New battery dies all at once

JDaerial · Nov 20, 2016

So I've flown my solo a half dozen times but yesterday was the first time I dipped into every battery I own. The last battery of the day I was letting a potential new solo owner fly and the on screen battery display went from 30% to 20% to 12% in a matter of seconds which initiated RTH while he was trying to land. Do the batteries take a few cycles to normalize or is this an issue I should be worried about? The last thing I need is to watch my solo crash to earth because of a defective battery!

pyrate · Nov 20, 2016

Did you charge the new battery first?
never fly a battery until it has been fully charged,
I don't fly mine unless they are topped off within 24 hours of fly time

JDaerial · Nov 20, 2016

Yes, it was topped off for the first time 4 days earlier. None of the other batteries exhibited this behavior however 25% is the lowest I had taken any of them.

pyrate · Nov 20, 2016

it could be a bad battery, but they start discharging on their own.
If it were me I would charge that battery to full, then fly it low and close to see how it behaves. If it does it again then trade it back in,
Also try pulling the battery on your controller.
I had a battery report 0 on me like that once, I was still over 200 feet out and 200 feet up, even though the battery said 0 I was able to fly it home'

JDaerial · Nov 20, 2016

Thanks for the insight, I figured I would see if anyone else experienced this before taking it back to Best Buy.

Stephen jennings · Nov 20, 2016

You said it was at 30% so sounds as if it wasn't fully charged to begin with or did I miss read?

JDaerial · Nov 20, 2016

It was fully charged prior to the flight. The erratic drop happened when the battery hit 30%, I would say within 30 seconds max it was at 6%. This was nearly the end of the flight which seemed about average in length to the others that day. I wasn't timing the flight but now I wish I had.

Marich · Nov 20, 2016

I always charge every battery the day of my flights. They can discharge quite a bit in 2 or 3 days.

Bushie2016 · Nov 28, 2016

JDaerial said:
So I've flown my solo a half dozen times but yesterday was the first time I dipped into every battery I own. The last battery of the day I was letting a potential new solo owner fly and the on screen battery display went from 30% to 20% to 12% in a matter of seconds which initiated RTH while he was trying to land. Do the batteries take a few cycles to normalize or is this an issue I should be worried about? The last thing I need is to watch my solo crash to earth because of a defective battery!

I had a similar problem a couple of months ago when the drone was around 1km and returning home, when suddenly the battery dropped to 25% & then 10%%. Since I was flying along the water's edge, I directed it to shore and the drone crashed into hillside.
I tried recharging the battery a number of times without success. I contacted my service agent, took the drone and battery to them and after checking everything they replaced the battery. The drone is flying without any problems now.
I read somewhere (possibly on this forum) that some of the cells in the battery collapse and this causes the problem.
The moral is, replace the battery and hopefully this should fix your problem.

SPP · Nov 28, 2016

Marich said:
I always charge every battery the day of my flights. They can discharge quite a bit in 2 or 3 days.

Agree , and I think its like how DJI manage the battery too, but 3DR never mention it. They wont allow fully charged battery to be kept. In P4 we can gprogram the battery to be discharged in X days.

JDaerial · Nov 28, 2016

I ended up getting a replacement for that battery and also took everyone's advice on charging the day of use. I was amazed at how long they took to top off again after only 3 days. Guess there will be no spur of the moment grab and go flying.