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Catastrophic app failure -- result, Mavic lost :*(

br-travel

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So today I lost my precious Mavic.


Backstory:
I was in a pretty remote, forested, mountainous area, but with a number of roads, cabins, and clearings also. Definitely very low extraneous radio signals, in fact I had no cell service in the area. (iPhone 6S, iOS 11.2.1, DJI Go 4.1.18)


The Fateful Flight:
I noticed it was somewhat windy so I put the Mavic up about 30 feet to see if it got high wind warnings, nope, all clear. So I started to take it up further, maybe 100 feet, when the app crashes. The app has only crashed maybe 1 or 2 times in many flights so I didn’t panic, just restarted it. Everything came back and I saw the Mavic was struggling to hold position, I switched to Sport mode and tried to fly to the home position. This was all of maybe 15 seconds and the app crashed again. I open it again, connects for only about 2 seconds, and crashes.

At this point I note that the controller is still connected and the distance is increasing slowly with no user input.

Crap, the wind is too strong, I need to put this down somewhere safe and walk to it. But I need visuals to do that.

As a slight panic is building I think how can I get the app to work? So I kill every app in task manager and completely restart the phone and start walking/jogging in the direction the wind is blowing, hoping this will reset whatever is causing the crash.

No luck, over and over the app crashes and I can’t get a visual. I am still connected through the controller and racking my brain trying to decipher from the controller display where it could possibly be, but all I can tell is that it is too far to hear (over 1km) and no matter how I try to rotate the craft and go forward nothing is reducing the distance number. I try reducing the altitude to get below the wind it doesn’t seem to be working, and I’m unsure how low I can go before getting in the trees.

It starts trying to come home, it can’t, as the distance number keeps slowly climbing. I watch in dismay as eventually it starts landing in some unknown location, now some 2km away, and eventually the signal is gone forever.

...

Lessons? Questions?

As I’ve had a few hours to reflect, I can’t think what I could have done differently other than not fly at all. Even in hindsight my choice to fly in a wind seems reasonably cautious, the high wind alert never activated, and if the app hadn’t failed so badly I would have still been able to land in a safe location.

Why is my app crashing? Even now without the drone it crashes after about 30 seconds trying to look at the flight logs or other functions.


Why did the high wind alert never sound?


Given this predicament, any genius ideas to safely land and locate the drone with no visuals?


Any chance DJI could look at some logs, acknowledge their app shouldn’t have failed so badly, and replace my Mavic or give a heavy discount?
 
@br-travel, check out your TXT flight log to see if it gives any hints as to where your Mavic might have landed. You can upload and view it online here. If you'd like other people to review and comment on your flight log, then please post a link back here after you upload it.

Any chance DJI could look at some logs, acknowledge their app shouldn’t have failed so badly, and replace my Mavic or give a heavy discount?
I doubt it. The Mavic is flown with the remote controller (not your mobile device). That means you technically should have no trouble flying even if DJI GO crashes and/or your mobile device shuts down.
 
It is unfortunate that the app crashed, but flying mavic in winds that exceed 40mph sounds like pilot error.

I'm sure it wasn't done on purpose and it could happen to me as I have been known to fly in high winds, but if the wind is slower than the top speed of mavic you should be able to fly it back home.
 
It is unfortunate that the app crashed, but flying mavic in winds that exceed 40mph sounds like pilot error.

Yes, I acknowledge it's not DJI's fault my drone ended up in a strong wind. But of course none of us are putting up some sort of kite or balloon to evaluate windspeeds at 100ft before we send our drone that high. My method, which has always worked when the app works, is to go up slowly, at the first sign of high wind warning, immediately drop altitude by 25-50%.
 
4.1.18 version of the app has been a problem for a lot of folks. Many of us have reverted back to an earlier version (4.1.15) which is much more stable. DJI accepts no responsibility for the app crashing since it apparently works on some devices. It's up to the pilot to find a device that will run the app. There is a list of device that are supposed to work OK but many of them now have problems with the 4.1.18 version.
Hope you are able to locate your bird.
 
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Real sorry for your loss... Let's hope you can help us all learn from this!

Didn't sport mode help? You could have put it sports mode and flying around until you saw the numbers decreasing...

