5 days later, my Mavic Air just died (RIP)

[KevinPritchett]

I was thinking of a training scenario where I fly from the driveway into the garage to learn how it behaves in that exact scenario. I could tune the settings and learn what to expect should I find myself in a spot that would look the same to the Air. It’s on my list of things to “try”. I don’t know that I would ever try it over water. I did shoot progress videos of the construction of my garage with my P4. I never could quite get it up through the trusses because it was too big but I did fly through the 6x4 window without triggering forward avoidance. It was a cool video.

I might be the next one to lose one LOL.

I watched the video again and I’m thinking the way the footage froze he lost signal quickly. He got a brief freeze as he entered and the signal tapped out quick and froze a few seconds later. In this incident it may not have been the sensors at all. I fly everything I own with upgraded antenna and that might be why I’ve never had this occur to me. I’ve done all types of bridges as well as stadium tunnel entrances without a hiccup. He was extremely close for this to have occurred. Like in previous post that bridge knocked out his signal like a Mike Tyson punch.

 

[Air Beetle]

Reading his description and responses I gather that the air tried to “move” rather than hover in place awaiting commands. I didn’t read it that he lost control of the sticks. My flight inside my garage is a way to assess the behavior after it loses all gps signals abruptly.

Any crash avoidance would only be possible if in LOS.

 

[Lon Denard]

This is a tough crowd! Sorry for your loss. An important part that comes with flying a drone is knowing how to stay calm under pressure and identifying the problems that your equipment is experiencing before reacting in a way that will cause you to loose your drone. In my opinion your initial issue was with your drone utilizing several obstacle avoidance triggers at the same time which caused it to freeze. I have 35 foot ceilings and fly in my house often and while flying my MA I noticed that it would freeze and shimmy in a crazy way if multiple sensors are triggered at the same time. That has never occurred with any of my other drones while flying in the house. I’ve flown through bridges, over bridges, through dense forest, in homes, in extreme low light, you name it and I have not crashed, however; I’ve learned a lot from those unique characteristics my drones have displayed while navigating in various environments that most are afraid to tackle. And each of my drones behave differently in those environments. I think your lack of experience and familiarity with your equipment got you this time. Learn from it and get another drone! Don’t let the bashing stop you from enjoying this outstanding hobby. There’s not a bridge out there that I would be afraid to tackle... but you must understand every detail of your equipment and the flight characteristics to ensure you can avoid a sticky situation.

I don't know, I had one recently, a train bridge running next to a power station that played heck with my Pro. It wasn't amused.

 

[Lon Denard]

Reading his description and responses I gather that the air tried to “move” rather than hover in place awaiting commands. I didn’t read it that he lost control of the sticks. My flight inside my garage is a way to assess the behavior after it loses all gps signals abruptly.

Any crash avoidance would only be possible if in LOS.

Yes I have mine set to hover. Worst case scenario is if I can't recover signal, it'll try to rth when the battery gets low. At least that opens up the possibility of you getting it back and flying home.

 

[Lon Denard]

I'm wondering how the downward sensors dealt with water once gps was lost? I also wonder if he would have been better off flying through there at full speed!!! Hahaha!

 

[KevinPritchett]

Reading his description and responses I gather that the air tried to “move” rather than hover in place awaiting commands. I didn’t read it that he lost control of the sticks. My flight inside my garage is a way to assess the behavior after it loses all gps signals abruptly.

Any crash avoidance would only be possible if in LOS.

I think he panicked even with it in LOS. You still have control of the drone even when you loose image transmission. The fact that he loss the image is why we didn’t see it take the plunge in the video. The Air is ultra responsive... I’d even go on a limb and say it’s twice as responsive to stick controls as the Mavic Pro. And in the hands of a newbie this incident was inevitable.

 

[KevinPritchett]

I'm wondering how the downward sensors dealt with water once gps was lost? I also wonder if he would have been better off flying through there at full speed!!! Hahaha!

They dont always judge the height from water correctly.

