Hit a tree at night, was very lucky

[Rub]

I've only had my Mavic a month or so and had not used the RTH yet. This past weekend I was filming some fireworks at an event, obviously at night. I took her up to about 350' and did my videoing, and was coming home. It was then that I realized what I thought was my Mavic that I had a visual on, was actually a star. So I had no clue where it actually was, just where I thought it was. So I kept flying in the direction I thought was home and searching the sky for it. In the corner of my eye I saw the video on the screen jump and then saw lots of trees. I stopped, saw on the screen I was surrounded by trees, went straight up to get to a safe spot. It worked, I caught my breath, then hit the RTH button for the first time. You can see it take over in the video. To say I was relieved when she landed safely is an understatement. Turns out it wasn't where I thought it was at all. I would likely have not found it if she crashed. Lessons learned.

 

[sdharris]

You're video is marked as private in youtube, try unlisted or public.

 

[Rub]

My bad. Try now.

 

[Former Member]

If youre going to fly at night, which is risky to begin with, you should get a few strobes for the ground to light up the LZ that will be visible during your flight and trip back. On your way back, you just fly high (or RTH) until you see the strobes and then land in the middle of the strobes and you wont hit anything coming down. Again, risky flight but at least you can see where you took off from.

 

[cobra46]

I find that flying at night is much easier than daytime to see the orientation at long distances because the red LED's change intensity as you change direction. I would not fly at night in a location I haven't first flown during the day to find out the elevation of the highest obstacle and then set your RTH altitude accordingly.

 

[Spanish Flyer]

If you were flying in mormal mode, it was my belief that the sonar cells would take care of avoiding any objets under the MV's belly; guess not....
One other thing, I notice the video is not properly focussed; I know the lack of light makes the Autofocus almost impossible, so it night flights you might be better off setting the focus to manual and checking your phone screen.
Spanish Flyer

 

[Rub]

If you were flying in mormal mode, it was my belief that the sonar cells would take care of avoiding any objets under the MV's belly; guess not....
One other thing, I notice the video is not properly focussed; I know the lack of light makes the Autofocus almost impossible, so it night flights you might be better off setting the focus to manual and checking your phone screen.
Spanish Flyer

I think I read the bottom sensors only work in daylight. Yes the focus was a pain, I need to look into the manual focus.

 

[YorkshirePaul]

Jeez you were lucky! I clipped a tree the other day and my mavic fell 10feet and snapped an arm on landing [emoji17] - will see how good DJI care refresh is..


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