Bye Bye Mavic - How to lose it in 5 easy steps... (and how not to)

[Cerberus]

Do you still have your phantom drone? Maybe you can bring it out to the spot and try and look for your bird from the air..

I think the chances of spotting your bird from aerial view would be much better than searching on the ground by foot..
Just a thought...

 

[MrMavic]

I read somewhere that it is actually uses lack of sensed motion by the IMU to decide it is on the ground rather than prop load. Net result is the same though.

Hindsight and all....
Another thing to consider doing just prior to outlanding at a remote site like OP. Reset the home point to the aircraft. That way it wont be going anywhere else if signal is lost.

Good point, but I still don't see how it can start back up without controller input. The motors had to still be running. Another point that I think many don't realize is that when you initiate a RTH function, the drone flies back on it's own without controller input, even if the controller is shut off or connection is lost.
The mavic knows :
1. Elevation to rise to and maintain in relation to take off point
2. Which direction as a heading back to Home point
3. When to descend and auto land
4. When to shut off the motors

At least that is what I understand to be so. Correct me if I'm wrong.
That's why RTH feature is such a powerful feature, and should be used if there Is any confusion on the pilot's part.

 

[Robbyg]

Hi Ian

Sorry to hear about your loss. Everything that happened to you would have happened to most of us.
I flew by my location once and saw the distance going further and panicked. I switched to the Radar screen and realized what happened. I no longer fly home with the maps unless I absolutely need to.

Everything else that happened would have caught me off guard, especially the part about landing and then the drone taking off again on loss of signal. IMHO it does not matter if the props have stopped or not. If the drone is on the ground and it gets no input to fly it should not fly. I could easily see a case of someone landing Manually and then turning off the controller first by mistake while talking to a friend and then the darn thing just lifts off and possibly hits into one of you. Yes you should have shut it off but who would have thought that an RTH would initiate because of a lost signal on an already landed drone! Just sounds like a half baked engineering idea and may explain some other cases of drones that have never been found.

I would imagine that the hunt is not over for finding your drone. If you need private help with the logs I am sure Cyperpower or the rest of us log guys can do it via a PM message. It would be prudent to not post more accurate info as to where it might be on a public forum since its in a fairly accessible area.

BTW Ian get yourself a Marco Polo Tracker. You would have found the drone in a few minutes if you had one of them on the drone. It does not use cell phone towers etc and the battery life is over 10 days.

Rob

 

[MrMavic]

I just purchased the Marco Polo. It will definitely ease your worry of never finding your drone.

 

[ThisIsCusel]

First of all, sorry about your mavic.

Second, try home lock, just pull down on the right stick and it will stop dead in its tracks about 20 ft away from the home point.

Third, if worried about someone grabbing it from the ground, set RTH to hover and leave it up a couple hundred feet. If you are only a couple minutes away by car 15% battery would buy you time to get there before it lands.

Easier said than done in the moment. But, we can all try to remember or even practice emergency maneuvers.

 

[Robert Mitchell]

Sorry to hear man. You've got a good attitude about it though. If it were me, I'd definitely give it a few more hours of search time, radiating out from the last known point. It does look like some pretty gnarly vegetation and terrain there though. Thanks for the tips and good luck if you pursue it further. Keep us posted of any developments.

 

[hammer73]

Thanks for sharing, Ian!

Like with piloting a passenger airplane (I'm certified) it's never one error that creates a disaster. One mistake followed by another, and another is what pilots get in trouble. The hard part is to recognize them. That's where the use of checklists come in. It's not an assurance but it greatly increases the chances to not forget that critical thing that enables recovery from the original mistake.

Don't get me wrong, i understand that using checklists in flight of a drone might be not as practical. That said, practicing recovery scenarios by putting the drone in hover mode and running over a little list might save the drone the next time you take it out.

No, I have not done this myself but Ian's comment on "I made multiple mistake" made me think of the above. Yes, I will do it.

 

[MrMavic]

I need a simple checklist.(Working on it now) I see some of the check lists people post, and some of these lists are longer than the one Apollo 13 had.

 

[solar1]

Hello all
Well, after a few months of fun, I managed to completely lose my new toy, meaning I couldn't even claim on DJI Refresh.

