Why did you crash?

steve stein · Nov 17, 2016

Brand new to the adventure, never held nor flown a drone before but looking forward to taking still photographs with the P4Plus. I keep seeing posts and articles about crashing - everyone does it, it will happen to you. Is there any way to avoid this? Was there a particular reason you crashed?
I also would like to take some stills from over the water and read that if you enter restricted air space that the drone will automatically land, presumably in the water. I'm in NY so have airports, prisons, nuclear, etc all around me. Really? No way to take control and get out of the way? Just watch it sink?

Best as always.... Steve

Jrods · Nov 17, 2016

I like to know where you gat the info about the drone landing when you get into restricted air space. On you tube some guy name ken is flying in Memphis over Graceland and the drone stops and will not go into restricted air space. I fly a lot in Clarksville TN after calling the Fort Campbell folks and I just answer Yes that I have permission to fly when that screen comes up. No problem. Never flown in TFR as that would be illegal. Don't know what happens if you try to fly in a TFR.

smiller · Nov 17, 2016

As I understand it the drone will not fly into restricted airspace, rather it will stop at the border (and if you are in restricted airspace initially the drone will not take off.) I believe that there are some oddball conditions that could conceivably force an auto-land (as in if the drone suddenly finds itself 'surprised' in restricted airspace because GPS geolocation temporarily failed before entry and then was restored) but this is not something you would likely run into under any normal operating conditions.

Re: crashing... it happens, either due to hardware/battery failure, or pilot error such as being accidentally flown into an object. The latter cause will probably slowly become extinct due to improving object avoidance technology.

stitch0852 · Nov 28, 2016

Most of my crashes with a Phantom 2 and Phantom Vision were caused by me. I got too close to a tree, or other nonsense like that. My P3P has only "crashed" once. It was trying to return home and I wanted it to land where I was and brought it down. It was soft and did not damage the machine. That was over a year ago.

Most time, just pay attention, don't try anything stupid, and you should be fine.