Also in your story, you missed out a lot of info as to when you got to 100ft and the bird got 1km away... That sounds like it should've been a long time... At least well over 5mins if it got 1km by drifting only
 
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@br-travel, check out your TXT flight log to see if it gives any hints as to where your Mavic might have landed. You can upload and view it online here.

That's a neat tool! Unfortunately, the log stops 26.9s into the flight, the first app crash. None of the reboots started a new log.
 
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Real sorry for your loss... Let's hope you can help us all learn from this!
I can't believe DJI is allowing this firmware with so many reported problems into the wild! They need to be pushing notifications into the app to not use it... or something! For every 100 Mavic owners who check here weekly there are several thousand Mavic owners who don't.

Didn't sport mode help? You could have put it sports mode and flying around until you saw the numbers decreasing...

Yeah, first thing I did was try sport mode, realized I couldn't manually fight the wind. So I shifted plans to just landing it. Later, maybe at about 40% battery, I started trying to just get the numbers to decrease. Rotate for a short flick (hoping for 60-90 degree rotation), press forward, rotate again, press forward, etc. No luck.

Also in your story, you missed out a lot of info as to when you got to 100ft and the bird got 1km away... That sounds like it should've been a long time... At least well over 5mins if it got 1km by drifting only

Yes, it was probably 5-7 minutes. Me frantically restarting the app, killing other apps, restarting the app, and completely restarting the phone.
 
On earlier Phantoms we had a switch to change to Homelock mode. This was a great tool to bring your aircraft home when you had lost orientation. With the Mavic, you need to have the app working to activate this mode and you are not able to use sport mode to fight the wind.
 
Did you ever tried flying it backward/sideways to see if distance decreases?
 
Unfortunately, the log stops 26.9s into the flight, the first app crash. None of the reboots started a new log.
Right. Based on the data in the log, you might be able to narrow down the landing/crash site.
 
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Right. Based on the data in the log, you might be able to narrow down the landing/crash site.

The last position logged (26.9s) was under 50m from homepoint, it flew for another ~15 minutes being pushed by the wind and my desperate attempts, at one point I recall the controller reading 2000m distance. I don't think the log data is going to help at all. I drew a 2km radius circle on Google Earth... seeing all the possibilities, trees, and difficult terrain, I am confident it is long gone.
 
My only advice here would have been to forget the phone at this point and focus on getting the drone on the ground. I would have hit RTH waited a few seconds switch to ( cancel RTH ) sports mode and just pushed forward and dropped hight as low as you safely could.

Why?

1 pressing RTH would have got your Mavic pointing the the right direction

2 sports mode would have given you speed

3 reducing hight would have helped reduce the wind affects

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but it's always to late.

Sorry you lost it and fingers crossed you find it.
 
hi sorry for your loss! With the app crashed and the drone drifting away in high winds (yes I had this situation too before) I believe you have two viable options, option one press RTH button on the controller and hope the RTH altitude is not too high and not too low and wait to see what happens....... or option 2. fly the drone manually (ideally in sport) back to you or back to line of sight.....to do this nearly always you have to lower the drone altitude as low as possible given the terrain as this will markedly reduce wind speed and then fly it back using distance display (but admittedly this is tricky because its hard to be sure which way the drone is facing relative to you). As anthony mentions, the RTH should help reorientiation, but it can be blown off course again. All in all a horrible situation to be in. After my experience I don't fly in strong winds at all (which actually means medium winds at ground level).
 
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My only advice here would have been to forget the phone at this point and focus on getting the drone on the ground. I would have hit RTH waited a few seconds switch to ( cancel RTH ) sports mode and just pushed forward and dropped hight as low as you safely could.

Why?

1 pressing RTH would have got your Mavic pointing the the right direction

2 sports mode would have given you speed

3 reducing hight would have helped reduce the wind affects

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but it's always to late.

Sorry you lost it and fingers crossed you find it.
The advice above is very important. Many new Mavic owners, and I suspect many not-so-new owners, believe that the app is a necessity for flight and will panic without it. An app can crash at any time for a multitude of reasons. Forget the app in that case (the OP lost valuable time), concentrate on the RC information and follow the steps above to get on the ground as quickly as possible.
 
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