I lost my Mavic and need help finding out what happened - FOUND BY STARZ!

[Pablo]

I can't help Pablo, but v sorry for the loss as I remember how excited you were about the trip [emoji107]


Sent from my iPhone using MavicPilots

Thanks Wacker! You don't buy one of these things unless you're prepared to lose it. I accept I was pushing it a bit with that flight, and although the circumstances are odd, I know if I could rewind time, that's a flight I probably shouldn't have attempted with 58% battery taking off. It's just so beautiful there that I got a bit carried away! That said I still maintain I would have got back easily enough had it not took over and descended at the worst possible moment.

Does everyone think it was 100% pilot error? I haven't even tried to contact DJI yet. Is there any point?

 

[maikm]

Done: Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Can't see too much extra information there to be honest. I would like to see confirmation that it auto-landed somewhere, but I don't.

I didn't ignore any return to home messages as has been suggested. Not as far as I'm aware anyway. I'm a fairly experienced flier, having had a P3 for over a year previously, so I've been in similar situations before without issue.

Well, there is this:

7m 53.8s 26% 11.013V Warning__The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now.

Are you sure you didn't get this warning on your remote?
You reached 30% battery at 6m 46.2s, and did not cancel POI until 8m 1.4s, according to the log. Also, the recorded speeds after POI cancel are very slow, I can't really see you attempting to move home.

With almost 2000 ft distance home, that probably qualifies as pilot error. Perhaps it would have been best to cancel POI right at 30%, ascend to well above the rock, and head home, possibly engaging sport mode to cut the remaining time?

 

[Pablo]

Well, there is this:

7m 53.8s 26% 11.013V Warning__The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now.

Are you sure you didn't get this warning on your remote?
You reached 30% battery at 6m 46.2s, and did not cancel POI until 8m 1.4s, according to the log. Also, the recorded speeds after POI cancel are very slow, I can't really see you attempting to move home.

With almost 2000 ft distance home, that probably qualifies as pilot error. Perhaps it would have been best to cancel POI right at 30%, ascend to well above the rock, and head home, possibly engaging sport mode to cut the remaining time?

I got that warning and at that time I was trying to figure out how to cancel POI ASAP. Then once I cancelled it I was trying to quickly figure out the best way around the rock as I was square behind it. That's why I was slow. I eventually got on top of the rock and just as I was about to blast it home it descended!

What still confuses me in the logs is that there's no mention of the critical battery auto-landing occurring. I would have expected to see that near the end of the logs, but it's missing.

 

[J-Dub]

I fly with 65-percent battery as my target (my Battery is Full Number). Fly 32-percent one direction, 32-percent home, gives you your 30-percent+ warning period in your pocket just in case...

 

[Sideeye]

Sorry about the loss. My brother lost 2 drones (photon 4 pro and a Mavic Pro) in a 2 week period. Because he ignored the rules of flight checks, and battery life is one of them. Hope you are able to find it, buy tracker for it, and floaty.

 

[Pablo]

I fly with 65-percent battery as my target (my Battery is Full Number). Fly 32-percent one direction, 32-percent home, gives you your 30-percent+ warning period in your pocket just in case...

Yes, that's pretty sensible advice. Usually I follow similar. it was such a great view, I just couldn't resist. I underestimated the height I'd have to fly to get on top of that rock. I think that's what really drained the battery.

 

[Pablo]

Sorry about the loss. My brother lost 2 drones (photon 4 pro and a Mavic Pro) in a 2 week period. Because he ignored the rules of flight checks, and battery life is one of them. Hope you are able to find it, buy tracker for it, and floaty.

Ouch, that's a killer.

I think this is sadly the end of the hobby for me now. I can't justify spending another significant sum of money on one of these.

 

[LawFlyer]

Ouch, that's a killer.

I think this is sadly the end of the hobby for me now. I can't justify spending another significant sum of money on one of these.

@Pablo - Don't give up yet. I shared your story with my wife Jane who happens to be British (she's from west London). Although your crash area is about 160 miles from our house, Jane wants to launch a rescue mission. "It would be a fun adventure!", she said.

I just have two concerns. The first is that this area is dangerous due to the proximity to Mexico. Mexico itself is great...we go all the time...but these border areas are used by armed drug traffickers, and due to that problem, local property owners who see people trespassing on their land have been known to shoot first and ask questions later. What can I say, it's the wild west out here.

My second and more practical concern is the size of that hill....do you really think it's climbable? I would hate to drive that far only to find the hill is 1,000 feet tall and impossible to climb. We are very happy off-roading in the Arizona desert, but rock climbing a vertical wall is probably out of the question.

