So....Yeah...This happened

[NinjaGaz]

Hello

This situation sucks on so many levels because it was my own stupid fault :/ Basically I was flying my phantom 4 on a river bank and using my partners Mavic pro to record the P4 for an upcoming YouTube video and I was really focusing on what I was doing stepped forward and some of the bank gave away and I fell into the water...

Long story short the controller and my iPad mini 4 sank into the water and I was unable to find it and the drone automatically returned to home which was a bit of a walk away by the time I got out of the water and ran to the home location the drone was nowhere to be seen so it either got lost on the flight home or it landed successfully and someone found it and took it... Either way, The drone was nowhere to be seen and I had not had the foresight to put a GPS tracker on the drone...I know I know...

Luckily my partner was flying the Mavic pro so I did not lose that one too otherwise it would have been even worse... We did return to the location early this morning and we managed to find the controller and the iPad mini 4 in the water but of course, as you would expect they are extremely water damaged but no sign of the drone anywhere and we searched a long time.

This was a very expensive lesson safe to say :/

 

[grin factor]

Sorry to hear that, it sucks big time.
I lost a P3S in the river a while ago, so I can understand how you feel.

 

[NinjaGaz]

Sorry to hear that, it sucks big time.
I lost a P3S in the river a while ago, so I can understand how you feel.

Yes its highly frustrating but I guess its something that taught me a lesson and now I know to never try this again >.> Have ordered a replacement and this time I will be more cautious

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

Plot a straight line from the lost drones last location to the recorded RTH point. walk it and look in trees, and ground and around the Home point. If it went critical battery it would land at that point that it went critical.

 

[The Famous]

Purchased Drone insurance from State Farm last week. $1,000.00 policy = $63.00 per year.

 

[Morningdewd]

How come he didn't track the Phantom 4 with the Mavic? Wasn't he filming the 4 ? Couldn't he have followed it , I'm assuming the Mavic could RTH,or made a b line to the original take off point .

 

[Deleted member 62848]

Hello

This situation sucks on so many levels because it was my own stupid fault :/ Basically I was flying my phantom 4 on a river bank and using my partners Mavic pro to record the P4 for an upcoming YouTube video and I was really focusing on what I was doing stepped forward and some of the bank gave away and I fell into the water...

Long story short the controller and my iPad mini 4 sank into the water and I was unable to find it and the drone automatically returned to home which was a bit of a walk away by the time I got out of the water and ran to the home location the drone was nowhere to be seen so it either got lost on the flight home or it landed successfully and someone found it and took it... Either way, The drone was nowhere to be seen and I had not had the foresight to put a GPS tracker on the drone...I know I know...

Luckily my partner was flying the Mavic pro so I did not lose that one too otherwise it would have been even worse... We did return to the location early this morning and we managed to find the controller and the iPad mini 4 in the water but of course, as you would expect they are extremely water damaged but no sign of the drone anywhere and we searched a long time.

This was a very expensive lesson safe to say :/

Suc,sorry to read, had idea while reading,,download djigo4 on another device ,because your signed in with your email ,i wonder if flight record mayby might come back even though this flight not get synced, p4 has the feature find my drone,it might show last direction of travel, just idea ...best of luck .sounds good in my head like when app gets uninstalled and reinstalled data returns

 

[NinjaGaz]

How come he didn't track the Phantom 4 with the Mavic? Wasn't he filming the 4? Couldn't he have followed it, I'm assuming the Mavic could RTH, or made a b line to the original take-off point.

My girlfriend was filming the P4 with her Mavic Pro and when I fell in she panicked and was too busy focusing on me to follow where my drone flew off too;/

Plot a straight line from the lost drones the last location to the recorded RTH point. walk it and look in trees, and ground and around the Home point. If it went critical battery it would land at that point that it went critical.

I went back to the location this morning and basically plotted a straight line from the last location I saw it from and walked for about a mile to see if it had landed at the critical point but I could not see anything. I then signed into the DJIgo app on my phone to check if any information had synced over before the crash/Offline and it was telling me the last location was in a spot that I was not even remotely near when I fell so I jumped back into the car and went back to the spot with the rough idea of the location and I wasn't sure if it had crashed into the ground or was wedged in a tree somewhere but no harm in looking I guess and after an hour or so of searching guess what!

I found her! 2 of the 4 rotors where broken but the drone itself escaped the crash with only a slight mark on the leg

Damage on the landing leg

I have 4 more replacement blades so that's, not a problem and that mark on the landing leg doesn't seem to affect it in any way so all in all, not a huge loss! The controller is on its way to DJI for repair as we speak and the iPad that got water damaged is being replaced by my Insurance policy so total cost of this accident is only 4 new DJI propeller blades

Thank you to those who commented with suggestions as without these I probably wouldn't have found it again so huge thanks!

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

Awesome to hear that! Now.... show us the video of you falling in.....

 

[DocDiggler]

Awesome to hear that! Now.... show us the video of you falling in.....

Hahaha

 

[Darren Roach]

YER we would all like to see the video of you falling in lol.

 

[DanMan32]

Also if the P4 was recording, seeing it's crash.
Why did it crash if it performed RTH?

 

[Meta4]

Why did it crash if it performed RTH?

We don't have any info here to know what happened in this case.
The most common reasons are:

The RTH height is not set to an appropriate height to clear any obstacles between the flying area and the home point.​

or ...

The home point is not clear of all obstacles and the Phantom clipped a tree etc as it was landing.​

 

[ShadowCrabb]

Wouldn't the forward mounted sensors take care of the RTH?

 

[Norry.]

Great stuff indeed, but still waiting for the fall in river vid.

 

[DanMan32]

The video should show the crash, ergo show why it crashed despite RTH engagement.

 

[KDCypP4Adv]

Wouldn't the forward mounted sensors take care of the RTH?

It should unless the user selected 'switch off obstacle avoidance on RTH'.
Apparently the reason for such an option is for instances where on RTH the drone is blinded by low sun, otherwise it tries to fly over it - last I checked the sun is quite far away and battery technology hasn't advanced so far as to travel round the sun (yet). Other posters have confirmed experience of this issue

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

It didn't work out so well for Icarus.....

 

[Neon Euc]

Still waiting for the video too lol. But glad the phantom got retrieved and it didn't cost anything to learn from this mistake apart from a heart attack and even thats for free lol

 

[jimlips]

Seriously, if you were recording at the time, let's see your video! That stuff is gold. Glad you got your aircraft back.