Close call with my p3 adv! Nearly hit a few trees and practically grazed some telephone wires!

NoBiffBetter · Apr 3, 2017

So I was out doing some long range flying yesterday cuz it was 50 degrees F out, which is the warmest it's been in months.. I decided to go long, but not too long, so I told myself I would go 30k feet and turn around.

It had been windy earlier that day but died down a bit so I decided to go for it.. flying out I could tell immediately the wind picked back up; as I was heading into the wind and knowing this cuz my top speed was only 20-22mph on the way out (headwind)

I should turned around there but I love a challenge and love the adrenaline rush. So I continued on, hoping that I would get a nice tailwind on my way back .. I finally made it to 30k feet and decided to push it another 2k feet (again assuming I would have a good 40mph+ with the tailwind on the way back. I finally turned around and soon realized that I didn't have the tailwind I was looking for. I maxed out at maybe 35-38mph but was mainly going 34-36mph for the majority of time.. picking up altitude wasn't helping so i just stayed where I was at to conserve battery power.

So soon after I knew I wasn't gonna make it back, so since I had already picked out a few safe landing locations before my flight I knew right where to go incase I wasn't gonna make it back.. I went to my buddy's house to land in his yard and by that time I was already critical battery, and the wind had picked up a lot more.. there were pretty huge gusts and as I tried to land it pushed me across the road and that's where all the near misses came in.

Video link:
Luckily I was able to somehow miss everything , regain control, and land it safely in his labors lawn across the road.

I got in my vehicle and drove down to the location and there she was sitting pretty in the yard like nothing ever happened. Talk about a rush.

I didn't loose my video feed until about 4 foot above the ground.. and that's when the video cut, and the camera stopped recording.

royster · Apr 3, 2017

Couple of close calls on way down, eh!
Were you flying in ATT mode or were winds that bad tossing your bird around like that?
In windy conditions I sometimes switch to ATT just to practice handling my P3A in manual flight, quite exciting & good practice, gets the old heart a pumping!

NoBiffBetter · Apr 3, 2017

royster said:
Couple of close calls on way down, eh!
Were you flying in ATT mode or were winds that bad tossing your bird around like that?
In windy conditions I sometimes switch to ATT just to practice handling my P3A in manual flight, quite exciting & good practice, gets the old heart a pumping!

No Atti, it was in gps mode, that's just how bad it was tossing me around, I had two external saddle pack battery's on the sides of it, so the extra weight along with just having the batts on the sides like that makes it almost like a sail in that high of wind.

I was a good 10k feet out I would say, and the sun glare on my tablet was pretty bad, so fighting the wind plus a dying quad that was in (critical battery landing mode) really put the pressure on! lol

It was a tense last 30 seconds that's for sure.

HWCM · Apr 3, 2017

Okay...

Pharm · Apr 3, 2017

HWCM said:
Okay...

Haha. Yeah, I agree. The alarm started going off early on this one.

kerrylaw7307 · Apr 4, 2017

Any way we can get a photo of your bird? Would love to see the batteries on the sides.

Digdat0 · Apr 4, 2017

holy crap that was close. Good call on finding a good landing spot, gotta know when to pull back and you recognized the wind there. That is sometimes a harder call than saying "ahh crud i'll go for it" .. better to land safely and drive to get it than have it fall from the air

HWCM · Apr 4, 2017

Weird, The tree limbs are not blowing at all.

happydays · Apr 4, 2017

I was thinking that too. I looked closely too and there were buds on the trees; surely they would have caught the wind too?

I thought the OP was flying rather erratically too when descending. If I was in that situation, I would have found a suitable spot, pointed the camera directly down and just descended straight down. No objects to avoid, safe landing guaranteed (almost).

NoBiffBetter · Apr 4, 2017

Digdat0 said:
holy crap that was close. Good call on finding a good landing spot, gotta know when to pull back and you recognized the wind there. That is sometimes a harder call than saying "ahh crud i'll go for it" .. better to land safely and drive to get it than have it fall from the air

View attachment 79764

Thanks for doing a screen shot of the telephone wires! I was trying to stop it in the right spot and do that myself but it was hard to do with my iPhone ..

Thanks man, yah sometimes it's better just to play it safe, and having another 10k feet or so to go, I knew I wasn't gonna make it. That's why I always pick out a few safe landing zones along with rout I fly in when I do long distances .. this way when/if I get into trouble, I know right where I wanna go to land, and know it will be safe for other ppl, and my drone.