If you think that hill could be reached easily enough, we might have to take a trip down this weekend.

 

[Pablo]

@Pablo - Don't give up yet. I shared your story with my wife Jane who happens to be British (she's from west London). Although your crash area is about 160 miles from our house, Jane wants to launch a rescue mission. "It would be a fun adventure!", she said.

I just have two concerns. The first is that this area is dangerous due to the proximity to Mexico. Mexico itself is great...we go all the time...but these border areas are used by armed drug traffickers, and due to that problem, local property owners who see people trespassing on their land have been known to shoot first and ask questions later. What can I say, it's the wild west out here.

My second and more practical concern is the size of that hill....do you really think it's climbable? I would hate to drive that far only to find the hill is 1,000 feet tall and impossible to climb. We are very happy off-roading in the Arizona desert, but rock climbing a vertical wall is probably out of the question.

If you think that hill could be reached easily enough, we might have to take a trip down this weekend.

Firstly, I wish there was more than a "Like" button. That you and your wife (I used to work in West London) would even consider it is really heartwarming!

As far as the proximity to Mexico goes, I don't think it's a huge worry having been there. It's only just off the road. There is a very basic barbed wire fence though, but it can't be more than 200/300m to the rock. Assuming you're willing to duck through the fence I very much doubt there'd be anyone within miles who'd kick up a fuss.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

Ok this extremely crude map might help. The x to the left is where I took off from. The rectangle is where I'd suggest you could park. There's a path up there that leads up the barbed wire fence, which starts where the other x is. From there it's a bit of a slope through the desert to the now infamous rock. I'd hope if you got round the back of there you might be able to spot it without too much of a climb.

As for the climb istelf, well, that was the least of my worries to be honest. I think it depends how far up it got stuck. Personally I was far more worried about the journey through the desert (maybe I watch too many nature shows ) than I was the climb itself.

If you do happen to try, and you do end up finding it. I will definitely pay you some money for it, and more importantly than that, I think you would become a bona fide forum LEGEND!

 

[J-Dub]

Beware Of Coyotes, Not the Four-Legged kind, the upright "human" version is quite ruthless at $4,000 per customer.

 

[maikm]

I don't know about the habits over there in Arizona, but would it a possibility to ask the local police or something to come along? Maybe even try finding out who owns this land and ask for permission?

 

[LawFlyer]

@Pablo -- We've done a preliminary investigation on Google Earth, and so far it looks like we may give it a go. As luck would have it, someone posted a photo on Panaramio (in Google Earth) which appears to show that same rock outcropping.

This is the photo, and I'll try to add it to the post as well:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/117203735.jpg

Based on this photo, it looks very do-able. Again, sometimes things look different in person, but we have certainly climbed worse hills than that.

As for the danger factor, as you know all Americans are armed to the teeth. For illustrative purposes, here's a photo of my wife on an average Sunday afternoon in AZ. I'm sure the area will be safe enough as long as we're there during daylight hours.

Assuming we're going to attempt a rescue, it would be helpful if someone could locate the Mavic's final GPS coordinates as it was descending. It's hard to tell if it landed on flat ground or if it may have tumbled a ways, but it would be good to have a fixed reference point to start the search.

 

[Helo]

@Pablo - Don't give up yet. I shared your story with my wife Jane who happens to be British (she's from west London). Although your crash area is about 160 miles from our house, Jane wants to launch a rescue mission. "It would be a fun adventure!", she said.

I just have two concerns. The first is that this area is dangerous due to the proximity to Mexico. Mexico itself is great...we go all the time...but these border areas are used by armed drug traffickers, and due to that problem, local property owners who see people trespassing on their land have been known to shoot first and ask questions later. What can I say, it's the wild west out here.

My second and more practical concern is the size of that hill....do you really think it's climbable? I would hate to drive that far only to find the hill is 1,000 feet tall and impossible to climb. We are very happy off-roading in the Arizona desert, but rock climbing a vertical wall is probably out of the question.

If you think that hill could be reached easily enough, we might have to take a trip down this weekend.

If you look closely at the log, the last signal was right at the top of the rock outcropping, from where you park if you walk to the south east just where the rock outcrop starts there is a crevice running from SE to NW you should be able to scramble up that crevice. It's not possible to tell the difficulty from Google Earth but there might not be much exposure.

Depending on the accuracy of the GPS it could have hit the rock face in which case you will be looking for a Mavic in a rock pile.

