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Phantom 4 battery failures

JMaeding

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My team had a battery failure mid-flight a couple months ago, exactly like this one:
crash
The thing dropped from 150 ft up, breaking off the camera and ruining the frame.
The battery had maybe 70 flights on it, and we take good care of equipment.
We had DJI fix the drone for far less cost than I expected, but it made me worry about these kinds of failures.
I had to buy some more batteries and started reading reviews.
Turns out several people have reported these sudden failures.
DJI is out of stock on their batteries, so I looked at aftermarket ones.
I see the same failure reports here and there.
In another thread, I called that "a lot", and we have three phantoms and 10 batteries, and have done about 300 missions over a few years.
So one out of 10 batteries failing is not good, and worse if you say one out of three phantoms, if they were the cause.
You can find reports from others by looking at battery reviews on amazon, or forums.
My solution is a parachute, as that will give people time to react if a failure happens over them by chance.

In the end, I wonder if buying DJI batteries is worth the cost, compared to aftermarket. I don't think dji batteries are special, and the one that failed for us was an original battery. I think its the drone itself that caused this, and several others have even said they re-used the battery that was in the crash. I won't do that though.
thanks
 
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A few years ago I had a battery failure on the Inspire 2, fortunately it was only one battery and I was able to RTH.
What I later learned was it wasn't the battery, it was the connections.
Now when I do my preventive maintenance I clean all the battery and drone pin contactors with a eraser. Also check for loose pins. I also do a battery survey every month and watch for weak cells, as soon as I see a cell going south the battery goes.
I will say this, theses DJI batteries sure don't have a long life.
One of Multivistas pilots was flying an Inspire 1, lost the battery and destroyed the drone. DJI found that the battery was good, failure was due to poor connection.
 
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With all due respect, we are still waiting for some type of validation for your previous comment of

"lot of people with phantom's are having them"

Sincerely,
Allen
 
BigA, as you know I have been using DJI drones for some time. My Pantom, the Inspire 2, and Mavic Pro. Yes I have had battery issues, but not excessive. Personally I think if someone is have server battery issues they may want to look at how they are using them, and if they are servicing them.
 
BigA, as you know I have been using DJI drones for some time. My Pantom, the Inspire 2, and Mavic Pro. Yes I have had battery issues, but not excessive. Personally I think if someone is have server battery issues they may want to look at how they are using them, and if they are servicing them.
I agree whole heartedly.

I currently have

Phantom 3 Standard
Phantom 3 Pro (2x)
Mavic Pro Platinum
Phantom 4 Pro V2+
Mavic 2 Pro
Mavic 2 Zoom
(several non-DJI UAS)

In addition to my fleet I have maintain/service for Emergency Services these:
Phantom 4 (3x)
Mavic 2 Pro (6x)
Inspire 2
Matrice 600
Spark (7x)
Matrice 210 (2x)
The above units (all but Spark) are kept with a complete Flight Set of batteries Flight Ready 24/7. Even with this scenario (this requires meticulous battery monitoring and documenting in order to not ruin your batteries very prematurely) we are having exceptional battery life.

Battery Care & Maintenance is paramount to safe Battery Health long-term;

Granted there can be Quality Issues and Manufacturing defects but currently we aren't seeing ANY indication of this for the Phantom series. Not here and not on www.PhantomPilots.com which is more definitely where a wide spread P4 battery problem would be noted.
 
With all due respect, we are still waiting for some type of validation for your previous comment of

"lot of people with phantom's are having them"

Sincerely,
Allen
I concluded "a lot" because when I went to buy batteries, I saw several reviews mentioning the issue.
Just now, I searched amazon, and looked at 1 star review for:
failures
You may say that is the third party battery fault, and I can't argue its not, other than saying these same failures happen with dji batteries.
Then this one:
another
and another:
more

They are not hard to find, and given that we ourselves had one with original equipment, add that. So if you are not aware of the issue, you are not looking enough. You can bet that for every one posted, 5 were not, as people don't like to advertise failures when businesses are involved.
I still consider this issue to have very little info. We all see the fried connectors, but the actual cause is likely not a bad battery or connection, as people are being careful about those aspects. I have not heard of this for other drone models beside P4's.
I always say, until you know the cause, you don't know the cause.

BTW, those aftermarket batteries seem to be great, or horrible, in terms of taking charge. I had one dead on arrival from one vendor. I don't buy the ones that have really bad reviews.
thx
 
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I concluded "a lot" because when I went to buy batteries, I saw several reviews mentioning the issue.
Just now, I searched amazon, and looked at 1 star review for:
failures
You may say that is the third party battery fault, and I can't argue its not, other than saying these same failures happen with dji batteries.
Then this one:
another
and another:
more

They are not hard to find, and given that we ourselves had one with original equipment, add that. So if you are not aware of the issue, you are not looking enough. You can bet that for every one posted, 5 were not, as people don't like to advertise failures when businesses are involved.
I still consider this issue to have very little info. We all see the fried connectors, but the actual cause is likely not a bad battery or connection, as people are being careful about those aspects. I have not heard of this for other drone models beside P4's.
I always say, until you know the cause, you don't know the cause.

