Phantom Pro 3 vs Heavy Wind - near disaster

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OK - in the interests of pushing this wonderful aircraft decided to fly it in the most windy conditions...

Up on a mountain with no tree cover... wind speeds of 20 mph with gusts of 40 mph. Flat and no shelter. Ideal place to see what this little UAV can take... 'Fly it like you stole it'

You can hear the props whirring at full blast - that is not the phantom powered up. It is switched off - it was the wind spinning up the props when I was holding it against the wind!! Listen carefully and it sounded like it was in flight.

The Phantom3 flew well under the conditions. Against the wind it flew at 4-5mph at full throttle.. downwind it flew around 34mph with no forward throttle. You can see that motorbike screaming at about 100mph on the road... yet it filmed it pretty steady in one place.

Anyway did a couple of gentle circuits and then decided to go further towards what looked like a 'slip stream' ahead (the green bit of grass) - bad idea... the phantom just flew backwards at over 40 mph with no stick input within a matter of seconds. This is at the 4:00 mark. I was simply stationary and hovering on the spot when I could see the phantom flying backwards.

It felt like a 'flyaway' - I could not stop the phantom even with full throttle forwards. Let go off the sticks and it carried on backwards... bye bye phantom...I could also see that the phantom was not tilting against the wind or making any attempt to stop and hold it's position when my hands were off the sticks. I decided to Rapidly descend to get out of the wind currents and then did a rapid landing before things got more nasty. So I still had control to descend and it slowed down when I lose height - "it just felt like no control rolling backwards down a hill with the handbrake off in a car..."

In hindsight I could have activated auto land but considering I had about 3 seconds to think before the phantom disappeared over the ridge at about 40mph I decided to land asap and cut my losses. After a 10 minute hike up the mountain we retrieved the phantom with just a bit of mud on one of the props.. No damage at all. In fact DJI pilot guided me towards the aircraft which made things easier. You can see how windy it was up at the landing site when I hovered it again.

Love the P3 - while I would not recommend flying in this sort of conditions it is a tough little aircraft nevertheless. I am still not sure why the Phantom just 'flew away' so quickly - I can only assume that the gust of wind was so strong it just overwhelmed the P3 flight controller and just blew with the wind...

Video to follow after youtube sucks it in..

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OK - in the interests of pushing this wonderful aircraft decided to fly it in the most windy conditions...

Up on a mountain with no tree cover... wind speeds of 20 mph with gusts of 40 mph. Flat and no shelter. Ideal place to see what this little UAV can take... 'Fly it like you stole it'

You can hear the props whirring at full blast - that is not the phantom powered up. It is switched off - it was the wind spinning up the props when I was holding it against the wind!! Listen carefully and it sounded like it was in flight.

The Phantom3 flew well under the conditions. Against the wind it flew at 4-5mph at full throttle.. downwind it flew around 34mph with no forward throttle. You can see that motorbike screaming at about 100mph on the road... yet it filmed it pretty steady in one place.

Anyway did a couple of gentle circuits and then decided to go further towards what looked like a 'slip stream' ahead (the green bit of grass) - bad idea... the phantom just flew backwards at over 40 mph with no stick input within a matter of seconds. It felt like a 'flyaway' - I could not stop the phantom even with full throttle. I could also see that the phantom was not tilting against the wind or making any attempt to stop and hold it's position. I decided to Rapidly descend to get out of the wind currents and then did a rapid landing before things got more nasty.

In hindsight I could have activated auto land but considering I had about 3 seconds to think before the phantom disappeared over the ridge at about 40mph I decided to land asap and cut my losses. After a 10 minute hike up the mountain we retrieved the phantom with just a bit of mud on one of the props.. No damage at all. In fact DJI pilot guided me towards the aircraft which made things easier. You can see how windy it was up at the landing site when I hovered it again.

Love the P3 - while I would not recommend flying in this sort of conditions it is a tough little aircraft nevertheless. I am still not sure why the Phantom just 'flew away' so quickly - I can only assume that the gust of wind was so strong it just overwhelmed the P3 flight controller and just blew with the wind...

Video to follow

http
We are alike why do we do it ( because we can ) ) flew yesterday winds 25 gusts to 40 HIT A MAX SPEED OF JUST UNDER 52MPH took off in garage flew out did a sped run and back into garage for landing. The transition from high wind to no wind was corrected in less than 3ft love this part of the phantom series
IMG_1242.PNG
 
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Can't stand the suspense...
image.jpg
 
We do it because we can, Luv it !!

The pump, the rush the back to being a boy again, a great post I could feel the fun from here :)

And no damage just how brilliant was that !!
 
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I don't fly mine over 14-16 MPH. Not worth it for me. High winds....disaster you will have.

Very sensible advice. Over the last few weeks it has been very windy in the UK even though it has been sunny on most days. I have found that 20 mph was ok with the P2 P3 as long as it was not gusting any higher than this. Taking it up the mountain was essentially pushing the boat out..
 
Very sensible advice. Over the last few weeks it has been very windy in the UK even though it has been sunny on most days. I have found that 20 mph was ok with the P2 P3 as long as it was not gusting any higher than this. Taking it up the mountain was essentially pushing the boat out..


