It Finally Happened...

[Opspeculate]

After 2764 flights with a Vision 2 and current Vision 2 plus v3 I had my first fly away with the plusV3 flight 2765 yesterday in the middle of nowhere in Ontario Canada. I have been filming there since March this year and other locations. There is zero cell and power lines only trees for hundreds of square miles all around me. We canoe in for days to locations. I started up with normal compass cal and waited for min 7 sats. All the norm for years, same routine, another day. Flew around after normal take off and did normal B-Roll video fly around first then went to pictures after 5 min of flying around and finding the view I wanted for stills.

I was in complete hover at around 35m or 100 feet almost direct but out front above me taking pano shots and in the middle of an 8 picture set.

After 5 min of hovering it suddenly took off to the direct right at full speed. My spotter called out to ask what the heck am I doing, with zero input from me on control I looked up from the screen app and saw it take off over the tree line, FAST !!! I could see it in the app it was flying hard towards the water and I knew it was not me flying but remained calm with the few choices I had.

I could not believe after reading about fly aways over the years it was finally happening and that WTF I am going to lose my sh@t comes over you.

I went to atti right away thinking sat signal issue with no response from control at all, it was already close to range so not much time left for home or course, it was approaching the sound barrier lol
There was no wind either, just raw quad power flying on a one way mission to who knows...

I turned off the controller and it went to rth right away and correctly. On the app it said return to home and it turned direct towards me all calm and relaxed and flew home like a pro. Once it was close I turned on the controller to try and land myself and it went direct to exact same fly away again in same direction... FAST !!!

Again I turned and left off the controller and it went rth and landed exactly at the take off spot perfectly.


Conclusion...

The phantom plus v3 was fine.
It knew how to find home and it knew how to fly correctly to get home without me.

The controller in on state was the thing messing it up so I am convinced it was the controller hardware / software relationship or bind that failed not the Phantom.

Once back at my office I checked inside for obvious failure in both controller and phantom and tested all on the computer link. I then did a recal and forced the already existing updates to update again to just refresh the current in both controller Phantom. Have flown in my office atti obviously 4 times since without any issue. Going to try outside test again in a few days with better wind and rain conditions.

Take my word for it as an insured certified CCUVS UAS seasoned pilot and not new to this at all
A FLY AWAY IS VERY REAL !!!
It will happen very sudden without warning and there will be very little if anything at all you can do but remain calm. I was left with one option to turn off the controller and it worked. It may not work for other types of fly aways but it is another working option when you have about 3 to 5 seconds to make the call.

I have never seen first hand before until yesterday flying for the last few years of using dji hearing about a fly away so it is not very common but it is very real.

It really does just fly away at full speed and it is not the pilot !!!
www.opspeculate.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdkPOMPZ0hfHTf2-cty_2ww

 

[BlackTracer]

Congrats on the save. Good work. Crazy behavior. I hope it goes back to working again for you. A long time ago (May 2014) I had an uncontrolled descent but a quick switch to ATTI and back to GPS cleared it up. No control losses since. For you, TGFRTH (Thank God For RTH).

 

[RoyVa]

Over the past year and looking at the fly a ways I think the onboard computer hits a glitch and off she goes. Don't know why and can't get proof but the worst ones are a complete onboard reboot and loss of all onboard data and away she goes with no chance of recovery.

 

[BuxtonTheRed]

So far the only fly-away I've experienced was wind-driven pilot error.

My other half was flying (and it is technically "his" quad, as he wanted it and paid for it), I lost line-of-sight to the craft as it went up over the crest of a hill and encountered way stronger winds up there than we had down at lower levels. We turned TX off to attempt to force an RTH once we realised we had a problem, but no joy.

Thankfully it put itself down on the golf course that was on the other side of that hill, with no interruption to other people or damage to property. When we watched the video back, it was obvious that it was trying but failing to fight against strong winds to come back to us directly. Eventually it gave up and did a controlled landing on the grass.

We've now upgraded to the Litchi app and I'm hopeful I would have the wits to use the easily-accessed big map view on that to tack across the wind at 45 degrees if that happened again. (Also, I'm now even more picky about both me and my partner flying eyes-on-craft and NOT eyes-on-screen!)

 

[JKDSensei]

Great save. Interesting that the controller would tell the bird to flyaway. Once out of range in that case it should have started a RTH.
The P2v+ has a 5.8Ghz control system and 2.4Ghz data link.
I always wondered if that had anything to do with it given the seemingly disproportionate number of P2V+ flyaways.

