First water flight - lost remote control link RTH saved my M2P!

[fguthrie]

Hi all, hope all is well with you. it is a beautiful day today in San Diego and I took my first flight over water. Everything was going well until I looked at the screen on my phone and the DJI app and instead of giving me the readouts for speed, distance, etc., it showed "N/A". It was only around 1,600 feet away from me. I'm trying to figure out if something/someone jammed my signal or what happened? The good news is that "Return to Home" kicked in (as it should have) and my M2P came back to me. Definitely curious as to what you all think might have occurred though. I took off from class G air space outside of the park ... I'm wondering if someone saw the drone and attempted to jam the signal? Your thoughts are appreciated ... flight log attached. I also uploaded the log to Phantomhelp, you can view it here: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com One note, see the black part of the lake? What is that all about? Airmap shows the area as "Class G", but I wonder if that black part of the lake means "Stay away"?

 

[sar104]

The black and blue parts of the lake are just the result of aerial images taken at different times, with different lighting.

 

[Vic Moss]

It's very unlikely that anyone jammed your signal. If it lost signal due to electronic noise, it's likely local interference.

However, you mention flying in San Diego. Obviously there is a lot of DOD traffic in SD. Both Air and Naval. I don't know if you were within 3000' of any U.S. Navy Vessels, but if so, they may have taken action against your drone. I've never heard of them doing that, but they are allowed. DOD is one of the few U.S. Alphabet agencies given permission to take mitigative actions against unidentified drones that stray into their airspace.

Luckily RTH kicked in and saved the day.

 

[sar104]

I don't see an obvious explanation for the loss of connection, which lasted 11.5 seconds. The aircraft was in good LOS and was yawing CCW at the time, and approximately facing the HP when the connection dropped. There was no warning in the form of earlier lost data packets. It was an RC disconnect - not a loss of connection between the mobile device and the RC.

 

[fguthrie]

I don't see an obvious explanation for the loss of connection, which lasted 11.5 seconds. The aircraft was in good LOS and was yawing CCW at the time, and approximately facing the HP when the connection dropped. There was no warning in the form of earlier lost data packets. It was an RC disconnect - not a loss of connection between the mobile device and the RC.

View attachment 100939

Thank you for taking a deeper look at this, I do appreciate it. Hopefully it will not re-occur!