Lost it whilst flying down near Dover, UK, by managing to convince myself it was being blown backwards out to sea by the wind. Funny how one simple error can compound itself and steer your mind into making further mistakes as the panic slowly increases. End result: completely lost and truly unlikkely ever to be found by anyone...

Anyway, I made a video using the streamed footage and flight data. After flying for over 18 months I'd have liked to think I was experienced enough not to make any of these mistakes. But I did, so I guess others could too. Here they are, in all their glory, so hopefully someone, somewhere, won't do the same!

Cheers,

Ian

 

[solar1]

Appreciate the share. Chin up. It is an unnerving feeling when Panic sets in because the mavic isn't responding and doing what we think it's doing. Been there done that.

Cheers

 

[Dragonfly]

Ian, dont give up looking for it, it will be somewhere between where healthy Drones gave you the last position and a straight line to your orginal takeof point (RTH) the position you have from HD is where you turned of your remote but the Mavic may have traveled a bit further on a direct line towards RTH before a forced landing occured due to low battery. Use a compass and search that line from that last know position towards the RTH position.

 

[bucefalo]

Hey Ian, thanks for your post !! I'm sorry for your lost.. it's the fear of everyone in the forum and i can tell that sure we can all have a plan or "checklist" but in the moment of panic is not always easy to stay cool and do the right thing! Actually you didthings correctly but that touch and go of the mavic ruined everything !
About having a gps tracker(like that marco polo) sure it can give you the " exact" location but guys sometimes is still IMPOSSIBLE to get to that locations ! Also Ian's mavic location still didn't seem so easy to reach ..
Anyway thanks for all the tips you gave in your video ! and still good luck.. maybe you go back there and you find it

 

[Ian in London]

Ian, can you confirm whether or not you had disabled the VPS and/or Landing Protection?

I almost always hand catch the Mavic on landing, so I had disabled the landing protection as it used to rise up when I put my hand out to catch it....

Thanks to all you guys for your comments. Nice reading and does make me feel I was more unlucky than a bad pilot.....
The radar indicator arrow and the map are very small on the phone; too small to notice that I was flying almost towards me but not quite!
The direct line back to the home point is easy to see but simply impossible to follow; you can see the type of vegetation in the small in-screen shot towards the end, but what you can't see is how the ground gets steeper and steeper until it's near vertical cliff faces. My parents were with me giving moral support via binoculars and it got to the point where I thought I'm not going to injure of kill myself over this......
The Mavic was indeed unskinned and standard grey; white would have been better, but there we are.

But I have definitely learned a lot from this, and I really wanted others to see how easy it is to get side-tracked and misinterpret information and make similar mistakes... Mine were compounded and the final terrain of the RTH flight killed off any chance of finding it.
But, I wasn't aware of the Marco Polo tracker; it looks the perfect design without GPS so I'll defo be getting that for the new one...
Cheers again

Ian

 

[Member]

Darn! You almost saved it... You only had to switch off the motors. Sorry for your loss dude

Wind can be a `beach. Your story reminds me of two smaller instances I've had:

1) Two weeks back during a flight I decided to return to the home point manually and watched the speed go up to a full 3 km/h. Apparently the wind was against me. Put it into sports mode, it went up to 20 km/h which was sufficient. But it was scary for a minute there.

2) Going the wrong direction: there was a hill with a 'carving in' on two sides, essentially just rocks, like a god took a bite out of two sides of the hill. Still had some time left but figured w/e I'll just come back. I come to the cliff, I can see it in plain view but for some reason I didn't see or hear the drone. I tried to come 'closer' to myself, signal was lost. I look at the distance, it says 400m. Then it hit me I was on the other side of the hill. It gave me a scare but luckily there was enough battery. Always leave extra time in your battery.

ps: the word h-e-l-l is actually a curse word on this forum?! What the hell?!

 

[Member]

I almost always hand catch the Mavic on landing, so I had disabled the landing protection as it used to rise up

I used to do that too (disable the downward sensor to avoid the mavic trying to escape from my hand), until I found out that smart return to home is disabled if the downward sensors are disabled. That's not good. If signal is lost and it starts returning home, I definitely want it to avoid obstacles and rise above them.

Solution: when you grab the bird, do it at the front side where the downward camera is, but avoid having your hand below the sonic sensors. It's a bit tricky, but perfectly doable. It helps if you hold the aircraft firmly with say 2-2 fingers on both sides, keeping some distance between your palm and the bottom of the bird. It no longer tries to escape from me and I fly more relaxed knowing the sensors are on.

