How real is the fear of Fly Aways?

[jotto]

How about a malfunction (motor stopping, firmware crashing or other hardware failure) causing it to fall out of the sky?

That happened a lot in the early drone days because of bugs and poor hardware. Has anyone had that with DJI drones?

 

[ac0j]

How about a malfunction (motor stopping, firmware crashing or other hardware failure) causing it to fall out of the sky?

That happened a lot in the early drone days because of bugs and poor hardware. Has anyone had that with DJI drones?

Even a good portion of ^^^those^^^ losses have been explained as pilot error. Due to Ice, props not being properly seated, batteries not fully locked into place, flying too far with a low battery........
once in a great while there is a real Mavic failure. but they are very few and far between.

 

[msinger]

How about a malfunction (motor stopping, firmware crashing or other hardware failure) causing it to fall out of the sky?

Sure, malfunctions can cause a fly away (or a drone crash). Those scenarios are not common though.

 

[dronerdave]

I found the whole hobby to be a bit of a learning curve which continues daily being I'm new to it. Yeah I've read the manual but it's easy to miss some stuff. I get more out of experiencing things than reading but going back through the manual and some Y-Tube videos helped me a lot. And so does reading this forum. I took small steps at first and am gaining knowledge the more I fly. I've made plenty of mistakes but nothing I would classify as a fly away.

I can't get State Farm insurance here in California so if the craft crashes it's all out of my pocket. Any time something goes wrong, the adrenaline flows, especially if it's where the MP can't be rescued from. My first flight over water pumped me up but it's basically more routine now. I don't know what I did to make the controller slip into ATTI mode, but that was a eye opener. Almost landed itself in the water and once it started up it kept climbing on its own. I was able to slowly get back to the takeoff point though.

I avoid windy weather but felt it was a good idea to learn how to fly in it. Wind can catch you off guard. Also I never thought about having to land my Mavic in my hand but the other day I lost the rear landing gear and had to learn very quickly how to do that. And yes it was my fault I lost the landing gear. I'm just now learning to fly in rough hilly terrain after having the MP for 6 month. I find flying in different terrains exhilarating but if she takes off to who knows where, it'll probably be something I did or missed.

 

[Lopez0015]

fly away"? What’s that""? Sport+ mode

 

[Lopez0015]

Is like Santa". Is no real But bring you presents

 

[Mike4884]

fly away"? What’s that""? Sport+ mode

That was funny!!!


..
..
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NOT!

 

[Oyibo VFX]

Common sense prevails.
I have a number of (DJI) drones, including an Inspire 2 with X5S and additional lenses and have over 800 missions in almost 900km of flight.
So far.... no issues that are related to "fly aways".
Sometimes you need to fly with caution instead of big balls.

 

[AnzacJack]

I the only flyaway I have had was with a blade 350qx about 5 years ago. I was just starting out with multirotors and equipment that had gps equipment on board.
The blade didn’t have any telemetry so I thought I strap an android phone to the top to gather some data (altitude, speed etc). My mistake of course, was that I strapped the phone right over the gps. I had only had the thing for about a week and was so impressed with the technology. I was demo’ing this great machine for a friend, take of and it’s rises to height. I am in the middle of bragging how good it just hovers in place with no input when it suddenly banks over and zooms off. I was speechless.
Amazingly it flew about 3 mile away, went into low power mode and landed right into a construction site. Because it had phone on the top, the construction workers handed it into the local police station and they where able to track me down. I had my machine returned unscathed.

Since then I have flown dozens of different platforms, always take care with what I’m doing and never experienced another fly away. I have also taught many students that also have flown many drones, and as far as I know none of them have experienced flyaways. I really think it’s a rare event that seems more common place due to the “pilots’ crying loudly and trying to place blame anywhere other than themselves

 

[Arkarian]

Always observe the wind. If you fly too far down wind and then fly back through a heavy headwind, you increase your risk of loosing your aircraft. This could be perceived as a flyaway. When the aircraft is out of power it will attempt to land where it is.

