I unfortunately lost my drone to the ocean while visiting the Algarve in Portugal a few days ago after only having it for a few days.
I was wondering if someone could have a look at my flight record below and let me know if this was all user error?
At one point it said to return to home so I accepted and swiped to do so and then 5 seconds later it told me it was landing. I tried and tried to get it to the nearest cliff but it just didnt make it
The Mavic is very easy to fly and the problem with that is that it can encourage a new flyer to get too adventurous too early.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong and you need to know these and how to make sure they don't cause a problem for you.
Flying over the ocean is good because there is nothing to hit, but it is a very unforgiving environment.
One mistake out there can mean that the fun stops.
Losing a drone can provide expensive lessons, but studying the data to see what went wrong can give useful lessons that tend to be remembered.
You can better see the problems with this flight by viewing the data here:
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
The obvious problems were launching with a battery at 57% and flying away in the direction that a strong wind was blowing.
By flying off downwind, you have already chosen a difficult flight home against a strong headwind.
It's like rowing in a river. If there's no current it doesn't matter which direction you swim.
But if the current is strong, rowing upstream means you should have no problem coming home.
Go downstream and .... you get the picture.
In post #2 look closely at the windspeeds and the altitudes.
You'll see that at higher altitudes, the wind was stronger.
It was easily manageable at 80 ft but too strong for the drone to fly against 780 feet up.
There was an important warning message at 3:24.9 that said:
The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now
Battery level was 39%.
If you had turned towards home at that point and descended to 50 feet above the sea to get out of the strong upper winds, you had a good chance of getting the Mavic back.
Instead of flying a little west of north, you pointed the drone toward the northeast, flying further away until 5:51.2 when you engaged RTH with the battery at 24%.
It probably didn't matter much after that point you left RTH to do the driving but RTH is a slow driver and the drone was only making 4-5mph in the direction of home.
At 6:04.9 (battery 22%), you cancelled and took over and pointed the drone to the northeast again.
Making slow headway, you tried Sport Mode but the small extra speed it gave only burned the battery faster.
You tried RTH again at 7:02.5, leaving RTH to do the driving again.
It made painfully slow progress against the headwind until at 7:28.6 (battery 12%), the drone began to autoland.
It does that when the battery won't get it home and there is only enough for the landing.
On land that's better than flying till empty and crashing but at sea, it doesn't make much difference.
You fought the autolanding with full left and right stick.
As the drone descended, the forward speed increased (lower altitude = lower wind strength) but it was too late.
At 9:21.3 the battery reached Critical Low Voltage (3.3 volts per cell), pushing the left and right sticks further, drained the battery to zero and it was all over.