Thanks for the comment bud

NoBiffBetter · Apr 4, 2017

happydays said:
I was thinking that too. I looked closely too and there were buds on the trees; surely they would have caught the wind too?

I thought the OP was flying rather erratically too when descending. If I was in that situation, I would have found a suitable spot, pointed the camera directly down and just descended straight down. No objects to avoid, safe landing guaranteed (almost).

Literally there is. I leaves on any of the trees, so not much for the wind to blow.. I assure you it was wind and not erratic behavior on the drones part.. I fought the wind the whole way out, here are some better screen shots to show you my speed on the way out.. this was fully throttle going out, I could go no faster than 20-23mph at best

You can tell in the video how the drone is fighting to stay forward yet being blown backwards .. and at a few points it's arched so much and being thrashed so hard you can see the legs of the drone in more than one instance ..

The first attempted to land before I got blown across the street I did try what you said, to "just allow the drone to Descend straight down in an open spot" but when I positioned myself over the open grass and let off the throttle so that it would just come down and land.. but what I didn't know was the wind was so bad that once I let off the throttle it blew the drone 20 or so feet and all I could do was turn the drone in the direction that it was being blown and throttle up as fast as I could to pick up altitude so I didn't crash and that was when I nearly hit the telephone wires.. once I was on the other side of the road; the gusts seemed to have died down just long enough for me to find another open spot of grass and to continue to let the quad auto land.

Things happen so fast, it may have seemed easier to you watching it, but when your 10k+ feet away, controlling it and watching it ONLY though your small tablet screen with lots of sun glare, and your fighting the wind, the dying battery, as well as the "critical battery" (auto land) it's not just that easy..

Luckily iv had a lot of time on the sticks and managed to pull out of the disaster and I just figured it would be cool to share it with you guys. I'm by no means a pro, but I'm just happy I was able to land it safely being what I was dealt with. Gotta think fast and be on your feet at all times when doing this kinda stuff. But that's what I love about it. It's a rush.

NoBiffBetter · Apr 4, 2017

kerrylaw7307 said:
Any way we can get a photo of your bird? Would love to see the batteries on the sides.

Sure thing..

In the pictures you Can see how the battery's are mounted.. so it doesn't take much for those external battery's to act like a sail in the wind..

HWCM · Apr 4, 2017

NoBiffBetter said:
Sure thing..

In the pictures you Can see how the battery's are mounted.. so it doesn't take much for those external battery's to act like a sail in the wind..

Do the amps help a lot? Have you done a comparison with and without them?

NoBiffBetter · Apr 4, 2017

I did a comparison.. they do help a lot with penetration.. iv gotten over 7 miles easy with the panel alone, and with the panel and the boosters.. havnt been able to get farther than 7.4 miles due to battery restraints.. but I know for a fact the panel and boosters will go farther Obv than just the panel alone.

Where I noticed the biggest difference between having boosters and no boosters was the penetration through trees and buildings etc. BEFORE the boosters I could drop altitude down as low as 105 maybe 100 feet while being roughly 10k feet out.. but WITH the boosters, in the same exact location and around 10k feet out I have gotten as low as 4 or 5 foot off the ground before I finally lost signal.. and iv done multiply tests with distance and how low I can go.. I truely think the same area I fly at.. using the boosters, if I tried to land the quad 8k feet away I bet I could.. maybe I'll try it next time.. I'll see if I can do along distance landing, and then takeoff and get it all on film for you guys. I would think that with out the boosters that the most I could prolly do to land it and take back off from would be maybe 4k feet or less.

Like I said the largest difference between boosted and unboosted is the ability to penetrate even though some of the thickest penetration, and in the case of the video clip i showed you, it pays to spend the extra money on the boosters even tho you may not really "need it" because in case of an emergency landing it's nice to be able to actually drop altitude to only 5-10 feet, and let it autoland from there, then if I didn't have the boosters on, I for sure woulda dropped connection at roughly 100 feet, then would have to hope and pray it landed itself straight down from where I lost connection. And with the wind there was that day, that woulda never happened.

