how to handle a disconnection midflight?

[Turn11]

Find a unobstructed area after you are comfortable flying. Take it out a hundred yards or so. Turn off the display and use your RC display to orient AC and come back.
Take it out again, left or right yaw without watching where AC is pointing and RTH without looking at AC
The elephant in the conversation is ATTI where you are completely at the mercy of the elements. The AC will maintain AGLbut breeze will blow AC and pretty fast. I bought a Hubsan H501 to learn. It has a P mode / ATTI mode switch

Just a thought. Be prepared. OJT can be tough with no prior experience.

 

[Mossiback]

You can also initiate RTH and when you see the distance decrease, cancel it and fly manually. At the least you will know that it is heading in the right direction. This is assuming that RTH is set properly.

 

[dennyc39]

I've had several disconnects. Current theory is that I stressed or jostled the connector into the iPad.
You can easily practice flying it back in a safe area, using only the RC display, even if you can't see it. The main requirement is that you must be able to climb to a safe altitude without hitting an obstruction. Several times I have lost visual contact only because the drone descended below a tree line or some non-sky background. Practice it once or twice and you'll have confidence you can do it when needed.

I recommend taking both thumbs off the sticks while you collect your wits (if necessary). The drone will wait for you. Try to assure yourself there are no overhead obstructions.

On the RC display, note the altitude and distance.

Left thumb forward carefully and watch for increasing altitude. Take it up to max or to a safe return altitude.

Note the distance. Then, move right stick to 12 o'clock for a few seconds and watch what happens to distance. If distance is decreasing, continue until it stops decreasing. If not, try the same with 3 o'clock, 6. oclock, and 9 oclock positions, keeping the distance decreasing. Soon you will have it at least within sight and can fly it visually and land it manually.

Note that you don't need any yaw movement to do this, which may help to reduce confusion. You can leave it pointing in the same direction you last knew before the display died, and this will help guess which way to pull it home. If you move the right stick toward the "home" direction, whatever that is, a quadcopter flies just as well as if it were pointed face forward. If no visual contact, once you give it a yaw command, then you won't know which way it's pointing. No worry. With this method, you won't need to know or to care which way it's pointing as long as you can reduce the distance. You likely will not have obstruction avoidance sensing, so clearance altitude is important.

So consider letting go the left stick once you are happy with your altitude. This also eliminates the chance of an accidental descent if you were not accurate in left-right movements of the left stick.

 

[MadMaqx]

Awesome responses I could have used you guys in the field. Note to one self very difficult to pull usb with sweating hands[emoji16]

 

[Mavhawk]

Absolutely correct. Watch the reported distance as you fly the drone in a straight line for a few seconds. If the distance increases, just apply reverse stick to start reducing the distance. You can then add some left or right drift to see if the rate of change increases or decreases. Again, if the rate of change decreases you’ll need to do the opposite of whatever you were doing. If the range decreases steadily then starts to increase again you’ve probably flown past yourself and will need to go through the routine above again to bring the drone closer still so that you can hear and see it.

Thanks for the response, Bob. That's good advice. I need to practice this so I can get a feel for it. Marc.

 

[m0j0]

A few things that really need to be stressed. Disconnected is the apps means of communicating to you that you are no longer recieving data in the app. The app connection and the RC connection are seperate and distinct. The RC is what controls the mavic the app provides video, telemetry and flight data... You absolutely do not need the app to fly it back. When you are new RTH is your friend. Make certain RTH is properly set up in the app and set it to a safe height that will clear all obstacles before you start flying anywhere. Do not launch before you have the green GPS lock and recorded homepoint. If something happens and you lose connection and don't know where it is... hit the RTH button and monitor the telemetry on the RC. If you can see it fly it back yourself. To be honest you should be training for all scenarios until you are confident.

Here are the scenarios I train for:

1) Application disconnected (LOS)
Train - Take it out about 500 yards disconnect the cord bring it home
2) Application disconnected (lost location)
Train - Take it out about 500 yards break eye contact use the telemetry to bring it back don't eyeball it until it is overhead.
3) Application connected (Lost visual location)
Train - Take it out about 500 yards break eye contact use the app to bring it back. Don't eyeball it until it is overhead.
4) Application connected (lost RC connection)
Train - Take it out to 500 yards and shut down the controller. (Give it a few seconds and try to reconnect)
5) Lost GPS connection
Train - You need a trainer here. Buy a cheap $50 trainer and work on flying it outside where there is some wind. You should already have one if you have a Mavic. No way should you being flying a 1K quad before learning on one you can crash.

NOTE: you can add another layer of training by hiting RTH in some of these scenarios. When using RTH understand that you can still control the speed of the return by using the sticks. You can also lower the altitude during the RTH by using the sticks. Remember if you are out and lose connection while you are at 350 feet the copter will return home at that altitude even if that isn't what you have your settings dailed in at on the app. Use the sticks to lower the altitude to an optimal altitude. This is really handy if you notice that you have flown out with the wind and are having a hard time getting it back.

After you have done this move your scenario out further and keep working until you are comfortable during all scenarios and ... absolutely understand what is happening when things go sideways.

Protip - if you can see it you should be able to bring it back using the technigue below. This was the one tool that really helped me be calm when I lost video on my old quads. It has saved my often.

 

[DanMan32]

Take the advice of the cover to the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy - DON'T PANIC!
Also always know where your towel is so you can cast some shade over your display from bright sunlight.

 

[dbyantis]

I am a newbie and I know how to change the settings, presently I have the setting to RTH. What are some of the circumstances that would cause you to use one of the other options

If you are flying from a boat over water, you may prefer to have the Mavic hover vs. return to the launch point since it may have moved, or another example is flying under a canopy of trees set to hover. I agree, though that RTH on RC disconnect seems to be the most usual setting.

 

[harvest moon]

It has happened to me several times. If it is not in my LOS I always hit the rth. I have never had a problem with that. When it gets above me I cancel the rth, land on my own and restart everything. The RTH is your friend

 

[RobH2]

I respect the comment about a bizillion Android devices out there. However, I only fly Crystal Sky devices and I occasionally get a lost connection. I use RTH for lost signal and have never had an issue.

 

[Marko9219]

Hover would be a good option if you planned on flying under a bridge, you wouldn't want it losing connection under a bridge and flying up to RTH.

Dynamic RTH would be useful if you were launching from a moving platform such as a boat.

Going into a hover under a bridge, with probably zero GPS satellites locked in, would instantly put you into ATTI mode, and it would be probably seconds before it flew itself into disaster.