Almost lost her!!

[Dogtown]

I'll keep it quick and let me know if this has ever happened to any of you!

I was out in the woods this weekend flying the Mavic around. on my second flight of the day about 6 hours after my first i launched on a ridgetop to catch the sunset. In the shifting light i lost visual and hit return to home. A note came on the controller and said "your current home" or "new home" ??? I had never seen that before so i figured "my current home" and pushed the button. while i was looking for the Mavic I noticed my distance went from 1600 ft away, to over 4000. WTF?? I looked at the camera feed to see if I could get an Idea where it was and because I was not familiar with the area i had no idea where the Mavic was. I could see that I was eventually going to run into some trees and decided to make an emergency landing. I found a spot with two things i knew i could recognize, a road junction and a creek crossing and landed it in between the two of them.
I found the bird and when i grabbed it the controller still said the mavic was over 4000 feet away.
I have the flight log and the screen video including my voice repeating almost everything that happened.
I think what happened was that somehow the app launched with the previous flights home point, even though this flight recorded a new home point.
Whatchya all think happened???
Sean

 

[Chouser]

Why didn't you look at the radar screen and fly her back home manually?

 

[Dogtown]

Why didn't you look at the radar screen and fly her back home manually?

Good Question! That really explains the situation best! The home point on my controller was not my actual home point

 

[Dogtown]

Well that sucks!

How on earth are going to have any confidence in RTH procedure again.

I thought that DJI already addressed this RTH issue with previous forced updates.

No idea what happened except you are very lucky hehe

Make sure you hear the audible "home point recorded" before getting airborne and to check it on the app as they suggest. (which i have never done)

It did record my new home point, its on the logs and the audio file i have

 

[KONY]

strange behaviour indeed. I owned my MAVIC for 10 months now and i think i had to resort to RTH only once (i know you clicked on it by mistake).

All the other times when i lost view of my Mavic i always do the following procedure :

Take a bit of height where i know there would be no obstacles and head straight to direction which shows the distance lowering down the fastest (as shown on the controller-but i always supposed that value to be accurate which seemed not the case for you)...

RTH for me would always imply some hazard which i know i can avoid by manually flying the bird back home.

There are soooo many occasions where i lose sight of the drone, i just can't rely too much on RTH to bring it back...

 

[Bergumbira]

I'll keep it quick and let me know if this has ever happened to any of you!

I was out in the woods this weekend flying the Mavic around. on my second flight of the day about 6 hours after my first i launched on a ridgetop to catch the sunset. In the shifting light i lost visual and hit return to home. A note came on the controller and said "your current home" or "new home" ??? I had never seen that before so i figured "my current home" and pushed the button. while i was looking for the Mavic I noticed my distance went from 1600 ft away, to over 4000. WTF?? I looked at the camera feed to see if I could get an Idea where it was and because I was not familiar with the area i had no idea where the Mavic was. I could see that I was eventually going to run into some trees and decided to make an emergency landing. I found a spot with two things i knew i could recognize, a road junction and a creek crossing and landed it in between the two of them.
I found the bird and when i grabbed it the controller still said the mavic was over 4000 feet away.
I have the flight log and the screen video including my voice repeating almost everything that happened.
I think what happened was that somehow the app launched with the previous flights home point, even though this flight recorded a new home point.
Whatchya all think happened???
Sean

Why "her"? The drone is female things in English?

 

[BigDuke6ixx]

Why "her"? The drone is female things in English?

Very much an English thing from the old days of sailing by ships.

 

[Bergumbira]

Very much an English thing from the old days of sailing by ships.

Yes, I know that ship is the only one gendered thing in English language as I was myself in the French navy. And I even remembered while questioning myself about this title.. But ship and drone are so different in shape, size and era lol...

 

[Tatuli]

Did you lock on enough sats and did you check the homepoint on your map before take off

 

[BigDuke6ixx]

Yes, I know that ship is the only one gendered thing in English language as I was myself in the French navy. And I even remembered while questioning myself about this title.. But ship and drone are so different in shape, size and era lol...

Aircraft are also referred to as 'she' in the English speaking world.

 

[Duse]

Did your map show your current location or your last location?I'v been having trouble getting my current location to show up.Sometimes its a blank screen and other times its the last location I flew at.Got to do some fiddling to get it to show up correct.

 

[Dogtown]

Did you lock on enough sats and did you check the homepoint on your map before take off

Yup! Wide open area in the country! I think I was locked on 13 sats! And yes I had my actual HP recoded on the map... it shifted when I pushed RTH

 

[Dogtown]

Did your map show your current location or your last location?I'v been having trouble getting my current location to show up.Sometimes its a blank screen and other times its the last location I flew at.Got to do some fiddling to get it to show up correct.

I think it's about completely closing down the app on your device!!!

 

[Big Fil]

Why "her"? The drone is female things in English?

Because sometimes they are bitchy and have a mind of their own.

 

[QuadKid]

Did your map show your current location or your last location?I'v been having trouble getting my current location to show up.Sometimes its a blank screen and other times its the last location I flew at.Got to do some fiddling to get it to show up correct.

Same here, was fine before I did the latest update 4.1.3, lost maps, sometimes blank, managed to get maps back with my home WiFi but now they are in Chinese,
made sure Chinese Mapping was off in the app, no change.

 

[Bergumbira]

Aircraft are also referred to as 'she' in the English speaking world.

Oh, thanks, good to learn

 

[Lake_Flyer]

How on earth are going to have any confidence in RTH procedure again.

Never. RTH is not meant to be a cruise in the backseat to home. Although many seem to use it as such.

If one uses RTH every time to bring it back one 'earns the right' to lose it one day. A vast percentage of RTH's fail due to compass errors, GPS drops or simply interference, not counting any user induced errors, the very next RTH could just be the last one.

 

[Lake_Flyer]

Yup! Wide open area in the country! I think I was locked on 13 sats! And yes I had my actual HP recoded on the map... it shifted when I pushed RTH

Just 13 sats is not a whole lot for a GPS/Glonass setup. 15-16 as minimum is safer.

 

[dewster]

"Home point recorded. Please check it on the map."

Make sure you verify your home point at start of every flight.

 

[NestleQuik]

Normally before i take off after hearing homepoint recorded i check my map and before i slide it to take off, i put in a check in that precision landing box, which you have to have turned on in your setting, then i let it rise and do it's image taking and i go about flying, if i hit the RTH button, it comes back and land exactly where it took off from. (there is a precision landing box to check if its turned on in your setting)