Comms lost and nearly lost Mavic too

[AndreC]

Hi everyone

(Just before posting I found other recent threads with similar issues, but if admin allows I'd like to post this again as the number of posts are worrying!)

I had a bit of a close call on Saturday. I took the Mavic out for a flight, and what should have been a short and easy flight nearly lost my Mavic. The spot where I was flying from had some tree cover (not dense), and was facing a sandy river bank. I don't like launching from sandy/bushy areas, so I launched from the deck and I had to fly the drone out about 5m before I could ascend past the tree cover. I kept a close eye on the signal strength but that remained at full strength as the drone went up. At about 30m up, and about 40m away, my drone disconnected. It was still within easy line-of-sight, but there was just no comms. The drone then switched on RTH and ascended to 100m coming back over me. If it tried to land it would have crashed into trees. I tried restarting the app, and moving the remote controller and antennas, but nothing worked. Fortunately after what felt like an eternity my comms came back on. I immediately returned the drone to the gap in the canopy to get it back to land, and then the same thing happened, except this time the connection broke when the drone was like 3m up and 5m in front of me, so really close. On attempt number 3 I finally got it down safely. It was a little too close for comfort, so now I have a few questions:

Firstly, when auto RTH is activated, does the drone land automatically or will it hover on home position until the battery gets drained?

Secondly, what could cause this. It only happened at the one site (did another 12 flights in the area over the weekend), so my thinking was possibly radio interference. There were no warnings about interference, and as I said, the signal strength remained at full bars.

I upgraded to the latest firmware a few days before, so could that be the issue? It doesn't quite makes sense though, as I did a number of other flights, even going quite far without issues.

 

[Ziggy01]

Seeing a bit of this kind of behaviour lately.

It's concerning.

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

Only part I can answer is that you can set the Drone to either Hover or RTH if connection is lost.
No experience on the lost connections though.

 

[Ziggy01]

Only part I can answer is that you can set the Drone to either Hover or RTH if connection is lost.
No experience on the lost connections though.

Not to mention that pause may prove unreliable in this kind of situation. I prefer the option of flicking over to Sport mode. Instant recalibration of flight mode.

 

[BlakPhoenix]

If your landing spot is not clear, then you need to change the RTH so that it doesn't return to where you took off from. You can set a new RTH location while in the air if you find somewhere else safe to land, or just tell it to hover while you work out how to get connection back. It's only going to do what you tell it, so be careful with your wishes.

 

[4wd]

I've noticed rarely when very close the app briefly says disconnected but in fact you have full contol, the controller shows good signal strength.
This seems to have happened rather more since last firmware but still a rare event.

 

[JLane]

The Mavic's exact behavior during RTH depends on several factors at the time. The manual describes what to expect depending on the circumstances, settings, environment, etc. Page 16 (in v1.6) in particular discusses different behaviors at different distances.

 

[Rnl]

Same happened to me back on .400 now.

 

[msinger]

when auto RTH is activated, does the drone land automatically or will it hover on home position until the battery gets drained?

If the Landing Protection setting is enabled and Failsafe RTH is initiated, the Mavic will hover 2 meters above the ground after returning to the home point and descending. If you don't manually land it, it'll eventually land when the battery reaches the critically low level. If the Landing Protection setting is disabled, the Mavic will auto land after descending.