Pure Luck ! Didnt come home.

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Decided to go on a distance run from my house. I think I did a few things wrong and learned from it.

First I seem to have an issue. I charge batteries to full bars and if they sit a day (or sometimes less) I get three bars or 3 and a blinking. Maybe that's normal.

So I took off into a wind. Battery showed lower than normal. I think I need to cycle all three of them down. For some reason I had it in my mind that if I am flying hard into the wind I am going to have it made coming back with the extra speed. So I get out there almost 4000' and the horn starts honking low battery.

So head for home and flipped to ATTI thinking it will conserve some battery. I am cruising at over 61 mph.. No kidding. And lose connectivity. So I wait and wait and wait. I tried the Find Phantom on the app and it shows it about 3 blocks away. I grab the Marco Polo and jump in the truck and head that way. We drove right past it and did not see it and turned around to follow the marco polo signal and there is sits in someones front yard. Not a mark on it except battery was popped out.

Get home, have Flytrex Data but video does not work. Try to power cycle it in the Phantom with no success. Try about 10 of those repair utilitys and none work. Try online service and it show preview. In a nut shell cost me $30 to recover the video but have a bird with no damage.

So it appears it did work as designed but for some reason my video either from corruption or DJI design shut off at about 140 in the auto descend.

Well I shall NOT push the battery that hard again.

Lessen learned.
 
Well all I can say is don't push the battery. DJIs estimator thing on the new app and firmware can not be trusted.

I chalk this off to stupid pilot. Flew out over some fields when it really was too breezy.

As I said, lessen learned.

Edmund its a RF tracking device in case I lose it.
 
If you can power the Phantom on again with the micro SD card in, I think it will complete/finalize the video file (but it sounds like you already have done as much as you could). What do you think caused the battery to pop out? That battery pop-out is probably what ended and isolated your video file.
 
rrmccabe said:
Well all I can say is don't push the battery. DJIs estimator thing on the new app and firmware can not be trusted.

I chalk this off to stupid pilot. Flew out over some fields when it really was too breezy.

As I said, lessen learned.

Edmund its a RF tracking device in case I lose it.

I wouldn't call you a stupid pilot. If it weren't for guys like you pushing these things, we won't know their limits. I do have a question though. You burned 80% of your battery heading out on your distance run and thought you could make it back on the remaining 20%? At 15% the Phantom wants to land itself. So in reality you only had 5% battery to get home on. Or did I misread your post?
 
Slothead forgot to mention I tried the power cycle trick. Did not work. Catalina your logic makes sense and I think is spot on. I just assumed dji logic took into consideration the last few percent. That and 15 MPH going out and 60 coming back made me think I had it made. Lol. Will post video shortly.
 
I love this story.

Never fly past your PSR...

PSR Explained

The Point of Safe Return (PSR) provides the pilot with the farthest point to which the aircraft can go and be able to return safely to the departure point with adequate holding, approach, landing, and alternate fuel. It is normally used when flying to remote island destinations with no diversion possibilities en route but can be useful even when alternates are available.
 
By the way the erratic stick movements, pauses, etc on return was because stupid pilot was lost (one row of trees off) and fighting the sun. Was trying to haul *** and make it home.

Did not help that I was pointing antennas in a direction I thought bird was. This was 90 degrees off where it really was.

Just not enough time to think.
 
Plastic septic cover.
 
Perhaps a dumb question, how did you get the overlay with the flight data in your video? I'm very new and have seen this before but have no idea what to even search for.

thx

bob
 
I have the Marco Polo also. Glad to see it worked! I also have a corrupt video file from a crash a while back. I would love to get it working. Researched so many options. What program did you use that worked?
 

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