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Hi guys, 

I got permission from my customer to share this story.  

The quad is a DJI Phantom, RTF in 10 minutes when you get your box delivered to you. yes no kidding, it's that simple. 

Of course this kind of product brings a lot of new beginner customers (as well as experienced one looking for a small form factor and easy of flying). 

So here is the story of this customer 4-5 flight, in a super wide open area, safe, really safe for experimentation. 

This is the video of the "trigger failsafe to save my $$$" event. 

Why I post this? 

I really think we should go in that direction for the APM failsafe out of the box. Granted we have more options but complexity and flexibility is not a reason to not have a basic default behavior even if not set in mission planner (for these beginners not reading instructions!) 

(below it is the text version of what was going on his mind.)

Enjoy! 

Dany

CanadaDrones

I didn't know what had gone wrong.  I was baffled and confused when it 
all went wrong so suddenly.  It was only while studying the video later 
that I figured it out.

I normally fly in GPS mode.  That's pretty much idiot-proof as long as 
the Phantom has a good satellite-lock.  But I had switched to Atti mode 
to experiment with improving video smoothness.

You can tell from the video it's in Atti mode.  I flew past my wife at 
high speed, then levelled off and swung it around to point back.  If it 
had been in GPS mode, it should have stopped by itself and hovered in 
that spot.  But in Atti mode it kept right on sailing further away, 
still at fairly high speed.

The problem was that it was such a bright sunny day, with bright snow 
and black trees in the background.  As it drifted even further away from 
me I wasn't sure and couldn't see anymore which way it was facing.  So I 
switched to Home-Lock and pulled back on the stick, thinking that should 
bring it straight back to me regardless of which which direction it was 
aimed at the time.  That was the plan anyway.

I didn't realize that Home-Lock doesn't work in Atti-mode.  I'd never 
tried that combination before.

So, when I pulled full back on the stick, the Phantom responded (quite 
properly) by backing up even more quickly away from me.  And that REALLY 
surprised me, because I wasn't expecting that at all.

At that point I should still have been able to figure out what was 
happening and recover.  But I was so stunned by this unexpected 
reaction, I just didn't know what to do.  I looked down at the 
transmitter to confirm it was actually in Home-Lock mode.  But when I 
looked back up I couldn't even see the Phantom anymore.

Last I saw it, it was heading for the trees across the lake.  So my only 
thought was to add throttle to ensure it clears the trees.

It was much too far away from me.  Did it just go out of transmitter 
range?  Maybe.  But fail-safe should have kicked in automatically then. 
 Did it lose satellite-lock?  If that's the case, then I'm really in 
trouble because I can't even see it anymore to control it manually and 
it might already be headed on its way back to China right now.

I was undecided about turning off the transmitter to force a fail-safe 
return to home.  If it has lost satellite-lock, then turning off the 
transmitter will kill any slim chance at all of my regaining control. 
But I didn't know what else to do.

Turns out, as you can see from the video, I had a solid transmitter 
connection the whole time.  I should have simply switched to GPS mode. 
Then Home-Lock would have worked perfectly.

But in panic, I switched off the transmitter, and instantly fail-safe 
kicked in and saved my butt.  But, it had already been flying for ~6 
minutes, and I was worried it was going to run out of battery time 
before I could get it back to the ground.