I HAVE TO RESPECFULY DISAGREE. I have been flying the vision series since the beginning and have at least 100 flights with winds over 25 many above 30 and have never had a crash due to winds now. Now trying to get that once in a lifetime shot has clamed many a prop but this is a great platform for even those with a wild side . Brings back the kid in all of us ;)
 
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I flew my P2V in wind with gusts up to about 25 mph once. It was over an open field where we were launching rockets. Even so, it was still a bit of a challenge. The wind was at my back, so I could fly the 'copter out at about 40 mph. Coming back was a challenge. Once I ended up flying it into the ground because I didn't notice how quickly it was losing altitude as I flew at full throttle against the wind. Fortunately, it didn't hurt anything.

From now on, I am not going to fly in winds that strong.

-- Roger
 
I HAVE TO RESPECFULY DISAGREE. I have been flying the vision series since the beginning and have at least 100 flights with winds over 25 many above 30 and have never had a crash due to winds now. Now trying to get that once in a lifetime shot has clamed many a prop but this is a great platform for even those with a wild side . Brings back the kid in all of us ;)

Have a look at the video - do you think that was the wind that did this?
 
Great video mohan, looks like you had a scare up there for a few minutes. All in the name of fun tho. :)
 
I too have had my fair share of flying in high wind with hardcore wind gust.

In watching the mohan's video, I actually wish I was there flying with them. I'd say they had a nice layout for what I like which is high speed flying. With there not being any obstacles above ground this should have given them smoother air streams above ground. In the video where the quad came down, to me looked just like it was hovering in atti mode. I don't remember reading anything about switching into atti mode, so this concerns me a lot.

Something about that event taking place doesn't add up. This is why not having a flight logger with the necessary data categories sux! Otherwise I/we could have a solution in place so that something like that would never happen again. At this point my best guess will be there was a mcu error and the quad instantly went into landing mode. It began landing the moment you see the quad begin to drift backwards on its own. In that situation, you can maintain altitude and/or descend only. To maintain altitude you have to hold up on the stick/lever. It will only stay at that altitude, and will not ascend upward in any way. Because the quad was moving and gaining speed as it drifted away, you would not have known the quad was holding altitude at anytime you had the lever in the up position. So, the further it drifted, it was slowly loosing altitude. And dropping the quad down the way you did would have been the exact same thing I would have done in that situation. Trying to continue flying afterwards was not a good idea at all. You really should get to the bottom of what just took place before flying anymore. Also, it doesn't take much debree getting inside gimbal motor, or the prop motors, or also inside the vents on the top cover to mess something additional up even at a later date.
 
I too have had my fair share of flying in high wind with hardcore wind gust.

In watching the mohan's video, I actually wish I was there flying with them. I'd say they had a nice layout for what I like which is high speed flying. With there not being any obstacles above ground this should have given them smoother air streams above ground. In the video where the quad came down, to me looked just like it was hovering in atti mode. I don't remember reading anything about switching into atti mode, so this concerns me a lot.

Something about that event taking place doesn't add up. This is why not having a flight logger with the necessary data categories sux! Otherwise I/we could have a solution in place so that something like that would never happen again. At this point my best guess will be there was a mcu error and the quad instantly went into landing mode. It began landing the moment you see the quad begin to drift backwards on its own. In that situation, you can maintain altitude and/or descend only. To maintain altitude you have to hold up on the stick/lever. It will only stay at that altitude, and will not ascend upward in any way. Because the quad was moving and gaining speed as it drifted away, you would not have known the quad was holding altitude at anytime you had the lever in the up position. So, the further it drifted, it was slowly loosing altitude. And dropping the quad down the way you did would have been the exact same thing I would have done in that situation. Trying to continue flying afterwards was not a good idea at all. You really should get to the bottom of what just took place before flying anymore. Also, it doesn't take much debree getting inside gimbal motor, or the prop motors, or also inside the vents on the top cover to mess something additional up even at a later date.

Thank you for chiming in. When I started realising the quad was flying away I was pretty certain it was not losing altitude. I reduced the altitude quickly as it was drifting away to try and get away from the wind. I did it fairly quickly before the aircraft went too far. As the aircraft lost altitude I realised it had slowed down but the adrenaline rush just caused me to continue with the maneuver and land instead of thinking about what was happening - all I could think was 'land / land /land'. In hindsight maybe I should have tried to hover and see what would have happened but it is very difficult when something unexpected like this happens.
 
Thank you for chiming in. When I started realising the quad was flying away I was pretty certain it was not losing altitude. I reduced the altitude quickly as it was drifting away to try and get away from the wind. I did it fairly quickly before the aircraft went too far. As the aircraft lost altitude I realised it had slowed down but the adrenaline rush just caused me to continue with the maneuver and land instead of thinking about what was happening - all I could think was 'land / land /land'. In hindsight maybe I should have tried to hover and see what would have happened but it is very difficult when something unexpected like this happens.

Would you mind sending me your txt file to look over. The current profile logger hasn't been setup to show the good stuff, but I can see the altitude throughout the flight and that of course is the main bit of data we would want to see. I might also be able to sync the video time with the flight as well.
Email it to [email protected]
 
Have a look at the video - do you think that was the wind that did this?

My opinion is that he either pushed into atti mode by mistake or by sat lose, or got confused on flight nose direction as bird would have handled those winds. if went in auto land still would have held position as descended unless pilot was making flight corrections.
 
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I'm a member at inspire pilots and have been thinking about getting the p3, and joined the forum specifically to ask if the phantom supported flight record in the user section of the app. This pretty much answers my question but just to be sure, you can play that recorded video, right?
 

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