St. Paddy's Day Crash! Phantom Dropped from Sky!

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Well, after owning my Phantom 2 Vision Plus v3.0 (with ESC 2.0) for a little over 2 months, She fell out of the air today. With nearly 40-50 flights across 3 batteries, the Phantom just dropped from the sky.

First flight of the afternoon, everything was going just fine as usual. I had already flown 2 or 3 times this morning with no problem. I went outside after lunch and flew for a few minutes and all of a sudden I see it just falling towards earth. No, I did not mistakenly initiate a CSC.

I lost FPV on my screen. However, I regained a connection as I ran down the street to start my search. I found it in a backyard with the help of Find My Phantom. The last think I remember seeing on the screen before it froze was the bird flying with the props visible at the top. It wasn't far away from me so I was flying via LOS visual.

Camera and Gimbal are busted up. The housing/shell has damage. One motor is packed with this semi-moist dirt. One prop missing. Another cracked in half. battery butt has some cosmetic damage but seems to still funciton fine. The phantom was still on when I found it and the on-battery indicators still show. 3 solids and 1 flashing.

I was video recording. However, the file was not ended properly. So, it will not play on the computer. I put it back in the phantom and booted up the phantom again but that doesn't seem to fix the file this time so it can be read.

Maybe I can send the file to someone and they can load it on their phantom and see if they can get it to close out.

Also, I notice that their was some heavy solar activity today. I wonder if that could have caused the shutdown in air.

Anyway, I purchased at Adorama and they said DJI handles ally warranty situations and they don't exchange even under warranty. I contacted DJI (USA) and got an RMA. I guess she will head to the west coast on tomorrow.

Not a good feeling. Of all flights not to run my screen video capture app before the flight. I guess I had gotten too comfortable in the way my Phantom performs.

On top of that, I just got my tracking number for my Flytrex on yesterday.

Grand Opening... Grand Closing!
 
Really sorry to hear of your loss.

I once had a file that didn't close properly and would not finalise when put back in the camera. I did come across a programme that fixed it perfectly though.

It's on my desktop PC and not available at the moment but next time I'm back home I'll dig it out for you.
 
Jetlagged787 said:
Really sorry to hear of your loss.

I once had a file that didn't close properly and would not finalise when put back in the camera. I did come across a programme that fixed it perfectly though.

It's on my desktop PC and not available at the moment but next time I'm back home I'll dig it out for you.
Please let me know when you find it. I really want to see what happened in the video.
 
Sorry to hear about this...

This happened to me last year. I have a P2V w/rotorpixel gimbal. I was all set to fly over a historic building about 30~40 miles away from home. I took off and let it hover about 8 or 10 feet up and 6 feet away. All looked good. I went up watching the FPV so I could tell when I was level with the top of the building. I was at 80' when I looked up preparing to fly forward only to see it falling, seemingly with no power. It landed right in front of me on the grass. Busted the gimbal, threw the camera off, popped out the battery and I never found the SD card. I came to the conclusion that the battery data pins must have lost connection. It's highly unlikely the main terminals lost connection due to the tension and size etc. The data pins however are small, spring loaded and can momentarily lose connection. A break in the data might do just about anything. Make the Phantom think the battery is dead, make it think it's not an authorized battery, make it think it's very low on charge etc.

So, after repairs (gimbal, camera mount, new GPS and props) I started cleaning both the battery and Phantom terminals every so often. I haven't had a problem like that since.

I use a typewriter eraser to lightly burnish the surfaces. Then, I use a Q-tip with some DeOxit on it to coat the surface. All in moderation of course. This is recommended for all Phantoms. Once up in the air you don't want any momentary loss of connections since that can result in a crash.

Geo
 
Djs by any chance U just had upgraded to ver 3.12??
 
Huge solar flare today. Said to have messed with electronics all over the world. sorry for your loss.
 
marg2 said:
Djs by any chance U just had upgraded to ver 3.12??
No, I was scarred to upgrade because I live in the Washington, DC area and 3.12 would turn my Phantom into a paperweight.
 
gbello23 said:
Sorry for your loss. You should pop the top off and inspect the ESCs to see if one fried.
They don't look Fried. I do have know they are v2.0. ESCs. though. Which raises a red flag in my mind.
 
Geoelectro said:
Sorry to hear about this...

