The absolute worst 10 minutes ever!

[Trailguide Pictures]

Yesterday I was out flying and getting some footage around a local river. I went in to a conservation area because I knew there was a decent sized parking lot and now that summer is pretty much finished it would be quiet.

So I launch my P3P and fly around for a while, all things good. Then a passer by walks by and asks me about what I'm doing, so I let her know, taking my eyes off the P3P just for a second. I look back up and it's gone.

The sun is too bright to use the display well, but I don't panic because there's a small office only a few feet away and I figure I'll go stand in it's shade and be able to see better and get her on track. I can still hear her humming up over the trees so I know things aren't too bad.

I step in under the steel roof of the office for shade and then discover my mistake. Steel Roof. As I look at the screen on my tablet I see the dreaded message "Signal Lost" and a black screen. Quickly I step back out into open space, but still "Signal Lost"! I hit the return to home, "Return to Home Failed."

For the next ten minutes I tried everything I could think of, driving to other more open parts of the park hoping to get a clear signal, I even turned the control off and then on again hoping I would get a re-boot type of reconnect. Nothing.

Everything I tried failed.

Then, all of a sudden, I could hear her getting louder. I looked up and with complete amazement saw her flying in on her own and then gently landed to her home position.

I don't know how, but I'm definitely a lucky guy today.

 

[PhotoJim]

Yesterday I was out flying and getting some footage around a local river. I went in to a conservation area because I knew there was a decent sized parking lot and now that summer is pretty much finished it would be quiet.

So I launch my P3P and fly around for a while, all things good. Then a passer by walks by and asks me about what I'm doing, so I let her know, taking my eyes off the P3P just for a second. I look back up and it's gone.

The sun is too bright to use the display well, but I don't panic because there's a small office only a few feet away and I figure I'll go stand in it's shade and be able to see better and get her on track. I can still hear her humming up over the trees so I know things aren't too bad.

I step in under the steel roof of the office for shade and then discover my mistake. Steel Roof. As I look at the screen on my tablet I see the dreaded message "Signal Lost" and a black screen. Quickly I step back out into open space, but still "Signal Lost"! I hit the return to home, "Return to Home Failed."

For the next ten minutes I tried everything I could think of, driving to other more open parts of the park hoping to get a clear signal, I even turned the control off and then on again hoping I would get a re-boot type of reconnect. Nothing.

Everything I tried failed.

Then, all of a sudden, I could hear her getting louder. I looked up and with complete amazement saw her flying in on her own and then gently landed to her home position.

I don't know how, but I'm definitely a lucky guy today.

Wow! Glad it worked out.

 

[Skyler]

Yesterday I was out flying and getting some footage around a local river. I went in to a conservation area because I knew there was a decent sized parking lot and now that summer is pretty much finished it would be quiet.

So I launch my P3P and fly around for a while, all things good. Then a passer by walks by and asks me about what I'm doing, so I let her know, taking my eyes off the P3P just for a second. I look back up and it's gone.

The sun is too bright to use the display well, but I don't panic because there's a small office only a few feet away and I figure I'll go stand in it's shade and be able to see better and get her on track. I can still hear her humming up over the trees so I know things aren't too bad.

I step in under the steel roof of the office for shade and then discover my mistake. Steel Roof. As I look at the screen on my tablet I see the dreaded message "Signal Lost" and a black screen. Quickly I step back out into open space, but still "Signal Lost"! I hit the return to home, "Return to Home Failed."

For the next ten minutes I tried everything I could think of, driving to other more open parts of the park hoping to get a clear signal, I even turned the control off and then on again hoping I would get a re-boot type of reconnect. Nothing.

Everything I tried failed.

Then, all of a sudden, I could hear her getting louder. I looked up and with complete amazement saw her flying in on her own and then gently landed to her home position.

I don't know how, but I'm definitely a lucky guy today.

Great that it work out the way it did. What firm ware revision are you running in the bird? Have you upgraded the app?

 

[Clipper707]

Like a good dog.

 

[Jeff48920]

When you tried RTH. Did you just hit the RTH button or did you press and hold. Just hitting the button will not initialize RTH. Glad you made it back under fail safe.

 

[JBalcius]

I'm glad it worked out in the end for you! From what I understand, it should automatically go into RTH mode if it loses contact with the controller for a few seconds. I have read that as a last ditch effort, you can turn the controller off, and it should return to home.

 

[J.James]

Out of curiosity what fail safe settings do you have it set up for??? You can have it set to just hover. or to land were it is or return to home. I'm almost wondering if you might have it set to hover when it loses signal and then it hovered till the battery was low and then maybe did a low battery RTH after about 10 mins.

I noticed on the last firmware update that it changed the settings for rth and used hover as the default and glad I noticed right away when going over all my settings while trying to find the new features of the last update. and Im glad as hell I caught it when I did.

 

[RoyVa]

Now we all can see the importance of getting the home lock before take off. Loose it in the sun, loose control and panic ourselves but if we di it right on take off she RTH on Failsafe and all is well. Love that GPS and Failsafe function. Over the past year and so has save me a many of time flying.

 

[Meta4]

Perhaps you had lost the video signal but still had connection to the Phantom.
Without input from you, it would have just hovered, waiting for you to do something.
Eventually it got down to a low battery condition and came home. Just as it is supposed to.
You probably could have brought it home with the RTH button.
This demonstrates the importance of experimenting with RTH to properly understand how it works and to be able to use it properly.

 

[JKDSensei]

I'm glad you had a happy ending. Some people hit RTH too many times and then aren't sure if it's engaged or not. Some, in their panic, delete their home point.

I wonder how many Phantoms wanted to come home....but were accidentally told not too and just hovered somewhere until the batteries gave out?

 

[Trailguide Pictures]

Great that it work out the way it did. What firm ware revision are you running in the bird? Have you upgraded the app?

I hadn't upgraded, but did so last night. Now the weird thing is I just took it out and after using up one battery and then flying for around 10 minutes on the second the app crashed. I'm not sure if it's the firmware or app, but going to need to check into this.
This time it was in clear view, no obstructions. I've tried turning it on and off again and it still won't connect.
I wonder if anyone else is having this problem with the new firmware?

 

[Trailguide Pictures]

When you tried RTH. Did you just hit the RTH button or did you press and hold. Just hitting the button will not initialize RTH. Glad you made it back under fail safe.

So I was trying RTH on the tablet. Stupid me, a newby for sure, totally forgot the RTH button. lol

 

[Trailguide Pictures]

Out of curiosity what fail safe settings do you have it set up for??? You can have it set to just hover. or to land were it is or return to home. I'm almost wondering if you might have it set to hover when it loses signal and then it hovered till the battery was low and then maybe did a low battery RTH after about 10 mins.

I noticed on the last firmware update that it changed the settings for rth and used hover as the default and glad I noticed right away when going over all my settings while trying to find the new features of the last update. and Im glad as hell I caught it when I did.

Right now the settings are to fly home at 30m and land. Still very new to this.

 

[J.James]

Wow thats weird and I wonder why it took so long to go in to rth esp. unless it was still some how getting signal Or if maybe you had high winds and it just took that long to fly back.