My 2+ was laid to rest in the Ohio River... :(

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jse1982

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So like most weekends on the river, I often fly my 2+ as we float and boat. I have done it all summer long. This passed Saturday though was the last time. I turned everything on as I always had. I was showing 93% battery. Took off and within 30 seconds my iPad was honking for low battery. I looked and it was showing 13% and the return to home pop-up was counting down to take over. I selected cancel and began to fly straight to me. 3-5 seconds later, about 30' in the air, it shut down and splashed into the river. For the record, they sure don't float for long! :( Never to be seen again..

Now I know that this is a risk of flying over water but would I just chalk this up to a bad battery? Any ideas? I've been flying for 2 years now and have never had an incident such as this. I have already ordered a new P3 and hope to have it by the end of the week.
 
I had a similar experience... after ~20 cycles on the three batteries I use (3), I followed recommendation of taking the voltage down to ~8% then recharging to 100%. I did this burn down in the back yard and hovered ~ 10 ft to accomplish this. I disabled RTH on low battery etc... Two batteries allowed me to land as planned. Third battery at ~20% got a overheat battery screen shot and it dropped like a rock!
 
I too was running 3 batteries. That particular battery was somewhere around 30 cycles I believe. I had done the run down to 8% deal some time ago. I have never had an issue with battery warnings prior to the incident.
 
I also ran 3 batteries and had one fall out of the sky at 31 cycles. ($300 repair) At $4 a cycle you should expect better than this. DJI will keep bending us over until something is done. Would be interesting to see the profit margin on battery's compared to other items. These are indeed smart batteries if you look at it from a profitability standpoint.
 
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I guess the lesson I take from this is to launch and hover for a minute, keeping an eye on the battery % for any early fast depletion issues before heading out. Might be a minute well spent, especially with batteries that are in the 30 cycles range.
 
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Agree with you there. I always go through the motions of the sticks once i'm about 5' in the air. All movements were as expected. I guess more attention to the battery status will be given. I do look forward to the P3 and the flight logging that it does. That would be very helpful in a situation such as this I would think.
 
Batteries are a poker players game. Never know when one is going to take a dive. I had some drop fro 65% to 8% and thank goodness when it did I just came back off the river. It autolanded when it hit the critical 8% level. That was the fastest battery drop I've had. After I found it I charged and checked the battery in the assistant. Said all was good. So I like a stupid pilot hover a few and watched it. Looked good went up and out and what do you know wham dropped to 8% from 65 again. Autolanded in the woods with some damage. Thank goodness for find my phantom. Thick woods! Discharged that battery and trashed it.
 
jse1982 said:
So like most weekends on the river, I often fly my 2+ as we float and boat. I have done it all summer long. This passed Saturday though was the last time. I turned everything on as I always had. I was showing 93% battery. Took off and within 30 seconds my iPad was honking for low battery. I looked and it was showing 13% and the return to home pop-up was counting down to take over. I selected cancel and began to fly straight to me. 3-5 seconds later, about 30' in the air, it shut down and splashed into the river. For the record, they sure don't float for long! :( Never to be seen again..

Now I know that this is a risk of flying over water but would I just chalk this up to a bad battery? Any ideas? I've been flying for 2 years now and have never had an incident such as this. I have already ordered a new P3 and hope to have it by the end of the week.
Click to expand...
I feel for you, had the same thing happen to my P2V+ this weekend, above a lake in Michigan. I was up flyng my P3 while my daughters BF was flying the P2V+, it came without warning, he got a sudden battery warning, the bird jumped into return home, rose to 400feet and fell with no power;

There is a bright side,.... it was an awsome crash with a very large splash... I am giving up on the P2V+ and gonna concentrate on the P3 which I am learning to love, now that the bad firmware upgrade has been fixed. It was getting way to time consuming keeping up with forums and apk's for 2 different birds. I will miss it though....
 
Sorry for your loss. If i were to fly with any frequency over fresh water i would consider that marker buoy thingy that deploys when it senses water. Im not sure of the depth it would be effective but if retrieved in a timely matter refurbishing of the drone may be possible. Water makes me nervous.
 
Has anyone seen the minutes of flying available increase during the first part of a flight? a few times I've seen my flight start showing only six or seven minutes of flight time and then it will quickly move up to 11 or 12 minutes and then gradually decrease as normal during the flight.
 
MikeTess said:
Sorry for your loss. If i were to fly with any frequency over fresh water i would consider that marker buoy thingy that deploys when it senses water. Im not sure of the depth it would be effective but if retrieved in a timely matter refurbishing of the drone may be possible. Water makes me nervous.
Click to expand...

I've seen where some have zip-tied the GetterBack to their bird. http://www.amazon.com/GetterBack-Recovery-System-Velcro-Yellow/dp/B00GIYIU8Q/ref=pd_sxp_redirect
I figured the only thing it would be good for after taking a swim would be your sd card, and parting out the non-electronic parts. I've chosen to stay over land for now or until they develop the self inflating bubble the inflates in a free fall and surrounds the unit before it hits the water. :) I'm sure for the right price, its already out there.
 
I ONLY fly over water (from my boat), so I had to devise something to keep my Phantom from sinking when the inevitable happens. I made a Styrofoam shell and made it easily removable. The added benefit is better protection for the camera/gimbal, and a wider landing gear. My Phantom hit the water 5 times, and after a three day dry-out, it usually comes back to life 100%. I did coat all electronic with Corrosion-X, which helps a lot when it gets wet. So far I've lost one battery, and had an ESC go bad, but I'm not sure the ESC was due to water damage. The idea is to keep it on the surface, where much less water enters the inner parts of the craft. The deeper it goes, and the longer it's there, the less likely you are to have no damage. Floating at the surface makes for a fast recovery. All bets are off if your flying over saltwater.

Oh, here's a video showing the shell:
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Regarding the batteries... DJI implemented a property they call Battery life(expressed in percentage from 0-100%), which can be checked either in the Assistant on the PC or on the battery itself by pressing and holding the button for 5 seconds... What DJI got wrong is the actual percentage... Your battery is basically dangerous to fly when the percentage drops below 90% ...
Check this video:
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Last edited:
Great explanation!
I put a little dot long the side of each of my batteries every time I charge them. I normally do a full flight till the batteries are discharged enough that the phantom has to come home. That way I don't always have to look up on the computer how many flights there are per battery. I can count the dots and see when each is at 20 charge cycles so that I can do a full discharge. Then after each full discharge charge cycle I use a line instead of a dot. That way also see how many full discharge cycle I've gone through. This is my little video about that:

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dannytroy said:
I ONLY fly over water (from my boat), so I had to devise something to keep my Phantom from sinking when the inevitable happens. I made a Styrofoam shell and made it easily removable. The added benefit is better protection for the camera/gimbal, and a wider landing gear. My Phantom hit the water 5 times, and after a three day dry-out, it usually comes back to life 100%. I did coat all electronic with Corrosion-X, which helps a lot when it gets wet. So far I've lost one battery, and had an ESC go bad, but I'm not sure the ESC was due to water damage. The idea is to keep it on the surface, where much less water enters the inner parts of the craft. The deeper it goes, and the longer it's there, the less likely you are to have no damage. Floating at the surface makes for a fast recovery. All bets are off if your flying over saltwater.

Oh, here's a video showing the shell:
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Click to expand...
how heavy is that ?
what flight time do you get with it fitted ?
 

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