 

[Lon Denard]

I think he panicked even with it in LOS. You still have control of the drone even when you loose image transmission. The fact that he loss the image is why we didn’t see it take the plunge in the video. The Air is ultra responsive... I’d even go on a limb and say it’s twice as responsive to stick controls as the Mavic Pro. And in the hands of a newbie this incident was inevitable.

Would Tripod Mode have helped at all? I also like bridge shots... I've probably filmed 20 or so. The good thing about my old drones is that they allowed you to choose to eliminate gps/compass and fly in manual mode.

 

[Lon Denard]

They dont always judge the height from water correctly.

Yes that's what I thought. If his drone went into "Opti" while under a bridge, over moving water... Then lost signal... Whew.

 

[KevinPritchett]

Would Tripod Mode have helped at all? I also like bridge shots... I've probably filmed 20 or so. The good thing about my old drones is that they allowed you to choose to eliminate gps/compass and fly in manual mode.

I think so. It calmed mine down a lot while flying in the house. But it began to drift more often.

 

[joejaxvic123]

I think so. It calmed my down a lot while flying in the house. But it began to drift more often.

35 foot ceilings? Wow.

 

[FuzLogix]

I think I've found the problem:

I'm quite sad cause I've lost a great toy/tool/drone/friend/lol but I wish I can understand what the issue was

 

[Simmo]

Hey @John23 can you post the flight logs, so we can see if it was gps or sensors?

 

[KevinPritchett]

35 foot ceilings? Wow.

The Air hates it regardless of the ceiling height as it likes to drift occasionally... but the I2 and Mavic are rock solid in tight quarters.

 

[joejaxvic123]

The Air hates it regardless of the ceiling height as it likes to drift occasionally... but the I2 and Mavic are rock solid in tight quarters.

View attachment 30694

Holy cow!! Wow!! Just...wow...

 

[maven4336]

Hello world, I'm new here and I'm new with drones as well

This morning (2 hours ago) I've played a bit with my first drone : the Mavic Air (bought 5 days ago in the Paris DJI store but we don't really care about that information right)

I was so pleased being able to flyyyy around my city today cause we had no rain for the first time
I'm living not so far from a small river and the idea was to fly over it in order to grab some nice video, brushing past the water.

The idea was : flying through a small bridge

So, yes this morning I took my young Mavic Air, took off gently using the remote control linked to a smartphone, started to fly over the river, no issue, then starting to fly through the bridge.

I've started feeling a bit of wind probably as the drone was shaking a little bit, but not too much, and kept going through the bridge (probably 8 meters (27 foot) large ?)

BUT THEN the drone refused any more move
My remote control was like useless

So the drone was under the bridge
at almosth the middle of it
I saw a yellow light on the drone (or was it red ?)
no way about making flying it back to me !
the drone started to move to the pole and hit it once, twice and I think I saw a small spark
At the third time it just crashed into the pole and felt into the water.

End of the game.

This is the video I got from the smartphone / DJI Go 4 application cache
as you can see the communication looks broken at the middle of the bridge : https://humanize.me/drop/VideoClip-q35.mp4


I'm quite sad cause I've lost a great toy/tool/drone/friend/lol but I wish I can understand what the issue was

Was it because of the water + wireless reception ?
Was it something else ?



Cheers everyone,

Very sad and I’m very sorry I would be too upset to tell you one thing you lost signal somehow and that’s why I do not like the Mavic air opposed to the Mavic pro has Accu sink will go for 4 1/2 miles and never miss a beat on the signal the Mavic air uses a different system mostly Wi-Fi, I think what happened is you lost signal RTH return to home checked in which is normal it tried to raise up to come back to home. And of course it cannot do that if you’re under a bridge if you would’ve had returned a home turned off it would’ve just Hubbard or you can set the return to home to hover before you draw tricky things on your next drone always test test and test again and learn every feature about the drone before you try to to fly like Batman very sorry for your experience and 800 bucks is a lot of money peace out

 

[SOLDAY]

Just lol. Words fail me.

I second that lol