Back to Fly Aways

The other day some folks on the PhantomPilots forum had an interesting exchange regarding a statement by Frank Wong, founder and CEO of DJI. Frank’s comment was, "some customers are losing control of their drones because of technical issues, including a reliance on GPS signal, which sometimes can be lost, it’s our fault. We have to make something that cannot go wrong in any scenario."

And then a couple of forum responses:
 

1)…I still believe that many of the "fly aways" are still pilot error - primarily, like not waiting for GPS to get a home lock. I've corrected local pilots who I saw doing this... taking off before the blinking green lights.... or ignoring other light blinking error codes (like compass needs to be calibrated etc) and flying anyway... A pilot has to be responsible and make sure they go through the proper pre-flight procedure every time.

I am glad DJI has admitted a problem, but we all still need to follow all the pre-flight precautions and not depend entirely on pure technology to get our craft back - learning to fly in manual mode would (sometimes) be another failsafe when technology fails us. Cheers

2)…For what it is worth, I purchased my first Phantom Vision 2 + early upon release in the spring. While my early July flyaway was my fault due to not waiting for enough GPS signals, I will share the following.

In mid-July, I ordered a new Phantom Vision 2 +. Soon after that purchase, the original lost Phantom was found, pretty much undamaged. LOL. Too late however to return the second Phantom.

In August, I took them both into my yard, same place, same conditions, same same same. First the old one, which took many minutes to finally acquire 6-8 sats. The number varied, and dropped when video turned on. Turned both transmitter and copter off. Took the newer version out, and it acquired 10-12 sats, quickly, and no drop off when camera turned on. Again, same time within minutes, same place.

3) I still maintain that if we learn to actually fly the quads before we start relying on advanced features we will be much better prepared for many technical faults. I belong to a club and have noted that many times newbies immediately fly in home lock or worse 'relative' mode where they don't have to learn orientation drills out at 200 yards. These guys have had 'fly always' when the quad goes into regular flying mode and the pilots are clueless as to how figure out the quads orientation and thus a flight path back to home. This usually happens as the batteries are getting low compounding the crisis. (Timer!!)

In my opinion it is the manufacturer's fault when the craft does not respond to basic radio commands and my fault when I cannot fly the quad visually.

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United Pilot to passengers, "Ladies and gentlemen and am sorry to tell you that we will be crashing somewhere because Boeing caused my plane to fly away. Stupid Boeing!."

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NET- NET: This shit is expensive. Protect your investment and the safety of those around you with competent flying skills.