Good point for brining the boosters up tho, didn't really think about it but in reality the boosters are what saved me in the end . Allowing me to drop it so low under my own control before loosing all connection

kerrylaw7307 · Apr 4, 2017

Thank you for the photos! Looks like theses are 3cell-2300ma Lipolys? If so, then you are adding another 4600ma to the main batteries 4850ma. Kool!!!
What kind of connection do you use to piggy back these batteries to the main battery? Did you open up the shell and add a connector to the main board where the normal battery power is attached? What is the green light at the connector? And, last question, where did you get those "battery hang bars"? NICE

happydays · Apr 5, 2017

@NoBiffBetter I'm not arguing with you - just that in such high gusty winds as described, I would have expected to see the branches of the trees moving. But in the clip (that I can see) none of them do. Even at the beginning of the clip the fir trees (or pine trees, I was never very good at identifying them...) aren't event slightly moving; in light gusts they would be, even more so in heavy winds that would cause the phantom to move about in the way it was

The legs appear a fair bit in the video, so the Phantom is clearly being affected. But it doesn't appear to be wind that's affecting it, at least not from the clip that I can see. My bet would be magnetic interference from the power lines. In that case, the erratic behaviour of the phantom would perfectly explain the flight characteristics.

Did you do a post flight analysis of the data?

yorlik · Apr 5, 2017

Hi winds?? Haha! I knew tnhis whole op was alternate facts from first read. Wind was only 10 mph, gusting to 15! 20-25mph out, 35mph back. Do the math.

Heck, even my p2 is stable as all get out in that.

NoBiffBetter · Apr 6, 2017

Well you guys can believe whatever you want, I know it was windy, just cuz you don't see branches move, (branches that have NO leaves on them) doesn't mean there wasn't high winds..

Iv flown in this area many many many many times, its never been affected by magnetic Feilds and specially not by power lines.. I wasn't even that close to the power lines when it was acting this way. My drone has NEVER given me an issue, and has never flown this way other than one other time when again, there was high wind gusts. Iv never even had a compass error.

Iv got ZERO reason to make this up. I was there, you guys wernt. I can't explain to which exact direction the winds and gusts were, as we all should know, wind changes directions constantly, gusts and wind speeds can change suddenly and depending on what altitude you are at, it could have more affect or less affect on the drone at any given time.

I take it you guys havnt flown in high winds much, but this is exactly how it will behave. Gps lock doesn't mean crap when the wind gusts are stronger than the phantom can handle.. google phantom 3 in high winds you will see it acts the same.

Never the less, i didn't post this video to have a dispute about whether there are winds, or whether the drone was acting strangely. I wasn't asking you guys if something was wrong with my drone. I posted it to show and share with you guys how close of a call I had in windy conditions. And just to show how close it came to being a goner that day.

I showed the screen shots to put together my story of that day.. at that given time, and what I was doing when it happened.. and THATS IT. Think whatever you guys want, but my p3 flys beautifully. And I've never had a single issue with it or it's flying characteristics, it's always flown flawlessly and still did the day after when I flew it again...

Also idk how many of you fly with 2 heavy external 4 cell battery's on the sides of your quad.. but in guess you two havnt. It's a lot more weight for the drone to carry, and it also is more of a sail for the wind to catch when the wind blows.. so what a stock drone may handle in a certain wind speed, will not be what my modded drone can handle at another.. meaning the wind will affect my drone more due to the extra weight.. and the wind will easier push the drone due to its large extra battery's that are mounted to each side.

NoBiffBetter · Apr 6, 2017

mikekilroy1074 said:
Hi winds?? Haha! I knew tnhis whole op was alternate facts from first read. Wind was only 10 mph, gusting to 15! 20-25mph out, 35mph back. Do the math.

Heck, even my p2 is stable as all get out in that.

You do the math.. extra battery's + extra wiring/connectors+ extra accessories = extra weight.. and extra mass for the wind to push around easier.. and for the stock motors which are now working harder.. it can't handle the wind like a stock p3... I never said how high the winds were.. I just said high winds/wind gusts blew my quad. Iv flown my quad hundreds of times, stock and prolly 50 times with the battery mod... I think I know when the difference of wind pushing my quad, or if it's another factor that's causing my problems .

If you like the video cool post and lmk, if you don't like it, and wanna debate, then say the heck out.

Sylle · Apr 6, 2017

mikekilroy1074 said:
Hi winds?? Haha! I knew tnhis whole op was alternate facts from first read. Wind was only 10 mph, gusting to 15! 20-25mph out, 35mph back. Do the math.

Heck, even my p2 is stable as all get out in that.

Well... to the defence of the OP there might still be a crosswind component too. That would not have an effect on his GPS groundspeed but that could still be strong/gusty enough to disrupt the Phantom's attitude in flight.

Would have been interesting to see the stick inputs that were made during the landing phase... especially when the quad gets blown over to the neighbours lawn across the road.

Glad to see all ended well!