Don't ask why smart return to home is disabled by the downward sensors being disabled, I assumed that such obstacle avoidance is using the front sensors only. Regardless, that's how it is, and I really don't want it to be 'dumb and blind' if it ever has to return to home automatically.

 

[Randall]

Sorry for your loss and thanks for sharing. I know I took note of how you got to where you ended up. Know it doesn't help your current situation, but if you find it or get another mavic you might consider getting a dronekeeper mini (see link below). Feather light and super small but it sends out a 90 decibel signal 30-seconds after a drone stops unless you turn it off (would have been easy to hear in the brush). Only $19 US and would have helped you.

dronekeeper, drone keeper, mini

Again, hope you find it! Cheers.

 

[AlanTheBeast]

I read somewhere that it is actually uses lack of sensed motion by the IMU to decide it is on the ground rather than prop load. Net result is the same though.

Hindsight and all....
Another thing to consider doing just prior to outlanding at a remote site like OP. Reset the home point to the aircraft. That way it wont be going anywhere else if signal is lost.

I'd hope it would use several data points to decide that it was "on the ground". That could include:

- baro rate near 0
- IMU accelerometer and gyro rates near 0 and lack of motion; vertical component ~= 1 g.
- a "bump" just happened
- props unloaded (sudden drop in current &| RPM, for example).​

Lack of sensed motion alone could be too narrow. Think of a dead calm day and hovering...

 

[nealjl]

Hello all
Well, after a few months of fun, I managed to completely lose my new toy, meaning I couldn't even claim on DJI Refresh.

Lost it whilst flying down near Dover, UK, by managing to convince myself it was being blown backwards out to sea by the wind. Funny how one simple error can compound itself and steer your mind into making further mistakes as the panic slowly increases. End result: completely lost and truly unlikkely ever to be found by anyone...

Anyway, I made a video using the streamed footage and flight data. After flying for over 18 months I'd have liked to think I was experienced enough not to make any of these mistakes. But I did, so I guess others could too. Here they are, in all their glory, so hopefully someone, somewhere, won't do the same!

Cheers,

Ian

Thank you so much for sharing that. Much of what you said is very helpful. $1000 loss is terrible, but in the scheme of life just a minor blip.

 

[medic57]

Hello all
Well, after a few months of fun, I managed to completely lose my new toy, meaning I couldn't even claim on DJI Refresh.

Lost it whilst flying down near Dover, UK, by managing to convince myself it was being blown backwards out to sea by the wind. Funny how one simple error can compound itself and steer your mind into making further mistakes as the panic slowly increases. End result: completely lost and truly unlikkely ever to be found by anyone...

Anyway, I made a video using the streamed footage and flight data. After flying for over 18 months I'd have liked to think I was experienced enough not to make any of these mistakes. But I did, so I guess others could too. Here they are, in all their glory, so hopefully someone, somewhere, won't do the same!

Cheers,

Ian

Thanks so much for the info! Great help. Sorry you lost your drone! I'm sure that was a aweful feeling for sure! Will remember your warnings for sure!!!!!Thanks from Texas!

 

[JLane]

I used to do that too (disable the downward sensor to avoid the mavic trying to escape from my hand), until I found out that smart return to home is disabled if the downward sensors are disabled. That's not good. If signal is lost and it starts returning home, I definitely want it to avoid obstacles and rise above them.

Solution: when you grab the bird, do it at the front side where the downward camera is, but avoid having your hand below the sonic sensors. It's a bit tricky, but perfectly doable. It helps if you hold the aircraft firmly with say 2-2 fingers on both sides, keeping some distance between your palm and the bottom of the bird. It no longer tries to escape from me and I fly more relaxed knowing the sensors are on.

Don't ask why smart return to home is disabled by the downward sensors being disabled, I assumed that such obstacle avoidance is using the front sensors only. Regardless, that's how it is, and I really don't want it to be 'dumb and blind' if it ever has to return to home automatically.

What the OP and I are referring to here is disabling the Landing Protection setting specifically, not the whole VPS or downward sensors. This prevents the Mavic's rise away from your hand, while still maintaining the benefits of having VPS enabled.