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I think my drone was taken down by GPS jammer

brevard2024

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was several hundred feet away from a 600ft laker ship in St lawrence sea way. When all of a sudden saw branches and water and signal was gone. I was so focused on ship i wasn't watching anything else, I was giving it up throttle to gain height many seconds before impact. I did see on RC the altitude was reported as 1000ft. I did have video stored on RC, after review, I know it couldn't have been over 50ft. I am pretty sure i was trying to move foward toward ship, but in fact i was moving away. wasn't able to recover. mine3 drone.
Anyone else had drone jammed, I suppose it could have just gone haywire. was only about 1000ft from me.
 
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Are you sure you didn't fly into something?
You can follow the directions below and someone may be able to tell what exactly happened.

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
  • Post your flight data to get help
  • Go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
  • Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
  • That will give you a detailed report on the flight data.
  • Come back and post a link to the report it provides.
You are also welcome to just post the txt file here.

Upload and view DJI Phantom, Mavic, and Spark flight logs online

@Meta4 and @slup are great at offering explanations from the data.
 
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Are you sure you didn't fly into something?
AND Those ships have some pretty strong radar equipment as well as other stuff You could very well have lost your signal because of that. Intentional Jamming is possible BUT The equipment is not easy to assemble and I would think only a select few have the "guts" to use it. I myself sure wouldnt mess with it, Not too many in the Know would.. I am going with the radars and such on the Ship.
 
I have a set of logs from a Mavic 2 Pro that was a fly-away and the cause was both GPS and RC signal jamming. If that would assist, I can make them available privately.
 
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AND Those ships have some pretty strong radar equipment as well as other stuff You could very well have lost your signal because of that. Intentional Jamming is possible BUT The equipment is not easy to assemble and I would think only a select few have the "guts" to use it. I myself sure wouldnt mess with it, Not too many in the Know would.. I am going with the radars and such on the Ship.
Yes, I imagine radar could take out both GPS and RC. Not to mention that a commercial/all metal ship could affect the AC compass when you get close.
 
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I was giving it up throttle to gain height many seconds before impact

I am pretty sure i was trying to move foward toward ship, but in fact i was moving away.

You were actually traveling sideways prior to impacting the trees. You can see that here as the drone neared the trees while pointed toward the ocean (note the stick positions on the right):

1725137452949.png


At 1m 29.3s, the abrupt changes in pitch/roll/yaw confirm some type of impact.

1725138391808.png

At 1m 29.9s, the following messages were displayed:
  • Motor stuck. Check for objects blocking motor or contact DJI Support for assistance (Code: 30165).
  • Motor unable to rotate. Check for objects blocking motor or contact DJI Support for assistance. (Code: 30165).
  • Not enough force (ESC error).

This confirms a case of pilot error rather than any type of GPS jammer.
 
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I didn't take offf till I had more than 12 satellies, between 7 and 15 seconds multiple warning about no or weak GPS, that seems odd to me?
Oh well, forum has been very informative. polot error it is. I have replaced mini 3 with mini4 pro, so hopefully tree hits will be less likely.



thanks
 
12 satellies, between 7 and 15 seconds multiple warning about no or weak GPS
That is arguably not enough, even though DJI might think it is. Once you have achieved the 12, that is no guarantee that 3 of them won't immediately drop off again, and that sounds like what happened to trigger the messages. Therefore, the safest move is to wait on the ground until you are well over the minimum; personally I like 20+ before Take-off. Not that I think this was connected to the crash in any way - that happened much later, and involved twigs so GPS likely not even a related issue.
 
That is arguably not enough, even though DJI might think it is. Once you have achieved the 12, that is no guarantee that 3 of them won't immediately drop off again, and that sounds like what happened to trigger the messages. Therefore, the safest move is to wait on the ground until you are well over the minimum; personally I like 20+ before Take-off. Not that I think this was connected to the crash in any way - that happened much later, and involved twigs so GPS likely not even a related issue.
It isn't the number of satellites, it is their position in the sky. You should never take off - or at least if you do, don't go ANYWHERE until you get the "home point is updated" message from the controller. That indicates the drone has a good GPS lock and is confident in its positioning. (I probably phrased that wrong, but you get the idea) I had a crash due to poor satellite reception - lesson learned the hard way.

I do see that you got that message in your log however.... I also see the GPS signal weak messages but those were early in the flight - the last one was at 15.1 seconds into the flight.

It is pretty amazing what the logs can tell you about a flight, especially to one of the forum wizards - what they can reconstruct from the logs is amazing.
 
I didn't take offf till I had more than 12 satellies, between 7 and 15 seconds multiple warning about no or weak GPS, that seems odd to me?
Having 12 satellites doesn't guarantee full GPS reception.
If you were flying a Phantom 1 or Phantom 2 from back in 2013 or 2014 it would have.
Back then your drone would have only had access to the 24 or so US GPS satellites orbiting the earth and receiving signals from 12 would have given you good coverage.

But for the last 10 years DJI drones have received signals from more than just one GNSS constellation.
All current models receive signals from 3 different GNSS constellations which have a combined total of about 80 satellites.
12 sats out of 24 = good GPS but 12/80 isn't good at all.

The number of sats you have does not ensure good location data.
You need more than a minimum number AND the satellites have to be spread over a large part of the sky to ensure good location data.

When you launched with 13 sats, the Flight Controller was rating GPS data reliability at 4/5 and had recorded a tentative homepoint which it would update when better data quality was available.
But from 7-15 seconds you were seeing GPS signal weak messages as the GPS data reliability was flickering between 2/5 and 4/5.
It wasn't until after 15 seconds that it showed a steady 5/5.

Rather than thinking that 12 sats ensured good GPS, you should watch the satellite icon in the upper right of your screen.
Watch for it to change colour from red to yellow to white to tel when you have good GPS data.
Sometimes the number of sats to achieve white could be 12, but more often it will be a number closer to 20.
There is no single number that signifies good GPS - you have to wait for white.

i-htZ7Xwq-L.jpg
 
AND Those ships have some pretty strong radar equipment as well as other stuff .. I am going with the radars and such on the Ship.

Yes, I imagine radar could take out both GPS and RC. Not to mention that a commercial/all metal ship could affect the AC compass when you get close.
For the last 10 years almost all my flying (thousands of miles) has been around ships at sea.
Ships radar and other equipment has no effect on GPS reception or drone flying and you would have to be only a few feet away before the steel hull would have any effect on the drone's compass.
DJI_20240506092536_0040a-X3.jpg
 
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