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First Crash! (OMG my precious mavic turn into mavic kamikaze into moving traffic)

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This is a great idea!
My sticker on the hood of my MP worked about twice and now the brain just fuzzes it out and I forget.

I'm definitely doing this ribbon thing. Blue not pink tho:cool:

Yeah any old bright fluro type rescue tape will do, I just happened to have this piece hanging about and thought “That’ll do”.
Spot of black urethane and let it dry.

The trouble I see with the combo gimbal cover / gimbal clamp accessory is some like to fly with the cover on , expect carrying the original spare might solve that for those in that situation.
 
The report stated the Blackhawk was at 500 AGL which is 100 feet above where the UAV should be. And military aircraft are built stronger than civilian aircraft. This incident did not disable the Blackhawk, the UAV it flew into the Blackhawk and busted apart. There was slight non-disabling damage to the fuselage and two dents on the rotor that had to be replaced, part of rhe drone was found in the cowling of rhe Blackhawk. After landing, it was grounded until a safety inspection could be performed. Whether a hobbiest or 107, the UAV had no business being at that height, and it could have been much worse. Not positive, but there may have been a TFR that day because the UN meeting. If so the UAV should not have been in the air at any height.

There is no regulation against a hobby flier flying above 400 feet AGL. Just sayin.

And to the other poster who said you can hear a Blackhawk coming at you...hardly. When fast a low they are on top of you very quickly with very little time to react. Lots of dead enemies can attest to that...
 
There is no regulation against a hobby flier flying above 400 feet AGL. Just sayin.

And to the other poster who said you can hear a Blackhawk coming at you...hardly. When fast a low they are on top of you very quickly with very little time to react. Lots of dead enemies can attest to that...

Correct, no regulation, however it is advised. And even if it was recreational, it is still wreckless to fly at an altitude where manned aircraft are flying.

And I did check. There are No Fly Zones over NYC, Not knowing if the incident was in one, I cannot comment on that. However, there was a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) in place that day, so No One should have been in the air, including the unknown pilot in question.
 
I'm a 63 year old guy.... You mean I can't like certain colors because I'm a guy? When did that happen? I guess I missed the memo.
Of course I didn't mean that, I would also suggest this for use with the Mavis gimbal protector ...:rolleyes:
 

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It sounds like you were in atti mode due to the interference from the car. I have learned to do a pre flight checklist every time. No whipping it out ( definitely not when I'm irritated) and flying around any metal will always cause it to switch modes. I even learned this lesson with my Spark, thankfully the Spark is super tough. ... I think DJI should remove ATTI mode because it's dangerous, as you found out
 
Hmm. I think we can all learn from this incident. Aviation safety only improves by learning from other peoples mistakes. Like Jeremy, I too have found it all too easy to forget to remove the gimbal clamp. I put a sticker on the front top to remind myself, but I like the ribbon much better. You just can't lay the drone on the ground with the ribbon dangling to remind you. Just like we used on the gear lock pins on my 747!

This incident also woke me up from my dream to use one of the solar panels on the side of my sailing yacht as a takeoff and landing platform. Again maybe too much metal. Your mishap probably saved me Jeremy. Thank you.

Has anyone had any experience of using a drone to active track a yacht underway? Yes I read about flying over water, but so far I have not had any problems. Getting it back on board seems a challenge. Anyone got any ideas.

Ian
 
Hmm. I think we can all learn from this incident. Aviation safety only improves by learning from other peoples mistakes. Like Jeremy, I too have found it all too easy to forget to remove the gimbal clamp. I put a sticker on the front top to remind myself, but I like the ribbon much better. You just can't lay the drone on the ground with the ribbon dangling to remind you. Just like we used on the gear lock pins on my 747!

This incident also woke me up from my dream to use one of the solar panels on the side of my sailing yacht as a takeoff and landing platform. Again maybe too much metal. Your mishap probably saved me Jeremy. Thank you.

Has anyone had any experience of using a drone to active track a yacht underway? Yes I read about flying over water, but so far I have not had any problems. Getting it back on board seems a challenge. Anyone got any ideas.

Ian
Make sure you turn off any downward facing sonar, obstacle avoidance, etc, as the water plays games with them. Make sure RTH is not set for take off point as it will fly back to where you launched from. Practice hand launching/catching on land, and get comfortable with it before trying it on the boat. Google "Flying a Drone from a boat", and "Flying a Done over water" to get inputs from others to learn their mistakes and lessons learned.
 
Make sure you turn off any downward facing sonar, obstacle avoidance, etc, as the water plays games with them. Make sure RTH is not set for take off point as it will fly back to where you launched from. Practice hand launching/catching on land, and get comfortable with it before trying it on the boat. Google "Flying a Drone from a boat", and "Flying a Done over water" to get inputs from others to learn their mistakes and lessons learned.
Thanks for the advice. The Mavic is not so catch friendly as say a Phantom. A good glove is probably needed!
 
The steps towards my first crash. horrible 23 of my piloting experience.

