First video - first flight over water - minor issue

[Aussie Jazza]

I am a part of a group here in Australia who headed away on a 4 day fishing trip. I decided I would try fly out to get some footage as they headed to our weekend destination.

This was my first distance flight over water which ended being just over 1 kilometre. My furthest before was only 400metres. I was flying without wifi or cellular service with aircraft mode activated.

On the way back, I must have headed for a different cove which may have had a lead to a blocked direct line of sight communication leading to disconnection of remote and an error message. It gave me the option to hit home which I did.

As the drone got closer, my controller reconnected and I was able to pause home return and guide the aircraft back to me. am I right that my issue was a loss of direct line of sight comms?

i will admit that I had horrible thoughts of losing my drone considering the excessive cost these things are lol.

for interest sake, my video is as per link

 

[dirkclod]

Well glad that didn’t turn bad and you sank your bird.
Not having cellular or wifi made no difference In
your situation. I’m just going to say it was good you
had your RTH set or was higher than anything between
where you hit RTM and got the app back.
Everyone should just be aware of their surroundings if
something like this happens and it does to lots.
And yes it was because you lost LOS.

 

[PAW]

Nice save!

I know you didn't submit the video for critique, but I couldn't help but notice the horizon is badly tilted to the right. Not sure which Mavic you are using, but you may want to consider a gimbal calibration. Here's a clip that may help:
Mavic 2 Pro Gimbal Calibration

 

[Mossiback]

... leading to disconnection of remote and an error message. It gave me the option to hit home which I did...

If the RC was truly disconnected you would have no options. Without connection to the RC no commands could be sent to the AC. You can only hope that you had RTH set correctly and it would return and re-establish connection on the way back (which it did, yay!).

What are you flying?

 

[Aussie Jazza]

I was flying the MP2 Zoom which is the organisations property. This caused more concern as if I’d lost it I would have been pretty upset with myself.

i personally own an MP1 platinum which I would have used but it was packed away on that boat as I’ll be meeting them at a rendezvous point this morning.

I am very new to the joys of mavic drones. Thank you PAW, I will endeavour to fix that issue.

mossiback, I vaguely remember the message indicating a weak signal and it then offered and option to commence RTH. I gladly pressed yes lol

 

[DanMan32]

I've been thinking about when the app reports communication loss and offers RTH. My thinking up to now was that the app sees the signal intermittent, so offers to send RTH in hopes you at least have uplink.
But then I read the manual in more detail about fail-safe. It mentions, which most of us know, that it backtracks its path for 60 seconds. If signal is regained, it waits 10 seconds for controller commands. That's probably when it prompts you for RTH.

 

[Meta4]

As the drone got closer, my controller reconnected and I was able to pause home return and guide the aircraft back to me. am I right that my issue was a loss of direct line of sight comms?

Maybe .. and maybe not.
You can lose signal for a few different reasons.
As usual, the explanation will be in your recorded flight data.
To see what was really going on, go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
That will give you a detailed report on the flight data.

If you need help interpreting it you can come back and post a link to the report it gave you and someone might be able to analyse it and give you an understanding of the cause of the incident