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?
