Drone won't descend

[MS Coast]

But you don't know my real name. How is anyone going to 'google' me or look up my address on the tax directory unless they have at least that? If you have my lat/long it would be easy to find my physical (mailing) address... and with that, anything/everything else.

My screen name is not linked to my real identity in any way. Sure, admin has my IP address... but if I wanted I could VPN myself through Europe or anywhere else.

(Just to be clear, I was talking about people being identified in the abstract, not you or anyone else personally.)

You're right that flight reports don't have a name. I just meant that there are already so many ways that people can identify us, including looking us up from a street address, that I personally don't feel a threat from having my location known here. I can see that others might, and that editing the flight data to remove the location might be more than they want to contend with.

 

[umanbean]

I think the process of downloading and posting the flight data is intimidating to many folks.

I agree, that could be one reason... and - while not wanting to post their lat/long or go to the trouble to strip that data could be another reason - there might be others also:

• Deep down they know the cause of the crash or 'flyaway' was their own fault anyway, but don't want to admit it or have it proven by in-depth analysis.
• They've convinced themselves that, by having watched a few YouTube videos after posting, they already found the cause.
• Hubris - they think that since they've been flying a few years and have made some YouTube how-to videos, they don't need to have an expert analyst tell them what the cause was... heck, they've already figured it out for themselves!
• Any combination of the above.

 

[Merrill277]

Try turning off obstacle avoidance and landing protection. Sounds like it is falsely detecting an obstruction below it, that it "thinks" would prevent a safe landing. Clean the downward sensors, as well.

Thanks I will try this.

 

[Merrill277]

Thanks I will try this.

Some other thoughts. I often fly in the mountains here in Idaho. This seems to happen more when I get the above 400 ft warning and simply ignore it. This is because as mountain rise, the 400 feet AGL rule goes up as well. I rarely fly more than 200 ft AGL even though I might be up the side of a mountain at the limit of 1,640 ft.
When using RTH either due to power decline or I just choose to return with it, the drone flies at its current elevation to a point over the Home as it should. Then when descending it arrives at about 400 ft AGL over home. Then it stops and won't drop no matter what I do. If I ignore it, it hangs and RTH won't descend. If I press down on the controller, it does nothing but hover. If I cancel RTH same thing, hangs and won't descend. Until I finally reach a critical point where it drops rapidly. I then have to press up on the controller just before landing to keep it from bouncing off the ground. It drops 400 ft in about 10 seconds. Its pretty scary and difficult to land.
Another thought it this. Often when flying in the mountains I loose control due to the mountains themselves. They block my signal and the drone loses contact. It then performs the RTH as it should and elevates and returns. Along the way I regain control, cancel the RTH and continue flying. After that it performs normally, until landing with RTH as per above. While it does a perfect job of returning to home, it won't descend below 400 ft. Still I wonder if this loss of contact followed by re-contact might be affecting the descent.
I'm going to try turning off obstacle avoidance for the next work around. Thanks for the tip. Any other advice would be most appreciated.

 

[Meta4]

Some other thoughts. I often fly in the mountains here in Idaho. This seems to happen more when I get the above 400 ft warning and simply ignore it. This is because as mountain rise, the 400 feet AGL rule goes up as well. I rarely fly more than 200 ft AGL even though I might be up the side of a mountain at the limit of 1,640 ft.
When using RTH either due to power decline or I just choose to return with it, the drone flies at its current elevation to a point over the Home as it should. Then when descending it arrives at about 400 ft AGL over home. Then it stops and won't drop no matter what I do. If I ignore it, it hangs and RTH won't descend. If I press down on the controller, it does nothing but hover. If I cancel RTH same thing, hangs and won't descend. Until I finally reach a critical point where it drops rapidly. I then have to press up on the controller just before landing to keep it from bouncing off the ground. It drops 400 ft in about 10 seconds. Its pretty scary and difficult to land.
Another thought it this. Often when flying in the mountains I loose control due to the mountains themselves. They block my signal and the drone loses contact. It then performs the RTH as it should and elevates and returns. Along the way I regain control, cancel the RTH and continue flying. After that it performs normally, until landing with RTH as per above. While it does a perfect job of returning to home, it won't descend below 400 ft. Still I wonder if this loss of contact followed by re-contact might be affecting the descent.
I'm going to try turning off obstacle avoidance for the next work around. Thanks for the tip. Any other advice would be most appreciated.

All of that isn't relevant.
But what is will be recorded in your flight data.

I cannot understand why you still haven't posted your flight data, more than a month later?
To fix the issue, it has to be identified and for that, the flight data is what's needed.
See post #16 for instructions.

 

[jeffcutler]

Try turning off obstacle avoidance and landing protection. Sounds like it is falsely detecting an obstruction below it, that it "thinks" would prevent a safe landing. Clean the downward sensors, as well.

SOLVED - MAYBE: This morning I was flying recreationally because there was some fog around. I thought my town, uncontrolled where I was flying, would look great with a ring of fog nearby. At one point while ascending, I went through a puff of cloud/fog/moisture. AND THEN the MA2 wouldn't descend.

I realized, seeing the fog, that even recreationally I should bring it down, so I pulled down manually on the left stick and nothing. 30 meters up - visible - but won't come down. Moves laterally perfectly. Spins fine. ASCENDS FINE.

On a hunch, instead of holding RTH, I slipped it into sport mode....but the downward sensor is the issue and that stays on during sport mode... THE drone sat at 34m as I moved it around the parking lot and thought about moving it directly above a grassy area (realizing if I can't get it down, it'll run out of fuel and drop).

Then, after moving around a bit laterally the sensor must have dried enough to view the ground and by now my battery was anxious to land. Not critical, but I keep my lower level higher than some people just to be safe.

It landed fine as my heart went back into my chest and I'm now drying her and recharging the batteries.

CONCLUSION - maybe it could have been a blocked landing sensor caused by moisture or some other blocking agent. While stuff charges, I'm finding a quick path to DISABLE LANDING SENSOR in case I run into this again. *No, I've flown 200+ missions and my drones have collectively been moist three times counting today.