1. someone in the car with me really irritates me I was soaked in his negative energy lol

2.Thus I pull over on the side of the road in the national park forest, very little to no car, 2-way traffic. (I need to set something FREE at this point, what better than my precious Mavic)

3.becuase of the rough terrain, for the first time I figure to use my car hood as the lift-off platform

4.I quickly assemble the Mavic on my car's hood; took of the main protected cover....but for the first time ever I forgot to remove the piece that is securing the gimble in place..you know that piece right.

5.I fire up the RC > Mavic > Dji app...( Mod Removed ) tell me it needs another update. (an update was done just the day before) O WELL, I reluctantly stand on the side of the forest road waited for whatever that update is, to do its thing.

6. Finally, the update it's complete, I figure I will restart everything before lift-off, this is where I realize the gimble securing piece wasn't removed this whole time, ( Mod Removed )!!! I have it removed and hating myself for not doing so for the first time. anyways this thing needs to fly now! I meant now.

7. there is a saying, trouble often comes in pairs or triplets. I can hear a car engine closing in about 20 seconds away. I lift-off Mavic from my car hood..it hover up 1/2 meter and immediately starts to fast bearing to the right clearly not where I want it to be, at this point the Mavic has gone kamikaze, I tried to fight it the RC, it's a tough battle, as the MAD MAVIC wanting to head up into the deep forest, I wanting it to come back towards me and land. 18 seconds into the battle, suddenly it shifts its trajectory towards the oncoming traffic.. at 45 degrees angle closing in on windshield level ..miss the car by 1.25 second to impact, slammed onto the small rock terrain back towards my side of the road, with my RC fixed down, its still wanting to kamikaze up away, chipping the rock gravel flying..I ran to it and finally manage to SHUT THIS BS DOWN without getting bladed. there...it survived the forest slam and a smashing into a moving car windshield..by some miner scratched.

if my Mavic was a boy it is now a MEN without a doubt.

Please do share your constructive and rude comment at will

ps. the person I'm with saw the whole thing, later told me that oncoming car driver had her mouth open...omg

INFO UPDATE:

Sorry guy's my apologies my Mavic kamikaze incident actually happened in a provincial park..not a national park.

and because I was battling my lose control Mavic, I end up walked onto the oncoming traffic lane to the left, because that's the direction where it when crazy off to..thus the car can see me from a far..and it stops about 20M from where I was standing..obviously because I'm out on the road..and the drone missed the windshield and turn towards me and crashed. there

Also, I'm here to share, no bs trolling or what not. I just drop the mic~ just do you know.

Fly Safe
Your story had me in stitches. Thought my life was epic haha!
 
Thanks for the advice. The Mavic is not so catch friendly as say a Phantom. A good glove is probably needed!

Watch some videos on hand catching and learn from others mistakes.
Bring it down to just above your height, let it hover, grab the bottom carefully, DO NOT PULL DOWN, it will fight you to maintain the hover. While holding it, press the left stick down until it shuts off. If your planning to hand catch turn off the downward sensors or it will try to avoid you.
 
After the firmware update did you at least reset/check your settings???? I missed that part in your story hahaha, Sorry to hear about this dude, We can't rush with these drones, pre-flight checks are actually important. Better luck next time..............
 
So, havent recieved my mavic yet...whsts the deal with metal? Yes I'm educated about metal and compasses. messes the up badly. however it doesn't mess with gps or it logging a location. I've been flying a racing drone for years without compasses. If you don't use RTH or some other special flight mode seems like it shouldnt need one.
With RTH "seems like" it would fly from point A to B. It wouldn't matter which way it was facing. For all it cares you could fly home sideways or backwards and still land at spot B facing the wrong direction. I get it that some modes like heading hold "my old quad" obviously needs a compass for.
No one seems to have answered this one, and it's a good question. The quick answer is that the Mavic is more of a self driving Cadillac than an FPV bird. It has no ATTI mode, where you can fly more or less the way you would fly an FPV drone. Although it will drop into ATTI mode if all else fails, it relies almost entirely on GPS for position and the compass for heading. The magnetic heading tells the drone which way it needs to go to maintain GPS position when it drifts, and to stay on course for things like return to home, or any of the special modes such as POI.

It's true that GPS alone could provide heading information, since the drone could move around and then determine which way it is facing at the moment, but that is transient information. This is not guaranteed to succeed, and would result in the Mavic moving around more or less erratically, not knowing its orientation, while it tried to set up the compass.

You might then ask another question: why can't the Mavic automatically move around, and use GPS to calibrate the compass on be on its way? This is really a fairly complicated programming challenge, and not guaranteed to get the right answer. One problem with automatic calibration is that there may be magnetic perturbations during flight that could throw off an accurate calibration and cause erratic flight later, long after the problem has gone away. If there were multiple magnetic sources, the Mavic might experience a string of these in a single flight, causing a complex series of movements.

Since the magnetic calibration on the Mavic is so stable, DJI decided to keep things simple: stick with the calibrated value,and if it finds that this causes position errors, give a message, and let the pilot land and do a good calibration.
 
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