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- Aug 26, 2013
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Boy was I wrong. I was the victim of a disastrous flyaway, read my story below and hopefully you will learn from my mistakes.
Background: Been flying phantoms since they first came out, we were one of the first in Canada to order the original Phantom, so I have hundreds of hours of flight time on these products. Besides user-error crashes when learning, I've never had an experience that turned me off the products, or one that was out of my control.
So I was headed back from a conference in Banff when I decided to stop on the way back and film some mountain scenery. I drove up a short access road and launched my Inspire from an open field. GPS was locked on, mod values in acceptable range, and there were no environmental circumstances prohibiting a safe flight. I took off, enjoyed some great weather and mountain scenery, and all of a sudden I started getting the classic disconnect, no signal, safe-to-fly cycle, over and over again to the point where I had no image on my screen of the drone POV. At this stage the drone was within VLOS over some trees about 500 M away from home point. This is where I made my critical error. I should have flown the drone back in, packed up and left. Instead, knowing how to solve the issue (or so I thought), I restarted the app, unplugged the iPad, plugged back in and booted back into flight mode. During this time as I'm sure you can imagine it involved some focus on the screen. I took my eyes off the drone for maybe 20 seconds, and by the time I looked back up, it was completely out of sight. Not to mention the visual from the iPad never returned. So now I have no FPV or VLOS, and I know my battery is at about 50%. At this point I begin to worry, I try resetting the app and unplugging the iPad again, no dice. Nothing I did would return FPV functionality. A couple more minutes go by of my frantically attempting to get some sort of connection, to no avail. Finally I hit the RTH button and hope for the best. Nothing, nothing....
At this point I am aware that the battery would be dead and it is lying on the ground somewhere, so I begin to make a route for the last place I had VLOS, and also where the drone icon is indicated on the app. I walk over to the area, and after looking for a couple hours come up empty handed. At this point I'm heartbroken and sick of bushwhacking, so I make my way back to the car with my tail between my legs and head for home.
Fast-forward two days, I am reviewing the flight logs on my iPad and come across something very curious, see for yourself:
You can see where the GPS goes haywire and cuts out between image 1 and 2. Image 3 is information I gained after the fact, and goes to show just what I expected. In the time I was attempting to regain FPV, the drone migrated from it's location in image 2 to image 3, so of course I would never be able to spot it. It moved here under no direction from myself, not sure if that's where it thought the home point was or what, but that's where it went.
So, the next day (yesterday) my dad and I set out to drive all the way back down to the site to look for the Inspire in it's new spot.
Unfortunately we had to stop and charge the car every 300 km...
When we made it to the site, we immediately were stared down by a large black bear, so exited and re-evaluated the entry point. After entering from a different area to as to not upset the bear, we made our way to the point of last contact. Lo and behold:
Me and the old man, he was happy we found it, I was too, but the destruction was not encouraging:
So, I have one busted carbon fibre arm, a broken gimbal and cables, and 4 busted props. Overall, not a terrible loss, but I fear a couple of motors may need repairing as well. So now I am attempting to get some sort of response from DJI customer service, looking right now like this thing might be fixed in about 6 months grrrr...
In conclusion, this is what I've learned: NEVER lose VLOS on the drone, especially if you are by yourself and without a spotter. VLOS is your only reliable hope of tracking it should anything go awry and if you lose FPV connection, bring it back in safely, diagnose the issue, and only fly again when you are confident everything is functioning. This was my primary mistake and it ended up costing me dearly.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed the read, and learn something from this. Fly safe!
Background: Been flying phantoms since they first came out, we were one of the first in Canada to order the original Phantom, so I have hundreds of hours of flight time on these products. Besides user-error crashes when learning, I've never had an experience that turned me off the products, or one that was out of my control.
So I was headed back from a conference in Banff when I decided to stop on the way back and film some mountain scenery. I drove up a short access road and launched my Inspire from an open field. GPS was locked on, mod values in acceptable range, and there were no environmental circumstances prohibiting a safe flight. I took off, enjoyed some great weather and mountain scenery, and all of a sudden I started getting the classic disconnect, no signal, safe-to-fly cycle, over and over again to the point where I had no image on my screen of the drone POV. At this stage the drone was within VLOS over some trees about 500 M away from home point. This is where I made my critical error. I should have flown the drone back in, packed up and left. Instead, knowing how to solve the issue (or so I thought), I restarted the app, unplugged the iPad, plugged back in and booted back into flight mode. During this time as I'm sure you can imagine it involved some focus on the screen. I took my eyes off the drone for maybe 20 seconds, and by the time I looked back up, it was completely out of sight. Not to mention the visual from the iPad never returned. So now I have no FPV or VLOS, and I know my battery is at about 50%. At this point I begin to worry, I try resetting the app and unplugging the iPad again, no dice. Nothing I did would return FPV functionality. A couple more minutes go by of my frantically attempting to get some sort of connection, to no avail. Finally I hit the RTH button and hope for the best. Nothing, nothing....
At this point I am aware that the battery would be dead and it is lying on the ground somewhere, so I begin to make a route for the last place I had VLOS, and also where the drone icon is indicated on the app. I walk over to the area, and after looking for a couple hours come up empty handed. At this point I'm heartbroken and sick of bushwhacking, so I make my way back to the car with my tail between my legs and head for home.
Fast-forward two days, I am reviewing the flight logs on my iPad and come across something very curious, see for yourself:
You can see where the GPS goes haywire and cuts out between image 1 and 2. Image 3 is information I gained after the fact, and goes to show just what I expected. In the time I was attempting to regain FPV, the drone migrated from it's location in image 2 to image 3, so of course I would never be able to spot it. It moved here under no direction from myself, not sure if that's where it thought the home point was or what, but that's where it went.
So, the next day (yesterday) my dad and I set out to drive all the way back down to the site to look for the Inspire in it's new spot.
Unfortunately we had to stop and charge the car every 300 km...
When we made it to the site, we immediately were stared down by a large black bear, so exited and re-evaluated the entry point. After entering from a different area to as to not upset the bear, we made our way to the point of last contact. Lo and behold:
Me and the old man, he was happy we found it, I was too, but the destruction was not encouraging:
So, I have one busted carbon fibre arm, a broken gimbal and cables, and 4 busted props. Overall, not a terrible loss, but I fear a couple of motors may need repairing as well. So now I am attempting to get some sort of response from DJI customer service, looking right now like this thing might be fixed in about 6 months grrrr...
In conclusion, this is what I've learned: NEVER lose VLOS on the drone, especially if you are by yourself and without a spotter. VLOS is your only reliable hope of tracking it should anything go awry and if you lose FPV connection, bring it back in safely, diagnose the issue, and only fly again when you are confident everything is functioning. This was my primary mistake and it ended up costing me dearly.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed the read, and learn something from this. Fly safe!
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