This happened to me last year. I have a P2V w/rotorpixel gimbal. I was all set to fly over a historic building about 30~40 miles away from home. I took off and let it hover about 8 or 10 feet up and 6 feet away. All looked good. I went up watching the FPV so I could tell when I was level with the top of the building. I was at 80' when I looked up preparing to fly forward only to see it falling, seemingly with no power. It landed right in front of me on the grass. Busted the gimbal, threw the camera off, popped out the battery and I never found the SD card. I came to the conclusion that the battery data pins must have lost connection. It's highly unlikely the main terminals lost connection due to the tension and size etc. The data pins however are small, spring loaded and can momentarily lose connection. A break in the data might do just about anything. Make the Phantom think the battery is dead, make it think it's not an authorized battery, make it think it's very low on charge etc.

So, after repairs (gimbal, camera mount, new GPS and props) I started cleaning both the battery and Phantom terminals every so often. I haven't had a problem like that since.

I use a typewriter eraser to lightly burnish the surfaces. Then, I use a Q-tip with some DeOxit on it to coat the surface. All in moderation of course. This is recommended for all Phantoms. Once up in the air you don't want any momentary loss of connections since that can result in a crash.

Geo
I will definitely do this for preventative maintenance in the future.
 
djsydvicious said:
marg2 said:
Djs by any chance U just had upgraded to ver 3.12??
No, I was scarred to upgrade because I live in the Washington, DC area and 3.12 would turn my Phantom into a paperweight.
a few other pilots had some weird flight today after upgrade to 3.12, on a diff forum, sorry for your lost
 
djsydvicious said:
gbello23 said:
Sorry for your loss. You should pop the top off and inspect the ESCs to see if one fried.
They don't look Fried. I do have know they are v2.0. ESCs. though. Which raises a red flag in my mind.
Definitely something to keep in mind while root causing the issue.
 
It does seem that most of these "drop from the sky" incidents are involving Vision+ v3 machines.
 
TuT said:
It does seem that most of these "drop from the sky" incidents are involving Vision+ v3 machines.

Yep this makes 4-5 in the last couple of days. I wonder if they are losing a motor lead and its shorting out causing power outage? I wish these guys could take them apart but DJI would then cry foul.... which is somewhat understandable. :?

Jeremy
 
I hate to say this but I am glad mine is boxed up and going back to bhphoto tomorrow morning for a refund. I decided to keep the Q500 instead. Really sorry to hear about another one dropping like a rock. I know a few Q500's have dropped but not nearly to the extent of the phantoms and yuneec is being top notch about repairs. Where are you located? I am in howard county md if you would ever like to try my bird out.
 
I was able to repair the corrupted/damaged video file that was recording at the time of the drop.

I'm inclined to believe the Phantom lost power in mid-air because the video just stops right at the end. It's pretty much the same thing I saw on the FPV screen of my phone at the time of the free-fall.

The file is currently in .h264 format. Once I get it back to MP4, I will post it for review.

I also have the log file (Phantom Tracks File) from the DJI Ultimate Vision App. It's suppose to be in a Flytrex type format. However, I'm new to dashware. So, I will have to figure out how to sync the video with the log file.

Man, Oh Man... This is not a good feeling. I really felt my Phantom was reliable. It looks like I'm back to my Hubsan X4 and my Syma x5c-1 and my UDI U818A toys until I hear word from DJI California.
 
burlbark said:
TuT said:
It does seem that most of these "drop from the sky" incidents are involving Vision+ v3 machines.

Yep this makes 4-5 in the last couple of days. I wonder if they are losing a motor lead and its shorting out causing power outage? I wish these guys could take them apart but DJI would then cry foul.... which is somewhat understandable. :?

Jeremy

I looked at it and it looks like all of the wires are still attached to the ESC Board. However, I really couldn't verif they connections going under the motors.
 
Jeff48920 said:
Huge solar flare today. Said to have messed with electronics all over the world. sorry for your loss.

Yup. Hover app show Kp index of 8. Caution flying today.
 
prostreetcamaro said:
I hate to say this but I am glad mine is boxed up and going back to bhphoto tomorrow morning for a refund. I decided to keep the Q500 instead. Really sorry to hear about another one dropping like a rock. I know a few Q500's have dropped but not nearly to the extent of the phantoms and yuneec is being top notch about repairs. Where are you located? I am in howard county md if you would ever like to try my bird out.

I fly Howard County all the time Girlfriend lives over by State Police Barracks (Rt1 and 175). I just flew over Lake Elkhorn (Near Cradlerock and Snowden River) yesterday evening (Glad it didn't fall yesterday while over the lake). I also fly at Meadowbrook Park and Rockburn Branck Park by the school.

I'd love to check out the Q500 sometime. Ive been flying my quads around there with frozen fingers for months. I was glad to finally see some warm weather and then this.
 

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