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Circling with no stick input?

buzz96

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During an early familiarization flight with my new MA2, I climbed to about 35 feet more or less directly above my takeoff point - and after the home point was recorded. I was watching the display and heard the tone of the drone's props change, so I looked up to see that it had drifted several feet and was now making a lazy circle (see attached flight path). What would cause this? After I observed it for a few seconds, I took over control and brought it back. Nothing was visibly out of whack. During subsequent hover tests, it would occasionally jerk to one side or the other, so I calibrated the compass and IMU to see if that fixed the issue. Haven't had the jerkiness since, but the engineer in me really wants to understand that lazy circle behavior. Any insight from more experienced pilots would be appreciated.

1594605120106.png
 
During an early familiarization flight with my new MA2, I climbed to about 35 feet more or less directly above my takeoff point - and after the home point was recorded. I was watching the display and heard the tone of the drone's props change, so I looked up to see that it had drifted several feet and was now making a lazy circle (see attached flight path). What would cause this? After I observed it for a few seconds, I took over control and brought it back. Nothing was visibly out of whack. During subsequent hover tests, it would occasionally jerk to one side or the other, so I calibrated the compass and IMU to see if that fixed the issue. Haven't had the jerkiness since, but the engineer in me really wants to understand that lazy circle behavior. Any insight from more experienced pilots would be appreciated.
Circular paths usually are compass-related.
Was the drone flying straight and hovering in place before this flight?
Make sure you don't launch from on top of or close to steel items. Reinforced concrete can cause problems.
 
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This is the typical behaviour when the compass of the drone is off. The drone found it's position drifted and tried to correct but due to compass error, it moved in the wrong direction so the position error could not be narrowed down. This made the drone constantly doing error correction and the result is a circular flying path.

The problem can be solved by avoiding powering up the drone near steel or anything magnetic.
 
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