Today my EVO had a mind of its own

[rkymtnflyer]

What seemed like a typical day of flying got pretty exciting in a hurry. I was in standard flight mode with obstacle avoidance turned off (sun was low on the horizon). The aircraft was about 2200 feet out with unobstructed line of sight to me and the RC. Suddenly the bird took off sideways like a bat out of hell. Counter-input on the stick did nothing. I was approaching the side of a mountain quickly so I started climbing as fast as it would go. After climbing +/-300 feet the horizontal movement stopped and I was able manually RTH. It was a tense 30 seconds to say the least.
I’m trying to determine if this was user error or aircraft anomaly. Any thoughts on what could have caused this?

 

[mixchief]

 

[Bobjazz]

GPS glitch? What altitude was it at? Do you remember how many satellites it was receiving?

 

[Black Dog Drone Ops]

I also had a flyaway about a month ago when th an unexpected RTH which flew mine right into a tree limb with resulting crash. The Pause button did absolutely nothing to control it either. I’m having serious trust issues flying mine now.

 

[rkymtnflyer]

GPS glitch? What altitude was it at? Do you remember how many satellites it was receiving?

I’m thinking GPS glitch. Was only +/- 100 feet above launch point. Not sure on satellites. I was really lucky it didn’t auger into the mtn. It was close.

 

[Bobjazz]

In and around mountains, you need to keep an eye on your number of GPS satellites. It can change dramatically. This is also a reason to have a switch for Atti mode. This mode will hold altitude, but not position. Should hopefully keep situations like this to a minimum. Of course, you need to be more aware of what’s around the aircraft since it will drift with the wind.

 

[Fly-a-holic]

A cell phone tower will make one act crazy sometimes. I've seen mine do it. Now I steer clear of towers by at least a 1/4 mile.

 

[rkymtnflyer]

A cell phone tower will make one act crazy sometimes. I've seen mine do it. Now I steer clear of towers by at least a 1/4 mile.

Interesting. There is a cell tower only a few hundred feet from where this happened. I wonder if that's what it was? Thanks for the insight Fly-a-holic.

 

[Fly-a-holic]

It could have. I had mine a couple of weeks and was flying with my cousin. Just flying around looking at different things without snooping at folks houses... We decided to look at the cell tower. I still had line of sight on my Evo but it was locked in a hover at an estimated 700ft, maybe a little closer, from the tower and probably around 75ft above it. I tried everything, even tilting the camera. Then about 10 seconds later, it moved slightly and the camera tilts. Scary.... I hit full rewind and flew backwards all the way back home. Not quite as long of a delay when I was getting away from the tower that time but it sure wasn't instantly.
You never know what those cell towers are doing. Heck, the companies can turn phones off or restart them. That's scary within itself. Lol