BTW, those aftermarket batteries seem to be great, or horrible, in terms of taking charge. I had one dead on arrival from one vendor. I don't buy the ones that have really bad reviews.
thx

I think we need to deeply take a moment and realize using non-Factory batteries is a HUGE gamble. While I have used some in my Mavic Platinum I spent a great amount of time doing the research and going over the reviews. It's totally unfair to lump an aftermarket battery failure into the total DJI P4 failures. That's not an accurate calculation at all because that battery company is indeed producing lots of JUNK.

Now let's look at the THREE other incidents you noted (one of them being yours). That's THREE incidents out of many 10's of thousands of units. Let's give you a break and say there's 3x as many but we just haven't heard about them. That's 9 units out of 10's of thousands of units.

Do you not think that Phantom Pilots wouldn't have many MANY threads of this "lot of P4 battery problem"? You found ONE from 2015 and ONE from 2018.... and ONE from 2022 (I'm assuming it was in 2022),

Do you see why we're saying there isn't a "lot" of P4 battery issues? DJI has produced a LOT of Phantom 4's over the years and if there was "a lot" of Phantom 4 Battery failures you can bet your bottom dollar we would see more than 3 isolated threads on Phantom Pilots forum
 
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to add....
That's a P3 aircraft and the operator took off with a battery only showing 60% charge at take off. That's a huge No-No.

Was a single post with no follow-up etc.

Neither post supports your theory very well.
 
I was just reviewing my Airdata, I've flown over 500 missions with one battery failure. Now I have had batteries that have gone bad, but that is to be expected. I only use DJI batteries and I try my best to take good care of them.

1648567232894.png
 
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I was just reviewing my Airdata, I've flown over 500 missions with one battery failure. Now I have had batteries that have gone bad, but that is to be expected. I only use DJI batteries and I try my best to take good care of them.

View attachment 3431

Here's my personal data and I have one non-user caused battery issue and the aircraft didn't fall out of the sky but initiated an Emergency Decent over a lake. It was a P3P back in ~2017 IIRC.

AirData_Newland_Mar2022.jpg
 
I've seen a lot complaining about their battery falling but that's because lack of checking to make sure it's locked in completely and is pilot error
 
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to add....
That's a P3 aircraft and the operator took off with a battery only showing 60% charge at take off. That's a huge No-No.

Was a single post with no follow-up etc.

Neither post supports your theory very well.
You can decide what is a lot or not, I don't care. It still remains the one thing you cannot control with a P4P. Its factory equipment, and careful people. I'm actually glad to hear experienced people saying its not significant. Other things could fail too, I just have not experienced them so this one item bit us pretty hard.
 
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Gee BigA, you got me beat. LOL. figured you would. How many RC plane hours?

I honestly have no idea. If I had to guess I'd say total "planks only" would be in the 10K range if you include instructing (before the buddy box and during). I've flown a good bit in the Unmanned Aircraft Realm. That doesn't include R/C helicopters lol.

I started in 1974 and never quit. There were times when I would fly something every day and some days we would fly literally all day and later on when we figured how to add lights, well into the night. For several years I was the club "Instructor" so I was flying (at least in some capacity) all day Sunday and Saturday. I used to always carry some type of airplane with me and if I found a half way suitable location I would stop, ASK FOR PERMISSION (something you never hear of these days LOL), and if granted I would fly even when traveling and vacationing. I would fly on lunch breaks and on days off I would get up early, go to the field, and fly all day long. That was still in the Glow Fuel era.

I was fortunate to marry a woman who didn't mind me always "being a kid" so I just never quit flying R/C. We got into Large Scale GASSERs for a while and I had a Big Bingo GIANT that we upscaled to (IIRC) 120" wingspan. I had a High Output SACHS motor with an APC 3-blade 18" prop that would pull that rascal vertical with performance like we now see in electric models.

I still have a dozen or so "planks" ranging from Micro (UMX hand toss and catch) up to a 80" Twin Cessna 310 and a host of 1/5 scale stunt planes. I just don't have time to go to the flying field and fly like I used to but hopefully later this year I'm going to make some "life changes" which might improve that situation.

How about you?
 
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Years ago a friend took me out the an RC field and let me attempt to fly his Extra 300 and I just couldn't get the orientation right. I could obviously see what the plan was doing but couldn't stay ahead of it. That was it for me and RC airplanes.
One of the lakes I live close to has a RC group come up and fly float planes, that was interesting to watch.
Well Good for you, have fun.
 
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to add....
That's a P3 aircraft and the operator took off with a battery only showing 60% charge at take off. That's a huge No-No.

Was a single post with no follow-up etc.

Neither post supports your theory very well.
Plus “12,000 ft” out over a lake leads every other comment to be suspect…
 
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