Btw.....this will clearly turn into a compass calibration thread now. Grab the popcorn.
Flyaways?
- Thread starter Stovetop
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Btw.....this will clearly turn into a compass calibration thread now. Grab the popcorn.
As a relatively newcomer to the flying camera, I had the same concern as you about my P3A flying away. Here a few recommendations:
1. Take baby steps in the beginning. Fly in an open area, calm weather, and keep range short until you are familiar with the controls. I find flying with the drone facing away works best when I am bringing it back to land.
2. Know Return To Home, its settings, and shortcomings. I only used it twice, and both times were nail-biters.
3. Set one of the custom buttons to the battery page on the app. Check battery often to insure voltage is adequate and cells are balanced.
4. Know your surroundings. Don't fly into an area where tall trees, buildings, and hills could interfere with RC signal. Before you fly, set RTH above the tallest thing between you and the drone.
5. There are so much you can do with the flying camera, like course lock and waypoints. I am taking my time to learn them.
Take care and enjoy your new toy. It literally opens a brand new window to the world.
1. Take baby steps in the beginning. Fly in an open area, calm weather, and keep range short until you are familiar with the controls. I find flying with the drone facing away works best when I am bringing it back to land.
2. Know Return To Home, its settings, and shortcomings. I only used it twice, and both times were nail-biters.
3. Set one of the custom buttons to the battery page on the app. Check battery often to insure voltage is adequate and cells are balanced.
4. Know your surroundings. Don't fly into an area where tall trees, buildings, and hills could interfere with RC signal. Before you fly, set RTH above the tallest thing between you and the drone.
5. There are so much you can do with the flying camera, like course lock and waypoints. I am taking my time to learn them.
Take care and enjoy your new toy. It literally opens a brand new window to the world.
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Dropbox - vision plus loses gps.mp4
As said above I think and from my experiences a fly away is mostly caused when you lose FPV and your bird either tries to make it home and auto lands or loses satellites and is in atti mode or put in atti mode by the user. This video is an example of me losing FPV with less than six satellites when I regained FPV I still had to fly the bird home completely in atti mode !you'll notice when I take back control
As said above I think and from my experiences a fly away is mostly caused when you lose FPV and your bird either tries to make it home and auto lands or loses satellites and is in atti mode or put in atti mode by the user. This video is an example of me losing FPV with less than six satellites when I regained FPV I still had to fly the bird home completely in atti mode !you'll notice when I take back control
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I think the majority of "flyaways" have been determined to be a combination of flying behind buildings/ships/etc and losing control signal from the quadcopter and, then having the automatic Return To Home (RTH) height set too low and the Phantom hits an object on the way home.
I try to fly from the highest point around. Whatever altitude you take off from is considered "0" altitude to the Phantom. Additionally I always set the RTH height at least 150 feet higher than the highest object around. There is little penalty for doing this, the good (not hitting something) outweighs the bad (perhaps more wind up high and therefore more battery power needed to return.)
I also scout out my locations on Google Earth before flying, when you move your mouse pointer around on Google Earth it gives you an approximate height of the land under your pointer. Be sure to account for trees, rocks, power lines, and buildings being much higher than the ground!
Generally higher is better. Higher means better signal and less things to hit. If you want to get close to objects, it is better for you to be on the ground nearby to get a close-up view of your Phantom, don't just depend on the map or video view.
Don't fly near cell towers, buildings, ships, large metal objects, etc. All of these can interfere with the video or control signals. Keep in mind the live (FPV) video stream and the control signals are two different things. Usually you lose video signal before you lose control signal. If you lose video, don't panic, let go of the controls. As long as the light is still green on your controller you still have a perfect control link to your Phantom. Just use the left stick to increase altitude (you should still see a live altitude number in the lower left of the app) and use the map to point your Phantom in the right direction and bring it back home. At some point as you get higher/closer you should get video back.
If you have a red light on your Phantom remote that means the control link has been lost. The Phantom should hopefully be returning to home (if you picked that under Failsafe Options) at the height you specified, and once again be sure that height is plenty high before you fly!
I try to fly from the highest point around. Whatever altitude you take off from is considered "0" altitude to the Phantom. Additionally I always set the RTH height at least 150 feet higher than the highest object around. There is little penalty for doing this, the good (not hitting something) outweighs the bad (perhaps more wind up high and therefore more battery power needed to return.)
I also scout out my locations on Google Earth before flying, when you move your mouse pointer around on Google Earth it gives you an approximate height of the land under your pointer. Be sure to account for trees, rocks, power lines, and buildings being much higher than the ground!
Generally higher is better. Higher means better signal and less things to hit. If you want to get close to objects, it is better for you to be on the ground nearby to get a close-up view of your Phantom, don't just depend on the map or video view.
Don't fly near cell towers, buildings, ships, large metal objects, etc. All of these can interfere with the video or control signals. Keep in mind the live (FPV) video stream and the control signals are two different things. Usually you lose video signal before you lose control signal. If you lose video, don't panic, let go of the controls. As long as the light is still green on your controller you still have a perfect control link to your Phantom. Just use the left stick to increase altitude (you should still see a live altitude number in the lower left of the app) and use the map to point your Phantom in the right direction and bring it back home. At some point as you get higher/closer you should get video back.