 

[kirk2579]

View attachment 33145 After 2764 flights with a Vision 2 and current Vision 2 plus v3 I had my first fly away with the plusV3 flight 2765 yesterday in the middle of nowhere in Ontario Canada. I have been filming there since March this year and other locations. There is zero cell and power lines only trees for hundreds of square miles all around me. We canoe in for days to locations. I started up with normal compass cal and waited for min 7 sats. All the norm for years, same routine, another day. Flew around after normal take off and did normal B-Roll video fly around first then went to pictures after 5 min of flying around and finding the view I wanted for stills.

I was in complete hover at around 35m or 100 feet almost direct but out front above me taking pano shots and in the middle of an 8 picture set.

After 5 min of hovering it suddenly took off to the direct right at full speed. My spotter called out to ask what the heck am I doing, with zero input from me on control I looked up from the screen app and saw it take off over the tree line, FAST !!! I could see it in the app it was flying hard towards the water and I knew it was not me flying but remained calm with the few choices I had.

I could not believe after reading about fly aways over the years it was finally happening and that WTF I am going to lose my sh@t comes over you.

I went to atti right away thinking sat signal issue with no response from control at all, it was already close to range so not much time left for home or course, it was approaching the sound barrier lol
There was no wind either, just raw quad power flying on a one way mission to who knows...

I turned off the controller and it went to rth right away and correctly. On the app it said return to home and it turned direct towards me all calm and relaxed and flew home like a pro. Once it was close I turned on the controller to try and land myself and it went direct to exact same fly away again in same direction... FAST !!!

Again I turned and left off the controller and it went rth and landed exactly at the take off spot perfectly.
View attachment 33146

Conclusion...

The phantom plus v3 was fine.
It knew how to find home and it knew how to fly correctly to get home without me.

The controller in on state was the thing messing it up so I am convinced it was the controller hardware / software relationship or bind that failed not the Phantom.

Once back at my office I checked inside for obvious failure in both controller and phantom and tested all on the computer link. I then did a recal and forced the already existing updates to update again to just refresh the current in both controller Phantom. Have flown in my office atti obviously 4 times since without any issue. Going to try outside test again in a few days with better wind and rain conditions.

Take my word for it as an insured certified CCUVS UAS seasoned pilot and not new to this at all
A FLY AWAY IS VERY REAL !!!
It will happen very sudden without warning and there will be very little if anything at all you can do but remain calm. I was left with one option to turn off the controller and it worked. It may not work for other types of fly aways but it is another working option when you have about 3 to 5 seconds to make the call.

I have never seen first hand before until yesterday flying for the last few years of using dji hearing about a fly away so it is not very common but it is very real.

It really does just fly away at full speed and it is not the pilot !!!
www.opspeculate.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdkPOMPZ0hfHTf2-cty_2ww

I have noticed the fact that Many phantoms that suddenly fly away seem to be in a "hover" prior to the sudden fast takeoff.

does Hovering push the naza to its limits and it crashes or something similar?

 

[Mark The Droner]

What mode were you in - Normal or IOC? What time of the day did this happen? What was the air temp?

 

[sdtag]

I have noticed the fact that Many phantoms that suddenly fly away seem to be in a "hover" prior to the sudden fast takeoff.

does Hovering push the naza to its limits and it crashes or something similar?

I think that while hovering the compass gets lost sometimes. I have seen it on mine and I have even replaced my compass, but eventually figured out that the compass needs motion to get a heading. Mine anyway. When it hovers for a few a seconds at a way point stop I can watch the compass needle spin or flip. It usually flips. I started noticing it in dashware. So maybe the compass data and the gps data don't add up and it starts a sequence of events? A BAD sequence of events. I think it's possible.

 

[kirk2579]

I think that while hovering the compass gets lost sometimes. I have seen it on mine and I have even replaced my compass, but eventually figured out that the compass needs motion to get a heading. Mine anyway. When it hovers for a few a seconds at a way point stop I can watch the compass needle spin or flip. It usually flips. I started noticing it in dashware. So maybe the compass data and the gps data don't add up and it starts a sequence of events? A BAD sequence of events. I think it's possible.

Makes sense, But since I noticed that hover trend I seldom let it hang out on its own....

I figure if I keep it moving for the most part at least that issue wont happen if it is real.

 

[shiftline]

That's freaky! It worries me a it when wanting to try follow me mode and not having the controller