Dear fellow pilots,
During my vacation in Slovenia I lost my Mavic because of a disconnection. This happened during a basic waypoint flight with Litchi.
During the flight I suddenly got the message on the controller that the aircraft was disconnected. Never had this issue before and in a kind of panic mode I ran to the point where I had last seen the aircraft. It looked like it was climbing out of control and after some time I lost visual and could not hear the engines anymore because of its height… I checked the App again, made sure the cable between the controller and my iPhone had a good connection. Restarted the Litchi App, rebooted my iPhone but I could not regain control anymore. Pressed return to home a couple of times but was not sure if that signal would came through. I started running around the vacation park to make sure that my Mavic would not hurt someone. After 40 minutes I gave up and tried to find out where it went.
From the logfiles I have included it seems that there was indeed a signal loss of 2 seconds. That would probably have caused the disconnect? Also from the logfiles it seemed that the RTH function was transmitted to the aircraft because at a certain point they mention “Mode change – confirm landing”. It seemed like the aircraft had reached a certain altitude and after that just descended and landed.
Fortunately I did not hurt anyone or damaged any properties. That really saved the day. Unfortunately the aircraft landed in a murky and small lake near the park. I should be just about 4 meters deep but visibility was very limited. So the same day I bought a small inflatable boat and started diving. I hoped it would be in a space of 2 by two meters because of its straight descent.
However, I have no idea how a Mavic will sink. I can imagine that the battery will be the heaviest part so this may cause it will sink battery down. On the other side the rotors might be spinning when the aircraft hit the water and therefor it might float to a certain direction…
I had put bright, orange stickers on the Mavic. The bottom of the lake did not have any vegetation of weed – hopes were high!
Unfortunately , I could not find it. The next day tried dredging the area – also no luck. This was our final day of the vacation but I got in touch with a very helpful fellow DJI pilot who will try to ask some local divers to search the specific part of the pond. Starting costs for diving will be 200 Euro’s.
I do have a valid DJI care refresh certificate but if I am correct this only applies when you return the aircraft? Having been on the bottom of the pond for 4 days now will portably result in a total-loss. The divers will go diving Friday and hopefully will find it.
Did I something wrong? I had signal issues before but always received warnings so I was still able to steer the aircraft away and get a better signal strength.
So basically my questions are:
1. What caused the disconnection issue and how should prevented it?
2. Will the Care Refresh option still apply even is the aircraft is fully drowned?
3. How many (diving) costs will be reasonable – how accurate is the spot?
4. Is it even possible to buy just the aircraft because I already have the rest?
During my vacation in Slovenia I lost my Mavic because of a disconnection. This happened during a basic waypoint flight with Litchi.
During the flight I suddenly got the message on the controller that the aircraft was disconnected. Never had this issue before and in a kind of panic mode I ran to the point where I had last seen the aircraft. It looked like it was climbing out of control and after some time I lost visual and could not hear the engines anymore because of its height… I checked the App again, made sure the cable between the controller and my iPhone had a good connection. Restarted the Litchi App, rebooted my iPhone but I could not regain control anymore. Pressed return to home a couple of times but was not sure if that signal would came through. I started running around the vacation park to make sure that my Mavic would not hurt someone. After 40 minutes I gave up and tried to find out where it went.
From the logfiles I have included it seems that there was indeed a signal loss of 2 seconds. That would probably have caused the disconnect? Also from the logfiles it seemed that the RTH function was transmitted to the aircraft because at a certain point they mention “Mode change – confirm landing”. It seemed like the aircraft had reached a certain altitude and after that just descended and landed.
Fortunately I did not hurt anyone or damaged any properties. That really saved the day. Unfortunately the aircraft landed in a murky and small lake near the park. I should be just about 4 meters deep but visibility was very limited. So the same day I bought a small inflatable boat and started diving. I hoped it would be in a space of 2 by two meters because of its straight descent.
However, I have no idea how a Mavic will sink. I can imagine that the battery will be the heaviest part so this may cause it will sink battery down. On the other side the rotors might be spinning when the aircraft hit the water and therefor it might float to a certain direction…
I had put bright, orange stickers on the Mavic. The bottom of the lake did not have any vegetation of weed – hopes were high!
Unfortunately , I could not find it. The next day tried dredging the area – also no luck. This was our final day of the vacation but I got in touch with a very helpful fellow DJI pilot who will try to ask some local divers to search the specific part of the pond. Starting costs for diving will be 200 Euro’s.
I do have a valid DJI care refresh certificate but if I am correct this only applies when you return the aircraft? Having been on the bottom of the pond for 4 days now will portably result in a total-loss. The divers will go diving Friday and hopefully will find it.
Did I something wrong? I had signal issues before but always received warnings so I was still able to steer the aircraft away and get a better signal strength.
So basically my questions are:
1. What caused the disconnection issue and how should prevented it?
2. Will the Care Refresh option still apply even is the aircraft is fully drowned?
3. How many (diving) costs will be reasonable – how accurate is the spot?
4. Is it even possible to buy just the aircraft because I already have the rest?
