Almost flew away

[Ed Hahn]

I was flying the other day with a friend when he did a return home and his p4pro landed exactly on the landing
pad were it took off. So I decide to try it. I took my p4 up about 250ft. and about the same distance then i hit
the return home button Every thing was looking good, it was hovering straight up above us and it started descending Looked like it was going to land on the pad then all of the sudden about 10ft. it took a left all by its self. I did not have my hands on the controller. It went into an oak tree and started to go up and down all by its self. I tried to land it. and It would not respond it was trimming my tree. luckily my friend was quick ran over there and grab the legs and turned it on its side and it turned off !!!!!!!! nothing happen to the drone.It was a little green from cutting up all those leaves,lost some paint on the tips of the blades But every thing was good.I cleaned up the drone,put a new set of blades on it and every thing is working find again. I flew it a few more times even did a return home,It landed about five feet from were it took off. Has this happen to anyone?
Does anyone know why or how this could happen. Guess I am lucky. If that tree was not there who knows
what would have happen.

 

[Fly Dawg]

Does anyone know why or how this could happen.

This sounds like a VPS issue. Nothing written in stone, but that is what it sounds like. You could take a look at the flight logs for more detailed information on that.

 

[Ed Hahn]

Fly Dawg If you could explain in simple English How to look up your flight logs
I would appreciate it. I have a mac book computer but I am not a computer guy.

 

[Fly Dawg]

How to look up your flight logs

The flight logs are stored on the device you fly with in .txt format and need to be converted for viewing. The easiest way to do this is to use the Phantom Help viewer ( Link provided below, and instructions are on the link). There are also flight records on the aircraft itself, in much more detail, but are trickier to work with and use a different converter/viewer. You do not need to be that computer savy to view the online decoded files, but you do need to be somewhat proficient to read the full downloaded .csv files. The viewer will give you the most relevant details, but not all of the data. In your case, you can see the VPS altitude with the online viewer but not much more than that in relation to the VPS. What you can try however is simply turning the VPS off in the app and see if the condition improves. It is not very usefull anyway, and I keep mine turned off. It hovers at low altitude much smoother without it.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - Phantom Help

 

[Ed Hahn]

OK I tried, I did get the flight records on my laptop but I could not read them.They are
encrypted. I don't know what to do next. This is not simple at least not for me.

 

[Fly Dawg]

OK I tried, I did get the flight records on my laptop but I could not read them.They are
encrypted.

As I said they have to be converted. You will need to upload that file to the link I posted in post#4. Then you can see the data.

 

[Meta4]

OK I tried, I did get the flight records on my laptop but I could not read them.They are
encrypted. I don't know what to do next. This is not simple at least not for me.

Go to DJI Flight Log Viewer - Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
Come back and post a link to the report it gives you.

 

[Ed Hahn]

Meta4 I did get the Flight log to work,I am not sure what you mean when you said (Come back and post a link to the report it gives you)
I did fine the correct log for my flight. But still don't understand what or why it happen.
I will keep trying to figure this out. I sure I will get it someday.

 

[lmmavrick]

Meta4 I did get the Flight log to work,I am not sure what you mean when you said (Come back and post a link to the report it gives you)
I did fine the correct log for my flight. But still don't understand what or why it happen.
I will keep trying to figure this out. I sure I will get it someday.

post a link so the experts on here and see what happened and let you know

 

[Ed Hahn]

I Hope this is what you need. And if anyone can tell me what happen I would really
Appreciate it.

 

[MtManDavey]

Lost GPS under the tree cover?

 

[Ed Hahn]

I don’t think so. It was not under the tree when it took off by it’s self

 

[MtManDavey]

Ed, was not thinking about when it took off, was more about when it flew into the tree and could have lost GPS if under tree cover at that time.

 

[Ed Hahn]

Sure, But I don’t know why it went over to the tree when it was comming straight down to the landing pad

 

[MtManDavey]

Not sure as I was not there. It's just a guess as to what may have occurred.

Dave

 

[Ed Hahn]

I did post my flight Record Hoping somebody can answer why

 

[yrless]

I did post my flight Record Hoping somebody can answer why

Have you ever done a compass calibration through the Go app? It's an easy and often overlooked fix for this kind of behavior not to mention mandatory on a regular basis. Position and stability are not guided by gps alone.... magnetometer and accelerometer outputs are used as well and they have to be clean!

 

[chopperdrone]

Maybe you accidentally flipped a switch on the controller... it's easy to do.

 

[Meta4]

Have you ever done a compass calibration through the Go app? It's an easy and often overlooked fix for this kind of behavior not to mention mandatory on a regular basis. Position and stability are not guided by gps alone.... magnetometer and accelerometer outputs are used as well and they have to be clean!

The behaviour described is not something a compass could cause.
Calibrating the compass doesn't fix things.
I'll look at the flight data when I get home

 

[Ed Hahn]

The behaviour described is not something a compass could cause.
Calibrating the compass doesn't fix things.
I'll look at the flight data when I get home

Thank you