Picture perfect auto water landing was sickening.

Nauti Bird · May 15, 2016

Beware fellow flyers. As a boat dealer, I use my drone primarily for shots of boats on the water for marketing purposes. After a successful mission, I initiated an auto landing and began walking back to my home point. Not hearing her return, I looked back and watched her land in the waterway and she's unrecoverable.

I had walked away from home point to the waters edge for the action and initiated the auto land from there.

As I have seen in other posts, she lands in place if within 66' at the time. This is undocumented and sickening. I should have maintained visual, but DJI needs to make this more clear. I had done many previous successful auto landings.

Question: Can I purchase another aircraft only and use my controller?

Scotty88 · May 15, 2016

Hi sorry to here about your loss

shouldn't you use rth? I thought auto land put the p3 down at its current location?

Stoo1701 · May 15, 2016

Yes, I believe DJI have it available without controller in the store. Hang on.. Yup just found it..
Buy Phantom 3 Professional - Aircraft (Excludes Remote Controller and Battery Charger)

£629 with battery but without remote & charger. Not too bad.
Are you sure it's unrecoverable? No friendly divers around the boats? If you could get it back, even now.. There's a chance you can save it.. Look for detailed instructions on drying out procedures, plenty of them in the forums [emoji106]

Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

msinger · May 15, 2016

Nauti Bird said:
As I have seen in other posts, she lands in place if within 66' at the time. This is undocumented and sickening.

This is documented a few places in the Phantom manual, but it's commonly overlooked. For example:

Nauti Bird said:
Can I purchase another aircraft only and use my controller?

You can buy just the aircraft from DJI. I'm not sure which Phantom you own, but you can find all of the aircraft only options on DJI's website here.

Nauti Bird · May 15, 2016

Stoo1701 said:
Yes, I believe DJI have it available without controller in the store. Hang on.. Yup just found it..
Buy Phantom 3 Professional - Aircraft (Excludes Remote Controller and Battery Charger)

£629 with battery but without remote & charger. Not too bad.
Are you sure it's unrecoverable? No friendly divers around the boats? If you could get it back, even now.. There's a chance you can save it.. Look for detailed instructions on drying out procedures, plenty of them in the forums [emoji106]

Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

Unfortunately I tried. It was only in 5' coastal tidal salt water but the bottom is 3' pluff mud. By the time I could get out there, tidal currents, boat wakes and pluff mud took her to far unknown places.

Nauti Bird · May 15, 2016

msinger said:
This is documented a few places in the Phantom manual, but it's commonly overlooked. For example:

View attachment 53875

You can buy just the aircraft from DJI. I'm not sure which Phantom you own, but you can find all of the aircraft only options on DJI's website here.

My mistake. Undocumented is the wrong terminology. I feel that when initiating RTH, the software should give option to RTH or land in place.

msinger · May 15, 2016

Nauti Bird said:
I feel that when initiating RTH, the software should give option to RTH or land in place.

Agreed. That would be a nice addition to DJI GO.

Nauti Bird · May 15, 2016

Scotty88 said:
Hi sorry to here about your loss shouldn't you use rth? I thought auto land put the p3 down at its current location?

It was RTH.

DroneDestination · May 15, 2016

Stoo1701 said:
Yes, I believe DJI have it available without controller in the store. Hang on.. Yup just found it..
Buy Phantom 3 Professional - Aircraft (Excludes Remote Controller and Battery Charger)

£629 with battery but without remote & charger. Not too bad.
Are you sure it's unrecoverable? No friendly divers around the boats? If you could get it back, even now.. There's a chance you can save it.. Look for detailed instructions on drying out procedures, plenty of them in the forums [emoji106]

Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

...this thread is in the P3S/4K section

Standard
4K
(depending on which one the OP has)

Thing is, a NEW full P3S kit is only $90 more, so you could sell the charger and controller and maybe even make a small profit, lowering the cost of a new full kit from $500 to below $409.

Nauti Bird · May 15, 2016

DroneDestination said:
...this thread is in the P3S/4K section

Standard
4K
(depending on which one the OP has)

Thanks much for the info.

Nauti Bird · May 15, 2016

Nauti Bird said:
My mistake. Undocumented is the wrong terminology. I feel that when initiating RTH, the software should give option to RTH or land in place.

I'm still confused. The section you quoted says that it will not RTH if flying within 20 m of HP. It was outside of 20 M of HP but not controller. How can I view/ upload the log for better understanding of what happened?

msinger · May 15, 2016

Nauti Bird said:
How can I view/ upload the log for better understanding of what happened?

You can upload and view your TXT flight log here. Post a link back here if you'd like us to comment on it.

Mark The Droner · May 16, 2016

IMO, it's a good idea to get into the habit of regaining control of the aircraft when it's in RTH and then land it yourself.

Sorry for your loss.

Nauti Bird · May 16, 2016

Marknmd said:
IMO, it's a good idea to get into the habit of regaining control of the aircraft when it's in RTH and then land it yourself.

Sorry for your loss.

You are so right. Distractions cause most accidents. I usually do land myself which is why I turned back to watch it land in the water. The real trouble was that she was too low when I initiated RTH and we're talking seconds, but that's all it took.

Nauti Bird · May 16, 2016

I'm not sure that I am doing this correctly but here is the flight log. She was well past the 67' limit but the log says auto landing. I clearly used the RTH icon on the DJI GO app as the icon has an arrow pointing to the "H". I don't even know how to "Auto Land" in place but obviously I somehow figured it out. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Was altitude too low to initiate RTH?
Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com