Drone flew 600m away from me - out of my control!

[SamCrouch]

Afternoon everyone - a bit of help if possible please.

Took my Mavic Mini and decided to fly it near to a Loch (I think you can guess where this is heading!). i was flying it above the church next to the Loch and it lost signal and went into some kind of fail safe mode, only had the drone since Christmas so I am not fully up to speed with the terminology etc yet :-/

Anyway, I lost sight of the drone, above some trees and after several minutes the screen on my remote was still saving that it had lost signal. I ran around searching for the drone, aiming the remote at the sky where the drone roughly was, but with no luck. After assuming that he drone was going to land directly below where it was flying, I searched for approx 45 minutes before checking that the drone had in fact flown in a straight line over the Loch and ended up 600m from the homepoint at the to bottom of the Loch, I was unable to attempt to recover the drone.

What are my options? I honestly believe that it was not my fault that the drone did this, the wind was not that strong at all and was was actually going the opposite direction to where the drone ended up, so the drone actually flew into the wind to where it ended up. I have seen that people can access the flight log etc to see if any errors occurred and to prove that this was a drone malfunction as opposed to pilot error so to speak.

Any help much appreciated.

Cheers
Sam

 

[Prismatic]

You should carefully follow the instructions in this post: Flight log retrieval and analysis guide

Someone will be able to provide more information once your log files are available.

So sorry this happened to you. ?

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Afternoon everyone - a bit of help if possible please.

Took my Mavic Mini and decided to fly it near to a Loch (I think you can guess where this is heading!). i was flying it above the church next to the Loch and it lost signal and went into some kind of fail safe mode, only had the drone since Christmas so I am not fully up to speed with the terminology etc yet :-/

Anyway, I lost sight of the drone, above some trees and after several minutes the screen on my remote was still saving that it had lost signal. I ran around searching for the drone, aiming the remote at the sky where the drone roughly was, but with no luck. After assuming that he drone was going to land directly below where it was flying, I searched for approx 45 minutes before checking that the drone had in fact flown in a straight line over the Loch and ended up 600m from the homepoint at the to bottom of the Loch, I was unable to attempt to recover the drone.

What are my options? I honestly believe that it was not my fault that the drone did this, the wind was not that strong at all and was was actually going the opposite direction to where the drone ended up, so the drone actually flew into the wind to where it ended up. I have seen that people can access the flight log etc to see if any errors occurred and to prove that this was a drone malfunction as opposed to pilot error so to speak.

Any help much appreciated.

Cheers
Sam

We have all been there : The learning curve

Without seeing the Data Sheets it appears your Drone lost signal when you went over the trees as you Lost Visual Line of sight something that is extremely important in keeping the signal connected .

When that happens over the trees the best thing to do is fly the drone up high in the sky to try to reconnect.

When the GPS is completely lost the Drone goes into Atti Mode which means that you have lost the help of the GPS and you our now flying in Somewhat Manually. which also means the wind has some control if you do not .

There is no harm in notifying DJI but this is Pilot Error.

VLOS plays a critical role in keeping the drone connected to the GPS to allow it to use its safety features..

DJI will ask you for the data and the video recorded on the Cashe so be prepared and if they find some errors in the Atti Mode you might be ok or they find some magentic interference also which can cause a fly away.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Mavic in the Rain.
Coal

 

[RodPad]

@SamCrouch,
There is an important file on your mobile device, if you haven't synced your flight with DJI yet don't do it.

Please Read: .DAT Files Being Deleted.

Rod

 

[old man mavic]

welcome to the forum sorry you lost your drone

 

[Meta4]

When the GPS is completely lost the Drone goes into Atti Mode which means that you have lost the help of the GPS and you our now flying in Somewhat Manually. which also means the wind has some control if you do not .
There is no harm in notifying DJI but this is Pilot Error.

What has any of this got to do with the OP's issue?
Without seeing the recorded flight data, there's not much point guessing what happened or confusing the OP with things that are irrelevant.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

What has any of this got to do with the OP's issue?
Without seeing the recorded flight data, there's not much point guessing what happened or confusing the OP with things that are irrelevant.

You assume everyone is always going to upload the data, its simply not the case especially for those that read the issue and not post at all.

They always have the option of uploading the data if you beg enough.

