This is in direct response to this thread, http://www.phantompilots.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=33205, but may explain a good number of other flyaways as well.
Here goes: The OP described what he thought was everything was ok and he took off. He had slow flashing greens and 10 sats. What he didn't have just yet was a home point ready to be recorded when he starts motors. The firmware has to initialize the home point to something, I am betting (0, 0). So when the Phantom gets in the air, it has good sat lock and position, but home point is still (0, 0). It immediately thinks it is out of the radius limit. It flashes rapid reds (says so in the manual), as reported by the OP, and flys off towards (0, 0) to try to get within the radius limit (says so in the manual). A perceived flyaway.
I also think once it enters this mode, it may be in an execution loop that does not update the home point even if it were to acquire one after it starts this behavior.
A way to get out of this is to switch to ATTI or manual when it starts to do this. You have to be thinking quickly on your feet.
This behavior can be likened to grabbing the phantom by the skids and dragging it away from its current location with no controller input. Once let go the phantom will try to return to the point where it was grabbed. So the flyaway is like instantaneously teleporting the phantom to a location far far away from its home point. Except in this case it is a special case in the firmware of being out of the radius limit. Hence the rapid reds and take off with no control.
What do you guys think? Ready to get shot down cause I probably forgot something important.
Here goes: The OP described what he thought was everything was ok and he took off. He had slow flashing greens and 10 sats. What he didn't have just yet was a home point ready to be recorded when he starts motors. The firmware has to initialize the home point to something, I am betting (0, 0). So when the Phantom gets in the air, it has good sat lock and position, but home point is still (0, 0). It immediately thinks it is out of the radius limit. It flashes rapid reds (says so in the manual), as reported by the OP, and flys off towards (0, 0) to try to get within the radius limit (says so in the manual). A perceived flyaway.
I also think once it enters this mode, it may be in an execution loop that does not update the home point even if it were to acquire one after it starts this behavior.
A way to get out of this is to switch to ATTI or manual when it starts to do this. You have to be thinking quickly on your feet.
This behavior can be likened to grabbing the phantom by the skids and dragging it away from its current location with no controller input. Once let go the phantom will try to return to the point where it was grabbed. So the flyaway is like instantaneously teleporting the phantom to a location far far away from its home point. Except in this case it is a special case in the firmware of being out of the radius limit. Hence the rapid reds and take off with no control.
What do you guys think? Ready to get shot down cause I probably forgot something important.