Drone Manufacturer: DJI
Drone Model: Phantom 4 Pro V2.0
Country: Namibia
Type: Incident Accident
Date: 2022-07-08
Applies: Daytime
Pilot Qualifications: Approved by Public Safety Agency or Company
Pilot Flight Experience: 100 Hours
Link to External Information About This submission:
File Uploaded: None
Description
This was the second flight of the afternoon on the same battery.
All systems were green and sensors were calibrated before the flight started.
Drone takeoff went normally, after an elevation of 20 m was reached, I began flying the drone forward while still increasing elevation.
Drone was 150 m away from takeoff point, still within line of sight, with an elevation of 30 m when I received a warning of “Weak GPS signal” and the camera image fell to one side and down so that I could see the landing gear.
The number of satellites connected went from 14 to 0. The drone started drifting to one side and not responding to any inputs from the remote.
Drone automatically changed flight mode to OPTI, which uses camera system to stabilize flight, this had no effect.
The satellites reconnected and the drone went back to GPS mode for a few seconds, this had no effect.
Flight Mode switched to ATTI mode, this had no effect. The drone kept drifting to one side and then rapidly began to lose altitude before it crashed to the ground and broke.
Reported Cause
User error was not the cause of the crash. Possible GPS controller issues might have caused the drift. The cause of the accident is unknown for certain.