Drone disconnected - assume blown away?

[acrossthenight]

Was flying my drone on a mountain. Had put it up in the air to check the wind and it was holding fine. Didnt see any issues with wind or performance. At some point I bumped on cinematic mode. I meant to turn it off but forgot. The drone was around 1km away and started having connection issues. I was trying to drop the altitude and fly it back as the wind started picking up but the signal disconnected and it entered automatic return to home. I was mucking around trying to switch to sports mode because I had a fly away problem a few weeks back but managed to find the drone and everyone told me to use sports mode. Well, it was too late I guess - couldnt change it before I lost the signal so it was stuck in cinematic. Drone had about 12 mins of battery to travel around 1km.

If anyone can give me any pointers to where it might have landed I will go check it out first light tomorrow. It may have been a bit out of sorts since the last fly away. I was due to take it back to DJI to get it serviced but this is the end of our trip.

I had been watching a lot of videos about controlling the drone and doing a lot of trial runs to avoid this so feel extremely incompetent at this point in time. I sort of hope it isnt wind again but am guessing that is what happened.

 

[JAW]

This would be a .............?

 

[Starz]

Mini?

 

[acrossthenight]

Mini?

Nope Mavic. Sorry forgot this. Mavic Platinum. It was missing a few weeks ago and then found it. Was going to get it fully repaired but was trying to get some video before we went home.
I checked wind speed on ground with Drone Buddy abd had also let it hover for a while before I set it off. Can only assume wind has picked up a lot. I was increasing altitude to offset signal issues and guess this made wind worse. Fml

 

[acrossthenight]

I’ve had a look a logs on Phantom Help but don’t know where to start looking.

 

[dirkclod]

I’ve had a look a logs on Phantom Help but don’t know where to start looking.

Well I’m sure sar or one of the others will be along and can
figure it out.

 

[Starz]

Worth looking for. Hope you can track it down.

 

[acrossthenight]

Yeah. My main question is if the wind is blowing it back does it keep trying to fly into the wind or does it give up and land? How would I calculate the rough Bearing it would have been flying along to try and walk the route?

 

[Starz]

Flys until low battery, then lands.

 

[acrossthenight]

Ok. Thanks. Does this mean where the wind is faster than the drone it can potentially have ended up further away than the last distance I got before the battery died?
Is there anyway to calculate the heading so I can just walk the route?

 

[Starz]

The location gurus will be able to find that info. Past my pay grade.

 

[m80116]

Wow... the starting point is so packed, that's definitely not a launch from a vantage point.

 

[Fort Pierce Pilot]

Wow! Curious to know the elevation changes along the route. It looks like you start out coming up a valley and along a ridge. The last part of the flight looks like it ended behind a ridge looking at it from home point. Only the initial wind warning too, I would have expected to see others. Also not sure what the "Not allowed to change aircraft mode" warning means. Hope one of the gurus here can shed some light on this. Very interesting series of issues. Hope you recover it!

 

[sar104]

There's an outside chance that this one might be found; on the plus side, the wind was pretty steady while on the minus side, the descent just before the end of the log makes the extrapolation less confident.





Extrapolating course and speed from the end of the log to autoland start, and then adding the descent to terrain that is 100 meters lower than the takeoff point (hence the -100) on the height scale, gives the following estimated landing area, with error estimation yielding the green zone:

 

[Fort Pierce Pilot]

New to this so please forgive my ignorance. Why no additional wind warnings? Does the MPP revert to P-mode upon RTH or does it stay in C-mode? Lastly (again, please forgive my ignorance) is the assumption that the AC fought the wind in vain until the battery level triggered Autoland?

 

[sar104]

New to this so please forgive my ignorance. Why no additional wind warnings? Does the MPP revert to P-mode upon RTH or does it stay in C-mode? Lastly (again, please forgive my ignorance) is the assumption that the AC fought the wind in vain until the battery level triggered Autoland?

What kind of warnings are you thinking about? The mode switches back to P-GPS on RTH, and it will have continued in that mode until autoland.

 

[Fort Pierce Pilot]

Thanks, that's how I thought it worked. But only one High Wind Velocity warning 51s into the flight. Unless they came during dateline connection lost periods. In my mind the pilot seems to have had no warning winds might be a factor. The weak signals at 2,500 ft would have convinced me it was far enough but that's a separate issue. According to the txt file he had 40% power toward the end after RTH so it seems like pmode should have been able to make headway unless wind was excessive,

 

[sar104]

Thanks, that's how I thought it worked. But only one High Wind Velocity warning 51s into the flight. Unless they came during dateline connection lost periods. In my mind the pilot seems to have had no warning winds might be a factor. The weak signals at 2,500 ft would have convinced me it was far enough but that's a separate issue. According to the txt file he had 40% power toward the end after RTH so it seems like pmode should have been able to make headway unless wind was excessive,

Wind was around 35 mph out of the NE.

 

[Deleted member 114292]

Thanks, that's how I thought it worked. But only one High Wind Velocity warning 51s into the flight. Unless they came during dateline connection lost periods. In my mind the pilot seems to have had no warning winds might be a factor. The weak signals at 2,500 ft would have convinced me it was far enough but that's a separate issue. According to the txt file he had 40% power toward the end after RTH so it seems like pmode should have been able to make headway unless wind was excessive,

If you have some situational awareness you really don't need warnings.
If you are flying with the wind you may not get warnings.

None the less if you are 4,324 ft facing a 35 mph wind and 40% battery there's no coming back. It took 40% to get there with the wind (well it wasn't exactly the same direction) . At one point he flew into the wind and the amps were in the red zone.

 

[Davidskegg]

Was flying my drone on a mountain. Had put it up in the air to check the wind and it was holding fine. Didnt see any issues with wind or performance. At some point I bumped on cinematic mode. I meant to turn it off but forgot. The drone was around 1km away and started having connection issues. I was trying to drop the altitude and fly it back as the wind started picking up but the signal disconnected and it entered automatic return to home. I was mucking around trying to switch to sports mode because I had a fly away problem a few weeks back but managed to find the drone and everyone told me to use sports mode. Well, it was too late I guess - couldnt change it before I lost the signal so it was stuck in cinematic. Drone had about 12 mins of battery to travel around 1km.

If anyone can give me any pointers to where it might have landed I will go check it out first light tomorrow. It may have been a bit out of sorts since the last fly away. I was due to take it back to DJI to get it serviced but this is the end of our trip.

I had been watching a lot of videos about controlling the drone and doing a lot of trial runs to avoid this so feel extremely incompetent at this point in time. I sort of hope it isnt wind again but am guessing that is what happened.

The analysis by sar104 is really impressive!!