Help Determining Why I Couldn't Get The Mavic to Fly Back

[Shaggy505]

Greetings;
Learning the mavic and no experience with dat files or analyzing and would like help. I was flying last weekend on lake St. Claire in Mi, when I tried to fly it back to the inlaws boat it wouldn't come within a 100 ft or so. I remembered reading a post here of switching to sport mode and was able to get it back via sport mode. Trying to figure out what I can do to ensure this doesn't happen again, was it my settings, did it try to land where it took off (I don't recall getting a low battery notification), etc. I was able to download what I believe to be the right dat file to my mac from that date (9/23/17) but not sure the best way to link for someone to review. It is 332.6MB.

Attached is a Dropbox link, the date should be 9/23/17 for the flight.

Login - Dropbox

Thanks in advance!

 

[sar104]

Put the file on Dropbox and then post the link.

 

[Shaggy505]

uploading to Dropbox now, will post link once done. Thank you!

 

[Shaggy505]

Login - Dropbox

 

[sar104]

Login - Dropbox

That doesn't seem to be a public link - did you use the "Share" function to create it?

 

[Shaggy505]

let's try this, apparently it wasn't shared...
Dropbox - Public

 

[sar104]

You had your flight limit distance set to 1500 m (1500] => fly_limit_distance). At around 800 seconds into the flight it reached that distance, and went into hover until you collected it.

 

[Shaggy505]

You are the man, thank you. So question, was I able to get back by switching to sport mode and does that over ride the limit I had or did we just get close enough with boat as we crept back to it in reverse? Thanks again, it was a bit terrifying!

 

[sar104]

You are the man, thank you. So question, was I able to get back by switching to sport mode and does that over ride the limit I had or did we just get close enough with boat as we crept back to it in reverse? Thanks again, it was a bit terrifying!

It appears that you went back and retrieved it. It did not move until you had it in the boat and set off to the east again a couple of minutes later. Sport mode did not change anything.

 

[tracer bullet]

Do you remember, or perhaps sar104 can tell, where was the home point set? I can picture a scenario where you launched and home point was set. Then you do the boating thing and move more than that distance from the home point. Perhaps the Mavic would be reluctant to come to you if it used that original home point as a base? Setting a new home point to the RC itself may have been a solution.

 

[sar104]

Do you remember, or perhaps sar104 can tell, where was the home point set? I can picture a scenario where you launched and home point was set. Then you do the boating thing and move more than that distance from the home point. Perhaps the Mavic would be reluctant to come to you if it used that original home point as a base? Setting a new home point to the RC itself may have been a solution.

Distance limit appears to be from home point, so resetting it to the RC might work in that situation.

 

[Shaggy505]

Odd, we didn’t go very far in boat before I was able to guide it closer and land on boat but as you said it was probably closer than I realized as I was very nervous. Time to change the max distance. I didn’t consider being over water how much further you can keep line of sight. Anyway, thank you for reviewing the log and letting me know!

 

[Shaggy505]

Thanks for all, I will figure out how to reset the home point as well and be sure to do this when moving. I must have just moved close enough back to the mavic under the 1500 range because it did fly it back to me. Does the data show that it hovered at the limit then moved forward again. Great community, much appreciated!

 

[sar104]

Odd, we didn’t go very far in boat before I was able to guide it closer and land on boat but as you said it was probably closer than I realized as I was very nervous. Time to change the max distance. I didn’t consider being over water how much further you can keep line of sight. Anyway, thank you for reviewing the log and letting me know!

If you look at the direction and distance (below), the limit was reached heading west after takeoff. Once it stopped at around 800 seconds at 1500 m, it did not move much further west at all - just a few meters. It exceeded its 1500 m limit by 4.8 m at one point. It was able to move tangentially to the limit circle and you did move it south by nearly 20 m, although you then moved it around 10 m back to the north before intercepting in with the boat. Recovery was at 990 seconds.

 

[Shaggy505]

Got it, all based on limit from where it took off/home point. I think I got very lucky that day. I had emptied my pockets and was ready for a swim..