 

[Meta4]

You assume everyone is always going to upload the data, its simply not the case especially for those that read the issue and not post at all.
They always have the option of uploading the data if you beg enough.

I didn't assume anything.
It looks like you didn't understand my post at all.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

@SamCrouch . . . Sam, Sam, Sam.

I and really sorry to hear you lost the mini like that, and that your first post here was not you finding the forum and introducing yourself, but an aircraft loss.
After introduction, if reading the many threads here you probably would have been a bit more aware of some of the Mini related flight behaviours, and avoided this.

But, nonetheless, if you REALLY want to know what happened, go to the link in post #2 and read a bit.
If that is too complex to find your txt and dat files and post up, then go here and follow those simple instructions to get them from the mobile device.

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view flight logs from your DJI drones

www.phantomhelp.com

Post both files of those here if possible, the dat may still be on your aircraft, but if not, then the txt will probably be ok to give you a definitive on what happened, and indeed if you may have a reason to try a claim with DJI.

If you want to post the actual link to the txt file upload to phantomhelp, you can do that, but the dat will have to be put here on the forum as an attachment.

Ball's is in your court re that, but it's amazing what info you can get from the analysis made here.
Good luck with whatever you decide, but DJI won't do a thing for you I feel, without some possible input you could gain from here first.

 

[John MacAulay]

By all means, post your flight data. There are very helpful persons here that can help determine exactly what happened to your mini.
In a 'normal' configuration upon losing your control signal to the drone, it should have risen to the RTH height and returned to the homepoint.
Only analyzing your flight data will you be able to find out what happened along the way to that preferred outcome.

 

[m80116]

There is a bug in the MM system (it's remote related) which disconnects the mobile and triggers the AC not connected to RC (I stand corrected, was MD) message and subsequent Auto-RTH message.

Effectively no disconnection between the remote and the aircraft has ever happened, the AC still responds to control stick inputs and RTH never takes place. Might be your case.

Unplugging and plugging-back in the USB cable fixes the issue but it's not cable or port related. It just fixes it by re-instating the MD to RC connection.

 

[SamCrouch]

Hi, thanks for the replies so far, I am just figuring out how to upload the data and will post on here when I have, hopefully it isn't Pilot Error as suggested above

 

[SamCrouch]

Hi everyone, this is the latest flight data that is on my phone. Is this the correct one? Just looks like jibberish to me but hopefully someone on here knows what they are looking at/for?

Thanks again for all the help so far!

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Sam, what you do is go to that site in my link, and where it says upload flight log, you browse, find it on your computer, and upload it.

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view flight logs from your DJI drones

www.phantomhelp.com

What came up makes no sense to me as yet, you weren't doing 12,940,834,889,773,000,000,000,000,000,000.0mph at any time were you ??
Something's corrupt.
Could be my upload, anyone else ?

 

[SamCrouch]

Sam, what you do is go to that site in my link, and where it says upload flight log, you browse, find it on your computer, and upload it.

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view flight logs from your DJI drones

www.phantomhelp.com

What came up makes no sense to me as yet, you weren't doing 12,940,834,889,773,000,000,000,000,000,000.0mph at any time were you ??
Something's corrupt.
Could be my upload, anyone else ?

Hi,

I have tried again, let me know if this works!

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view flight logs from your DJI drones

www.phantomhelp.com

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Nah, all data is out of whack, no location, there's something seriously amiss with that txt file.
Maybe @sar104 or @BudWalker has seen this before . . . others like @slup and sorry can't think of others getting into the analysis.
Wait and see if anyone knows what's going on with your data.

 

[xspwhite]

Wow, thats pretty neat that your right on the English Channel.

 

[SamCrouch]

An

83,362,461,600,004,300.0mph???

Something crazy going on with that data!

Everything is corrupted.

Any suggestions? That is the most recent file in the folder, shall I upload the one prior to that to see if its any better/makes sense?

 

[SamCrouch]

This is the second to last flight log within the file:

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view flight logs from your DJI drones

www.phantomhelp.com

 

[Deleted member 94047]

Opened the txt file from post# 13 and it is the the weirdest thing I have ever seen



If we take this at face value, the AC encountered a compass error at 838s and nothing that comes after makes any sense. CsvView threw up this error when it opened the txt file though, so I am guessing there is something wrong with the data.



@sar104 @BudWalker - you guys ought to have a look at this one