Should I Create A Poll To Collect Flyaway Data

[D_Tshudy]

I was thinking that it would be a good idea to start a poll on SurveyMonkey (or something similar) to collect as much information as possible from everyone who has experienced a flyaway. If we had all of the data in one place, we could look for a common cause. I would bet that DJI would like to collect this kind of data but will not for fear of appearing to admit an issue and the legal ramifications that go with that. Maybe we can help them without suing them.

What data could we collect?

Date/Time
Model
Modifications to craft if any
Firmware Version
Controller Version
Naza or Vision Mode
Location of Flyaway
Craft Battery level at time of flyaway
# of charges on battery
Controller battery condition
Wifi battery condition
Distance at time of flyaway
Altitude at time of flyaway
Weather
Level of Experience
# of previous flights with lost craft
camera settings ( i know. remote but being a trained engineer...)


What else?

 

[MikesTooLz]

# of consecutive flights just before flyaway (example multiple flights right after another after swapping battery)

Could give a clue if its due to failing motor wires or solder points due to overheating.

 

[Birdman]

Excellent idea! Maybe a good understanding of underlying cause(s) will be detected! Luckily, I haven't yet had the experience.

 

[Boozshey]

What about Transmitter/Controller being used? Aftermarket or Stock? Which transmitter and receiver if aftermarket?

 

[Scenictraverse]

I have been trolling this forum for weeks and have read all I can about fly always. I haven't seen mention of the device connected with controller (iPhone, android, iPad, etc). I cannot for the life of me figure out how that might matter in a fly away, but if you want to rule out everything, then you need to know everything.

Also, under location, can we be specific with a google earth screenshot or something? Because you could be in a rural area and still be right next to a big power line.

Kristen

 

[PhantomRock]

Please separate weather to indicate rain etc and wind speed etc

For those that use a wifi analyzer it would be helpful to know strength and channels of strongest signals.

Were you using prop guards

 

[DBS]

What about Transmitter/Controller being used? Aftermarket or Stock? Which transmitter and receiver if aftermarket?

You won't find much of anything aftermarket for the 5.8ghz P2V+ controller ... just sayin....

 

[Boozshey]

Oh I thought you were collecting for all flyaways.

 

[ResevorDG]

I love that you made a poll to see if you should make a poll. Are you from the government?


Good idea though....

 

[crashoften]

Some other questions may be

A.Did this flyaway occur after starting this flight a considerable distance (miles\km) from your previous flights home location, or was this the same home location as your previous flight?
B. Was the home point accurately displayed on the fpv app at any point during the flight.
C. Was the home point re-mapped during the flight on which the flyaway occurred.
D. What were the home point failsafe radius settings for the phantom
E. Do you have manual mode enabled and if so, was manual mode attempted to retain control.
F. How many satellites were available at start up, (and how many IF you happened to notice during the flyaway)
G. What would be your best guess as to the level of radio interference in the area. (High, Some, Low)
H. Did the phantom, controls, fpv app exhibit any odd behaviors in the minutes leading up to the flyaway.
I. Has this phantom been involved in any crashes, severe landings, or other known damage before the flyaway flight.
J. Do you enjoy tacos? < you would be surprised what you can learn about people who say no.

 

[JimDE]

Someone should be doing this.... Inorder to possibly find the route cause you have to collect data and find common distinctions especially when the pilot has no idea why it happened. Also we will see just how common or rare fly aways are.

The data may either shock or calm us

 

[dbcch]

I'm so sick of hearing about supposed 'fly aways'. It's just so absurd. Maybe, every once in a blue moon, for some unlucky people, there is an actual hardware fault and a 'fly away', but it's highly unlikely and I've never seen anything of the sort.

Even *if* there is some legitimate hardware or software fault, 95% of reported incidents are surely user error - and we can all agree on that I think.

So much BS on the internet. And so many who don't want to take accountability for their own errors. Not saying there haven't been a handful of legitimate fly aways, but it's been blown way out of proportion, to the point that new users expect some sort of fly away, so say 'fly away' the moment anything unexpected happens.

