Deep snow ravine lost overnight

[Silverthorne]

I am new at this. I was flying my Mavic 2 Pro around a point of interest automated when I hear alarms and see tree branches on my iphone connected to the controller. Flying in the ‘center’ mode (P?). What was I supposed to do?

I instinctively push up with the left joystick, raising the Mavic: bad choice. It crashed and buried itself on deep snow in Colorado. On somebody else’s lot, 800 acres large.

I did a Find My Drone and got the Lat/long and initiated the search on knee high snow on a terrain very steep with aspen trees and other shrubs all around. My first two searches were exhausting and did not find it. Even at night I ventured to those woods hoping the lights and sounds I enabled would lead me to the Mavic. No luck.

Today morning I went again, using the app and 2 other GPS apps, so I hoped one of the 3 would work, and it did! I found the poor bird under a star shaped cavity in the snow. Find My Drone is not very precise but in the deep ravine GPS reception was not great.

It is now in a ziplock bag with plenty of rice. I hope it dries up well and will try to fly it tomorrow. If I get it into trees again, while still flying, what is the right maneuver?

Thanks!

 

[sea157]

Back it out a little then look for a good opening to fly through. Were the sensors on or did you have them off for some reason?

 

[Silverthorne]

Sensors were on

 

[BD0G]

For automated flight such as what you mentioned (POI Orbit) the fastest way to kick it out of the Automated mode is by switching to Sport mode (using side switch on Remote Controller) or alternately using the Pause Button. Then switching back to P Mode from Sport Mode and slowly rotating to see the surrounding area (branches) then pick an opening in the branches and slowly fly forward without any elevation change.

Glad you found it! Persistence paid off

 

[Silverthorne]

Thank you, I hope I don’t find myself in similar situation again but if I do I will try those steps.

Question tough, if I hit cancel and them Home, would the drone fly automatically avoiding the obstacles and return home by itself? I thought that may be an option. Yes, no? I also wonder what would it have happened if I did nothing...

 

[BD0G]

If you press RTH and it initiates the process the first thing the drone will do is ascend to the Return to Home Altitude and then proceed back to the last recorded Home Point. In this situation that would have caused the drone to crash into any overhead branches and you would be in the very same position once again.

If you did nothing and took your finger off sticks then this is the likely outcome. The drone would hover in place and may drift a small amount due to wind. Then clip a branch as a result and down you go. Or it would hover and miss those branches and then when critical low battery limit is reached then the drone would attempt Return to Home and clip a branch during the elevation portion of that process.

 

[RayOZ]

If you are doing POI, before you start, spin your drone 360 slowly to look around. If there's are taller trees, go higher. For me, I do 2 POIs. First one a little slower with the drone facing direction of flight so I can see where it's going. Once I know it won't hit any obstacles, I do a proper POI.
Depending on how wet your drone get, 1 day to dry might not be enough. Outside might be dry, it might not be inside. I think you should wait another day or 2.

 

[Silverthorne]

Thank you. I will make Mavic Suhi: on rice all around for two days. BTW I love this machine!

 

[Meta4]

If I get it into trees again, while still flying, what is the right maneuver?

The correct and best manoeuvre is to avoid getting into trees in the first place.

 

[Silverthorne]

No kidding. It got into the trees by flying autonomous doing the loop around a POI. I expected the sensors to recognize any obstructions on it’s flying path and avoid them. It didn’t. It may happen again, but for the advice I read above of doing two loops, the first one looking forwards to insure the flight plan is clear and only then the one filming the subject.

 

[BD0G]

Obstacle Avoidance have a tough time with small branches as you found out. They are not always recognized.

 

[Meta4]

No kidding. It got into the trees by flying autonomous doing the loop around a POI. I expected the sensors to recognize any obstructions on it’s flying path and avoid them. It didn’t. It may happen again, but for the advice I read above of doing two loops, the first one looking forwards to insure the flight plan is clear and only then the one filming the subject.

Yes .. no kidding.
There are a number of limitations to the obstacle avoidance system.
Expecting it to work like magic and recklessly letting your drone get into a similar situation is asking for trouble.
The majority of incidents are due to flying too close to obstacles and avoiding getting into that kind of situation is the most effective way of keeping your drone.

 

[lertsek]

Here's one link to some testing done on drying phones, etc. using rice. As with several other tests, the conclusion is that uncooked white rice is terrible at drying things out. It falls behind silica gel, cat litter, oatmeal, instant rice, and couscous. Just open-air drying is far better than rice. (Assuming about 40% humidity).

 

[Canuk]

Take the drone out of the rice and put it someplace warm and get a fan blowing air on it . Warm air will dry it better than rice .

 

[Silverthorne]

True, I placed a humidistat inside the ziplock bag containing the uncooked white rice and drone: the humidity inside what higher than in the room, at 37%. Drying with rice is BS. In my case, I found my drone sunk in the snow, but it was happy and dry there... when I placed inside my backpack to trek back home is when I FU as the snow melted and became... liquid.

Anyway, my Mavic is doing perfect.

I got prop guards too.