As for bad guys, its less than 1/2 mile to the rec area high up and open and can be seen from the road, a place they would avoid I would think (easy for me to say sitting behind a computer in Colorado huh).

Sorry about your lost drone Pablo. Good luck LawFlyer.

Just saw your last post. 31°23'52.57"N 111°05'42,14"W looks like the last location shown.

 

[Andrew F]

The video of the flight from my phone for reference (excuse the poor quality):

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1. I get a battery 30% warning and cancel POI on 13 seconds and take control.
2. On 59 seconds I have positioned it above the rock, facing back to my location.
3. I start to head home, then on 1min 5 seconds it just auto-descends behind the rock and it's gone.

Why does your video stop so abruptly upon descent?

 

[Kilrah]

Lost video downlink once it was behind the rock most likely.

 

[LawFlyer]

If you look closely at the log, the last signal was right at the top of the rock outcropping, from where you park if you walk to the south east just where the rock outcrop starts there is a crevice running from SE to NW you should be able to scramble up that crevice. It's not possible to tell the difficulty from Google Earth but there might not be much exposure.

Depending on the accuracy of the GPS it could have hit the rock face in which case you will be looking for a Mavic in a rock pile.

As for bad guys, its less than 1/2 mile to the rec area high up and open and can be seen from the road, a place they would avoid I would think (easy for me to say sitting behind a computer in Colorado huh).

Sorry about your lost drone Pablo. Good luck LawFlyer.

Just saw your last post. 31°23'52.57"N 111°05'42,14"W looks like the last location shown.

Yep -- I just found the flight log on MSinger's page and I see the final GPS info there. Really sucks that Google can't give us a little more detail. The west side of that rock hill looks really steep and nasty while the east side looks much better. I have watched the flight video several times and it's very hard to tell exactly where it went down....at one point it looks like the drone is directly over the top of the hill, and then it starts to move slightly further east before descending.

I'm a little worried that at least based on the video, it looks like the Mavic may have gone down directly into that dark crevice that's visible at 0:02 into the video. If so, it might be really inaccessible....but I still think it's worth a try. At the very least, I can send up my Mavic (with a full battery, of course) and I can take a look for it.

 

[Andrew F]

Looks like Smart RTH engaged. You should have (and apparently did have) your 10 seconds to cancel it before it engaged, then you could always have stopped it later (until you lost connection a whole minute later).
Smart RTH plans the return so that it has landed by the time it reaches the set critical level, so it starts quite a bit earlier.

HD doesn't give the most important battery info, maybe post your TXT file here so other tools can be used?

He may have accidentally hit the "set new home point" button. It is too easy to do that, IMHO.

 

[Helo]

Yep -- I just found the flight log on MSinger's page and I see the final GPS info there. Really sucks that Google can't give us a little more detail. The west side of that rock hill looks really steep and nasty while the east side looks much better. I have watched the flight video several times and it's very hard to tell exactly where it went down....at one point it looks like the drone is directly over the top of the hill, and then it starts to move slightly further east before descending.

I'm a little worried that at least based on the video, it looks like the Mavic may have gone down directly into that dark crevice that's visible at 0:02 into the video. If so, it might be really inaccessible....but I still think it's worth a try. At the very least, I can send up my Mavic (with a full battery, of course) and I can take a look for it.

Wow it looks like it had a nice soft landing and is sitting in that crevice right on top of the hill. It also looks like that south east approach is only about 30 degrees, doable. Go LawFlyer!!

 

[Andrew F]

Lost video downlink once it was behind the rock most likely.

Normally there is a "slow fade", etc.

I think this is a bit confusing of a situation. How can the software report 22% upon landing but no video or stick control? I've manually landed with 12% before (VERY lucky) so he should have been able to defeat RTH. My guess is he accidentally reset the home point or mucked with the default settings such that 30% was the "critical" landing. Either way, so sorry to hear about it. I'd suggest a $900 drone is not worth a broken ankle if that place is so inaccessible. Also, given the last glimpse of that "rock", I'd suggest the drone is fodder at this point as it likely tumbled down that rock face and was destroyed. Good luck to all, and sorry again, Pablo.

 

[Andrew F]

Wow it looks like it had a nice soft landing and is sitting in that crevice right on top of the hill. It also looks like that south east approach is only about 30 degrees, doable. Go LawFlyer!!View attachment 3961

I'm skeptical about that last reported location given the lack of communication. But that would be awesome if it is sitting there in that nice dry weather happily waiting to be picked up!