Lost Mavic after losing RC Signal - RTH fail?.

[Mavic Joe]

Hi Everyone,

I was wondering if I could please get some help in finding my mavic.

I was flying over some hills yesterday and at about 1600 ft I lost signal to my mavic. I tried running towards the mavic, but it never reconnect. The last prompt I saw on my phone was to turn on the RTH, which I clicked yes. I waited about 5-7 minutes, but could not see it in the sky. There was about 32% left on the battery and it should have been able to make it back. I went searching for the mavic at the last known point with the remote on the whole time, hoping it would reconnect and of course no luck. Was in the area for 2 and half hours. The area was thick with wild flowers so it was hard to cover ground. So I'm sure the mavic is some where in the field, but it is like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Just need to determine a better search area. Attached is the log files and all the info I can pull from the app as well as some picture of the area. Please help and Thank you in advance.

Joe

Airdata flight log
Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones

Phantom help
Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

 

[mavic6611]

Have you got the longitude and latitude?

 

[msinger]

Try looking around the red line at the tallest point of that hill from this side:



The point where the white line touches the ground is located at 34.032932, -117.809977. The tallest point of the hill is at about 34.032628, -117.811231. You can plug those coordinates into an app like Google Maps and walk to that point.

Here's a view from the other side:

 

[gllkoop]

too many flyaways latly, could you please tell us kn what FW were you on ?
are we tracking these incidents ? could there be a killer BUG wating to be pointed?
as a customer=[official QA team for DJI] we need to raise a flag and let them know

 

[msinger]

Have you got the longitude and latitude?

You can find all recorded coordinates in the flight log.

 

[msinger]

too many flyaways latly, could you please tell us kn what FW were you on ?
are we tracking these incidents ? could there be a killer BUG wating to be pointed?
as a customer=[official QA team for DJI] we need to raise a flag and let them know

Review the OP's flight log and you'll see this is another case of pilot error. The RTH altitude was set too low for the flying area.

 

[gllkoop]

Review the OP's flight log and you'll see this is another case of pilot error. The RTH altitude was set too low for the flying area.

just want to make sure...

 

[Cyberpower678]

Try looking around the red line at the tallest point of that hill from this side:

View attachment 10273

The point where the white line touches the ground is located at 34.032932, -117.809977. The tallest point of the hill is at about 34.032628, -117.811231. You can plug those coordinates into an app like Google Maps and walk to that point.

Here's a view from the other side:

View attachment 10274

This looks like pilot error to me. But I also want to point out another possibility. The drone was still connected and the phone simply disconnected from the remote. If that is the case, and factoring in the wind, it may have landed slightly Northeast of the last known position. This is of course assuming the pilot didn't look at the remote itself and assumed a disconnected phone meant a disconnected drone. Can the OP tell us if the connection status on the phone was grey or red and/or if you recall what the RC had on the display when it happened?

 

[Cyberpower678]

And to follow up, after analyzing the signal strength on disconnect, it shows it was perfect all throughout the flight, leading me to believe your phone disconnected from the remote and that your drone just stood still. Of course if you moved your joysticks around, the drone likely responded and moved around accordingly. So it would be hard to figure out where it went with a disconnected phone. With that in mind, was your RC beeping continuously after the phone disconnected? If not, RTH never initiated.

 

[Mavic Joe]

First and foremost thank you for the help and suggestion.

I didn't notice the signal bar as I was too busy panicking... I should have set the RTH attitude height higher, but a bit too late for that. Hopefully once I get my mavic back. I will make sure to set it before I go flying again. The remote itself never reconnected to the drone. I kept it on pretty much the whole time while I was trying to get to the last known spot and once I got there I even tried turn off and on the remote, but no luck. The google earth maps the field looks pretty to get around, but currently the field is full of wildflower that are as high 6ft plus. I have a friend that has a drone and going to see if he could help fly in the route on the way back to the home point, so hopefully that should help.

 

[Hellsbellsidaho]

Review the OP's flight log and you'll see this is another case of pilot error. The RTH altitude was set too low for the flying area.

Even if the RTH is set too low shouldn't it avoid obstacles?

 

[mavic6611]

I haven't read through all these comments. So forgive me if other people have previously asked. Have you walked over to the point to look with the coordinates? I'm not really interested in how or why it went down at this point. I'm interested in helping you find it

 

[rydfree]

Even if the RTH is set too low shouldn't it avoid obstacles?

OA doesn't pick up all things . OA , RTH , Low battery landing Etc are not save all features to be relied on in place of safe flying habits and pilot skill . They may save your arse more than once but depending on automated tech is a recipe for disaster .

 

[mavic6611]

Also set your RTH altitude to 90 meters in future flights. That's a great height as high enough for trees buildings etc.. And low enough not to collide with manned aircraft

 

[Cyberpower678]

First and foremost thank you for the help and suggestion.

I didn't notice the signal bar as I was too busy panicking... I should have set the RTH attitude height higher, but a bit too late for that. Hopefully once I get my mavic back. I will make sure to set it before I go flying again. The remote itself never reconnected to the drone. I kept it on pretty much the whole time while I was trying to get to the last known spot and once I got there I even tried turn off and on the remote, but no luck. The google earth maps the field looks pretty to get around, but currently the field is full of wildflower that are as high 6ft plus. I have a friend that has a drone and going to see if he could help fly in the route on the way back to the home point, so hopefully that should help.

So the remote said "connecting"? Or the phone just didn't show an image? I'm more or less convinced of my scenario.

 

[armoredsaint]

Review the OP's flight log and you'll see this is another case of pilot error. The RTH altitude was set too low for the flying area.

i have mine at 70 m, good enough? i don't think there's anything higher than 100 feet.

 

[mavic6611]

Depending where you fly. But Always best to Ayr on the side of Caution

Sent from my E6553 using MavicPilots mobile app

 

[msinger]

Even if the RTH is set too low shouldn't it avoid obstacles?

It will if obstacle avoidance is enabled and if the obstacle avoidance system is able to see the obstacles.

 

[msinger]

i have mine at 70 m, good enough? i don't think there's anything higher than 100 feet.

There is no magic number that works for everyone. Your RTH altitude should be set to at least the tallest obstacle above the takeoff location plus 50 feet to account for any error in the IMU's altitude estimation. If you like to research your flying area before flying, you can find some tips on how to estimate a safe RTH altitude here.

 

[Mavic Joe]

Update..

So I had my friend do a fly over the area as suggested on the route of the RTH for about an 30 minutes, but no luck. So I went back in on foot and cleared out over 100 yards through the field, then cleared out another 10 to 15 feet around the highest point and still no drone (4 hours). It was so thick out there that I could probably can only see maybe 4-5 feet through the brush, so it could have been right next to me, but I could have missed it....

Link to the field pic

Video going through the field

So I'm going to contact DJI and hope that there was a hardware issue causing the lost connection between the drone and the remote. Wishful thinking but what do I have to lose.

Maybe I could just wait until the flowers dead out, then head back in there and try searching for it again. Not sure if that would be more helpful or worst.