First flight lost drone :(

[Yorkshire_Pud]

I doubt RTH height was the problem, if you look closely at the satellite imagery the takeoff point appears to have been under or VERY close to a tree's canopy, so I would assume it descended into the tree.
I have a take off point at home that is quite similar and its only safe to let a drone auto land an RTH if the take off was straight up to 7m+ so that the precision landing was enabled. Even then I watch the landing like a hawk ready to either cancel the auto landing or, if it works during precision landing ( can't remember ), 'nudge' the drone one way or another.
In the flight of this thread there was horizontal movement at a height of only a few feet so this would have been a normal GPS only landing.
I am a bit surprised the drone 'landed' there at all and that it didn't reject the landing site ...... but if it did reject the landing site and was hovering above the tree waiting for pilot instruction and none was received it would, I suppose, eventually reach critical battery forced landing and descend.

 

[Aerophile]

Watch out for tall trees. Especially when it's windy (I note there were many "strong wind" warnings in the logs...).

 

[retiredNH]

Another strong argument for VLOS, especially when learning flight. If the OP had maintained VLOS, would he have had this problem? I don't think so...

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

@JRoffers
I was wondering, was the drone recording video? I don't think so but if it was it would be interesting to see whether or not it climbed during the 60 retrace? Could you post the video please .... if there is one?

 

[tvdwouw]

Now the drone is recovered it should be possible to recover the flight logs from the drone and find out what really happened...

 

[Mikieh]

I did recover it. A couple busted propellers and a missing rear landing gear pad.
View attachment 158706

You’re a lucky man. My Yuneec Typhoon went down in deep woods due to battery failure and I never recovered it. Sob………Now it’s just waiting for the archaeologist!!!

 

[Tim3459575]

Would Apple airtags be a reasonable option for tracking ?

 

[msinger]

Would Apple airtags be a reasonable option for tracking ?

It would be better than nothing. However, it's not going to help in cases where the drone is not within Bluetooth range of an Apple device.

 

[Dbez1]

A big shout out to our daily heroes Meta4 and Yorkshire_Pud for coming to the rescue again!

Amen to that! There are multiple people on this forum that are very knowledgeable and want to be helpful. A giant thank you to those persons for all you have helped.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Now the drone is recovered it should be possible to recover the flight logs from the drone and find out what really happened...

Unfortunately probably not, the beep beep logs on the drone are probably encrypted, they are on the M2P/Z..... darn it. Hence my asking about the video in the post immediately before yours.

Unfortunately JRoffers hasn't logged in since Dec 27.