If you have a red light on your Phantom remote that means the control link has been lost. The Phantom should hopefully be returning to home (if you picked that under Failsafe Options) at the height you specified, and once again be sure that height is plenty high before you fly!
What tool is that?
I don't think i got one with my P3P, i purchased it 4 days ago and its the revised motor/shell version.
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msinger
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Ok i have that one.
Thought there was a tool specific to props tightening or something.
Thank you.
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As far as p3 I have read of very few flyaway situations, I think they had an issue in the p2 days and sorted that out then.
I had an issue per se with my p2v+. It was only a couple weeks old, hovering at about 40 feet (showing off to a few friends of mine how stable it was) and out of no where dropped into a death spiral and smashed into the ground destroying the camera. I was devastated, took it home, went through my head over and over thinking I must have done something wrong. Finally after about 24hrs of devastation & being told on the forums that I was just "an idiot newb who crashed his drone" I called DJI, explained my situation. They send me a pre paid shipping label & it was back to them.
I can't remember how long the process took but there was a mistake made when checking it in, I ended up calling and politely but assertively letting them know that I was not happy. My repair got bumped up in priority and ended up being told my a supervisor there that an ESC had failed mid flight (defective) and due to the mistake made on checking my unit in/ how new it was/ and how rare this issue was, they sent me a brand new unit.
So do flyaway' happen ? I would say absolutely !!! But they are probably accountable for 1 out of ever 100 crashes if they are lucky!
99% of the time , unfortunately it is pilot error.
Read the manual a bunch of times !
I calibrate every flight (like frank)
And just take your time / do it right.
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I had an issue per se with my p2v+. It was only a couple weeks old, hovering at about 40 feet (showing off to a few friends of mine how stable it was) and out of no where dropped into a death spiral and smashed into the ground destroying the camera. I was devastated, took it home, went through my head over and over thinking I must have done something wrong. Finally after about 24hrs of devastation & being told on the forums that I was just "an idiot newb who crashed his drone" I called DJI, explained my situation. They send me a pre paid shipping label & it was back to them.
I can't remember how long the process took but there was a mistake made when checking it in, I ended up calling and politely but assertively letting them know that I was not happy. My repair got bumped up in priority and ended up being told my a supervisor there that an ESC had failed mid flight (defective) and due to the mistake made on checking my unit in/ how new it was/ and how rare this issue was, they sent me a brand new unit.
So do flyaway' happen ? I would say absolutely !!! But they are probably accountable for 1 out of ever 100 crashes if they are lucky!
99% of the time , unfortunately it is pilot error.
Read the manual a bunch of times !
I calibrate every flight (like frank)
And just take your time / do it right.
Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app
View attachment 44092
Btw.....this will clearly turn into a compass calibration thread now. Grab the popcorn.
Until someone comes along and asks what motors it shipped with!
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I'm in the camp that believes that calibrating every flight will increase risk of a bad calibration. There is no logical reason to calibrate at every flight location, much less every battery. The exceptions are:
1. If you your flight location is over 100mi from the last flight
2. The sensor mod value is out of range
3. You've just loaded new firmware.
Calibrating every flight location introduces the risk of being in an area that you have NO IDEA what's below you for magnetic anomalies, and if you do have something strange at the area you can get a bad calibration and not know it. If the Mod value is 1450 to 1550, I always fly the same calibration. If it's beyond this value, I'll move the bird about 40-50' to another location and 90% of the time the mod value is within the 1450-1550 range and I fly it. In the 7 months I've been flying my P3P, I've had only one compass error (about 6wks ago) and I had to bring the bird back to recalibrate. I deem that as pretty solid, and I've never had a hint of a fly away. I do know that P2 craft had many reports of fly-aways (pre-lightbridge), however many P2 owners swear by them. That's why I waited until July to buy the P3P, waiting for the reports, or lack of.
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This is an important point and one that isn't obvious to most readers of tales of woe with Phantoms.
This article is the best explanation I've seen for anyone interested in the topic: Fear of Flying 2016 - The Last Word on Drone Flyaways! - Drone Flyers
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Maybe I was one of the unlucky ones, but I had a small flyaway after only flying my brand new P3A for two days. I had the Safe to Fly GPS, but a few minutes into the flight it had put itself into P-OPTI mode and took off. I didn't realize this at the time because I was looking at the bird, not my screen. I panicked and thought, let go of the control sticks, and it will hover (as people usually suggest), only it didn't hover, it kept moving and wound up in a very tall tree. I had good satellite coverage and no one was ever able to explain what went wrong...I was supplied with a new unit, and never even got to fly that one, as the compass was dead straight out of the box. I got another replacement, and haven't had any issues to date with number 3.
If I'd known what was happening at the time, I could have used the sticks to prevent the crash, but I was totally new to this. After several people advised to buy a cheap drone to learn to fly with, I got myself a Syma X5C-1 and a little Hubsan, and a couple of Cheerson micro quads. I feel more confident now that I can actually fly, and they have been great practice for me - aside from that, they're just plain fun
If I'd known what was happening at the time, I could have used the sticks to prevent the crash, but I was totally new to this. After several people advised to buy a cheap drone to learn to fly with, I got myself a Syma X5C-1 and a little Hubsan, and a couple of Cheerson micro quads. I feel more confident now that I can actually fly, and they have been great practice for me - aside from that, they're just plain fun
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