I hear people talking about 'recalls' like these are automobiles, or lawsuits. What the heck is wrong with people? Are you crazy?

But, sure, no tech is 100% reliable, especially something you are putting into the air... though I would bet on the reliability of the Phantom over the reliability of most new pilots I see any day!

I'd say 98% of Phantom owners never have any issue that isn't that own fault, at least. Of course, you don't hear from this group.

 

[JoeyD]

Geomagnetic unrest and solar wind both could cause GPS and electro magnetic interference problems but how do you measure that accurately?

 

[GMANNZ]

I'm so sick of hearing about supposed 'fly aways'. It's just so absurd. Maybe, every once in a blue moon, for some unlucky people, there is an actual hardware fault and a 'fly away', but it's highly unlikely and I've never seen anything of the sort.

Even *if* there is some legitimate hardware or software fault, 95% of reported incidents are surely user error - and we can all agree on that I think.

So much BS on the internet. And so many who don't want to take accountability for their own errors. Not saying there haven't been a handful of legitimate fly aways, but it's been blown way out of proportion, to the point that new users expect some sort of fly away, so say 'fly away' the moment anything unexpected happens.

I hear people talking about 'recalls' like these are automobiles, or lawsuits. What the heck is wrong with people? Are you crazy?

But, sure, no tech is 100% reliable, especially something you are putting into the air... though I would bet on the reliability of the Phantom over the reliability of most new pilots I see any day!

I'd say 98% of Phantom owners never have any issue that isn't that own fault, at least. Of course, you don't hear from this group.

+1 and 5 more to that ...

 

[GMANNZ]

Geomagnetic unrest and solar wind both could cause GPS and electro magnetic interference problems but how do you measure that accurately?

How would you ever know even it it did give an effect to a Phantom .... I work in telco industry and have for years, people go on and on about solar issues effecting this and that etc ... have never seen any effect AT ALL ever, to mobile networks, data trans, GPS links, time services or anything .... mostly I think its published "booga booga" as if anything did happen with a big solar blast (which are very rare) the power or phone companies have something to blame there lack of preparedness on ... but I do see someone has now published an app so you know if anything is happening.

If I worked at DJI and someone sent their "flyaway report or crashed phantom back based on what the sun was doing .... I would just laugh my tits off and send it back.

Me for anything solar that might affect me, I look out the window .... if theres no sun, I watch a movie (as with no sun here its usually blowing tits) ...... if its fine .... ITS TIME to FLY !!!

 

[doug86]

I was thinking that it would be a good idea to start a poll on SurveyMonkey (or something similar) to collect as much information as possible from everyone who has experienced a flyaway. If we had all of the data in one place, we could look for a common cause. I would bet that DJI would like to collect this kind of data but will not for fear of appearing to admit an issue and the legal ramifications that go with that. Maybe we can help them without suing them.

To what purpose? To avoid suing them?? If you really want to know if this problem is associated with DJI products, you would need to include as many other manufacturers as possible in your poll, in order to get a base line of data to compare the DJI data with.

Here is a snip from a post on another forum about a 3D Robotics product:

My normal MO is to take off, climb to about 10ft, engage loiter and make sure everything looks kosher before trying any real flight. I did the same thing here, but it started drifting backwards in loiter. After a few seconds, i switched back to stabilize and started giving forward stick... almost no effect... Full forward stick and I am still drifting backwards, over my head and over the treeline! Uh oh... Switch to RTL... still drifting away from me... after a few seconds of that, switch back to stabilize and finally after giving it full throttle, I manage to coerce it back over the field, but I still have VERY limited control. I finally managed to get it down, but its a very hard landing (which it seemed to survive amazingly well).

(see http://ardupilot.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 68&start=0)

hmm.... that kind of thing is what we read about here too. I think that the real answers about lost drones will come from an understanding of all the technology available, not just DJI's. What would you say if your data indicated that 10% of all drones get lost during flight? Does that exonerate DJI? Suppose you found out that DJI's actually have LESS lost drones than the industry average?

