Having read through lots of postings about damage and repairs, fly always and losses I was wondering how many users have good news stories and str still flying their original drone. As a newbie I was curious if I can expect to get weeks, months or years of enjoyment from my new purchase.
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Well I've never had a problem with my P2V+, P2 v.3, P3P, never.
I don't do stupid stuff, I've never had to put my drone in the refrigerator to cool down the IMU or the freezer like some claim to do and what's funny is I live in blast-furnace-hell aka Florida, so a "cool" IMU is not a problem.
I've never had to build a perfectly level launch platform to calibrate the IMU either, put it on my desk (that I'm sure is not level) and calibrate on rare occasions works just fine.
Now if you want a truly level platform that never varies, buy a two to three foot thick block of granite, keep it indoors, make sure it's mounted to the foundation of your home (concrete) and make sure it's adjustable depending on the season of the year. How do I know this? That's how they calibrate military lasers in aerospace... granite expands and contracts the least of all materials. BTDT.
I've had two fly-aways because of signal loss and I wouldn't even classify them as fly-aways, rather signal disconnect / interference, and what is NEVER mentioned in these forums is that DJI built into their "old" P2's the ability where if a signal that is stronger than your TX's signal that causes the drone to fly towards it because its signal is more powerful than that of your TX and is the same freq ... unless there's variability in that signal as if a human were controlling it... meaning constant adjustments of speed and altitude... the Phantom's firmware senses that the signals direction commands never changes so it "realizes" it is no longer under human control ... stops the Phantom from proceeding further, it hovers, then ascends to its predetermined RTH altitude, does a 180 and RTH and auto lands... had it happen to me twice, worked like a charm. I'm sure the P3P and P4 all have this feature.
So unless you plan on doing stupid stuff, you're probably going to be okay. As far as years of service... that I don't know. Batts don't last forever, motors wear out, bumps, knocks, take their toll.