caps are you referring to? Got a photo?
 
I'll get a picture later. According to the phone app, the drone did not go the direction that I tried to steer though. I was steering left and the drone continued to fly backwords. I only started to try controlling it, when I realized it wasn't going to land correctly.
 

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According to that image, the rear of your Phantom was facing toward the trees. And since you had the elevator in the down position, your Phantom was flying backwards (not to the left side of the Phantom).
 
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I'll get a picture later. According to the phone app, the drone did not go the direction that I tried to steer though. I was steering left and the drone continued to fly backwords. I only started to try controlling it, when I realized it wasn't going to land correctly.
While your Phantom was auto-landing, you were applying extreme joystick input to counter it.
If you didn't want the Phantom to continue as it was going, you should have disengaged the autolanding rather than leaving it on and fighting with it.
 
Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback.

Doesn't pressing the left joystick down decrease throttle? I was trying to bring the drone down hard because I saw it start to veer off. It didn't really reaspond well. Also, it's definitely not going the direction i'm telling it to go. Towards the end, it stopped responding altogether. My fear is that the "high wind warning," which popped up right before crash will create an issue. There is no warning in the log before that point.

Is my best strategy to state it that it wasn't responding correctly to commands/giving propper warnings?

Also, how can I prevent this from happening again?
 
On closer inspection it did behave correctly. Looking at the comparisons of elevator/pitch/forward speed (red) and aileron/roll/lateral speed they appear to track approximately correctly at the end of the flight.

Negative (back) elevator produces positive (backwards) pitch and negative forward speed (moves backwards). Positive aileron (right) produces right roll and positive lateral speed (moves to the right).

Since it was facing roughly east at the time (83°) it headed backwards and right - i.e. to the SW as shown on the recorded track.

It looks like a simple case of confused stick inputs during autolanding.

DJIFlightRecord_2018-03-25_[16-34-20]_conv_01.png
 
decreasing throttle shouldn't push the drone back, should it? Usually, it comes down when I decrease the throttle without a lot of backwords motion. That, I don't understand.

How do I know if the drone is damaged? The gimble rolled after the crash (ie. it still seemed to move-I did a quick test). I think I got extremely lucky after this. The battery was knocked out of the drone.
 

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decreasing throttle shouldn't push the drone back, should it? Usually, it comes down when I decrease the throttle without a lot of backwords motion. That, I don't understand.

How do I know if the drone is damaged? The gimble rolled after the crash (ie. it still seemed to move-I did a quick test). I think I got extremely lucky after this. The battery was knocked out of the drone.

Backwards motion was due to your elevator input, not throttle input. You had maximum back elevator applied from the 1246 s mark.

DJIFlightRecord_2018-03-25_[16-34-20]_conv_03.png
 
******, you're right. Up on the phone app controll log is forward. Guess I could have done more damage. Just hate beating up an $800 device.

Looks like they prob won't give me a new one. Oh well.
 

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