What is the industry average for flyaways? How can you learn that?

The problem is that you will end up polling the pilots, who are in all probability at fault in some cases, but they don't know it. How many flyways stories included claims of "But I did everything correct." and "I have no idea what happened..." Its kinda hard to extract any meaningful data out of "I have no idea..." responses.

Are DJI Phantoms occasionally experiencing "un-commanded flight". There is some evidence that indeed they are. Is it caused by some defect exclusive to DJI? I haven't seen that evidence yet.

 

[Gizmo3000]

I'm so sick of hearing about supposed 'fly aways'. It's just so absurd. Maybe, every once in a blue moon, for some unlucky people, there is an actual hardware fault and a 'fly away', but it's highly unlikely and I've never seen anything of the sort.

Even *if* there is some legitimate hardware or software fault, 95% of reported incidents are surely user error - and we can all agree on that I think.

So much BS on the internet. And so many who don't want to take accountability for their own errors. Not saying there haven't been a handful of legitimate fly aways, but it's been blown way out of proportion, to the point that new users expect some sort of fly away, so say 'fly away' the moment anything unexpected happens.

I hear people talking about 'recalls' like these are automobiles, or lawsuits. What the heck is wrong with people? Are you crazy?

But, sure, no tech is 100% reliable, especially something you are putting into the air... though I would bet on the reliability of the Phantom over the reliability of most new pilots I see any day!

I'd say 98% of Phantom owners never have any issue that isn't that own fault, at least. Of course, you don't hear from this group.

I used to feel somewhat the same.. but after a year of flying, and hundreds of flights, it finally happened to me. (on my F450 ).

I waited until well into double-green to take off. But moments after takeoff it wasn't quite responding right, so I decided to land, but then found myself fighting for control. and THEN, like it had a mind of it's own, it bolted at full throttle off into nowhere land. never recovered it. ( It's either on someone's roof, stuck in a tree somewhere or someone found it and never called.) - and putting it into Failsafe was useless.
And that seems to be the case with many other "legit" flyways. - a loss of Tx control and a sudden full speed fly away.

But there's no denying that user error can be attributed to a good percentage of flyways.
and I agree, a vast majority of flyers never experience problems. (I used to be one of those people as well)

 

[XL-Studios]

Geomagnetic unrest and solar wind both could cause GPS and electro magnetic interference problems but how do you measure that accurately?

I would say this is really an issue! 9-10/5 there was supposedly solar-storm interference and on both days my P2V+ lost GPS (<7) and just started to drift away with the wind! Thanks to ATTI and FPV I could steer it back but without those two it would have been lost. After 50+ problem free flights I was like many thinking fly-aways was user error mainly but I can assure it is a reality! What I don´t understand is how it can lose satellite connection! Must be the issues you brought up.

My latest fly-away: http://youtu.be/01mznpa339w

 

[MikesTooLz]

Geomagnetic unrest and solar wind both could cause GPS and electro magnetic interference problems but how do you measure that accurately?

I would say this is really an issue! 9-10/5 there was supposedly solar-storm interference and on both days my P2V+ lost GPS (<7) and just started to drift away with the wind! Thanks to ATTI and FPV I could steer it back but without those two it would have been lost. After 50+ problem free flights I was like many thinking fly-aways was user error mainly but I can assure it is a reality! What I don´t understand is how it can lose satellite connection! Must be the issues you brought up.

My latest fly-away: http://youtu.be/01mznpa339w

when solar storms can be detected with enough warning, some satellite systems will shut down and go into a hibernation mode to try and avoid being damaged.

Another major problem that has occurred during geomagnetic storms has been the temporary loss of electrical power over a large region. The best known case of this occurred in 1989 in Quebec. High currents in the magnetosphere induce high currents in power lines, blowing out electric transformers and power stations. This is most likely to happen at high latitudes, where the induced currents are greatest, and in regions having long power lines and where the ground is poorly conducting.
via: http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/spaceweather.htm

I wonder if anyone who has had a flyaway has checked if they were flying in one of the earths magnetic field lines.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... F_MERC.pdf