Another perceived flyaway, if you are using follow me mode and are on a bike, boat, in a car, hiking etc, RTH home is where it took off from and it will appear to fly away when it is actually doing what it was set to do. Return to launch point.

 

[Amarand]

The fear is absolutely real.

It's good to practice, practice, practice what to do in the case of lost/bad signal, or if something else happens you didn't account for. RTH isn't your only option.

First day, I decided to take off (4 feet) and land.

First time, it worked great. Took off, landed. Yay!

Second time, it worked great. Took off, landed. Double yay!

Third time, it took off and shot up 20 feet into the air, coming back onto the roof of my house, and hovering. I was freaking out! My heart was literally pounding in my chest. Then, it started to rain a little. I was like: "What would Captain Kirk in Wrath of Khan do?"

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, imagined where the drone was, thought in 3D (versus 2D), visualized its current orientation, took over manual control, slid it "forward" (away from the house roof), and once I could see it visually again, I landed it manually, holding the stick down steadily until the rotors stopped spinning.

I was done for the day.

That was literally me trying to do an automatic take-off and landing. The third time, I have NO IDEA what happened. Same take-off spot, same GPS signals, same procedure. Random things happen.

Needless to say, my backyard Nest camera captured the whole thing, and I look "hilarious" when I'm freaking out. Practice is the only thing that will give you confidence over time.

 

[Johnmcl7]

My Mavic was my first drone and initially I was concerned about losing it but I found it useful to read through threads where drones had been lost or crashed to understand what went wrong and to avoid making the same mistakes. As others in this thread have pointed out while many thread titles and opening posts suggest an unavoidable flyaway, most are down to pilot error and there's very few actual genuine flyaways.

I don't worry about a flyaway and more concerned about making a mistake as it's easy to get carried away but I'm usually careful and keep the drone in open areas and fairly high up so that it can't crash into anything.

 

[Arkarian]

Have a checklist
Keep it in sight
Don’t go under bridges or behind structures.
Don’t fly too low especially over water.
Account for a head wind coming back.
Trees in winter are easily miss judged because you can’t see the branches very well.
Know your airspace.
Read up before doing upgrades and then make sure all settings are correct afterwards. Don’t rush.
Flying at night is a whole new ballgame. You have to disable some sensors or it will crash trying to find the ground.

Think and then do.

 

[DavidNDC]

This is nothing, you should have been around during the Phantom 1 and 2 days. There was a time when I actually considered tethering my P1 with fishing line.. lol

I've had my Mavic Pro for exactly one year this week and have never had any indication that I was not in full control or about to experience a fly-away. Not saying it won't happen, but I feel much more confident with these newer birds than I did with the earlier generations that's for sure.

 

[Huge Bama Fan]

Every thing I have ever had go wrong while flying after going back I found was my fault. For instance even though everything else on my app is set for imperial the RTH is in meters had I paid attention I would has noticed easily. I have gotten in to a habit of doing drills every so often ( shut remote off, kill app etc.

 

[jbjeep]

It will fly away if it loses GPS and goes into atti mode. Had this happen twice with my Standard. Unfortunately the Mavic has no atti mode to practice with.

 

[zorr0]

Had already read all but the last and just read that one. Thanks for the links.

I did notice that you didn't actually answer my question Coming from Mavic Help, I read that as a warning sign. I'll do whatever I can ... but not having you say, "Your chances are minimal if you follow these rules", makes me a little suspect Stuff happens...but does stuff happen to the best of us? Have YOU ever had a fly-away?

I have had 2 flyaways but both were with a nonexpensive brand. Never with my MavicPilots Pro or Parrot Bebop2, also a decent drone. I use a dependable phone(iPhone) and I don’t push my luck. I like that “not if but when” I have been flying for almost a yr with my Pro. No problems.

 

[Airborne24]

Amen to that!

 

[Ifti]

Needless to say, my backyard Nest camera captured the whole thing, and I look "hilarious" when I'm freaking out.

You NEED to share this video!!!!!

 

[Irish-apple]

Great post and great answers there [emoji106]