Loss of Mavic2 Pro: signal disconnect

[Buzzman]

Not a good day flying yesterday. Lost my drone. Have flown a Mavic2 Pro for about 15 months with many dozens of safe flights. Decent pilot. No previous issues with drone. Flying at a remote country park (Painted Desert Rim Drive about 8 miles NE of Winslow, AZ). Gorgeous Triassic badlands. I have flown there before with no issues. Standing on cliff. Start flight out over badlands with fresh battery and having calibrated compass. Flying with my smart controller. No telephone poles or high voltage lines nearby. One tall microwave tower 0.5 to 0.8mile away. Never flying toward the tower, always away from it. Last flight of the morning. Not much wind 5 - 10mph. I'm hovering in place at 100 ft. AGL making camera adjustments. Drone is 700 feet out from me. With no previous signal strength warning, there are two red alerts that the aircraft signal has disconnected from the smart controller. I was a bit panicked. Tried using the RTH button (did not work) and going in and out of the DJI Go app several times. Nothing. Signal never reconnected. I was hoping that the emergency setting for RTH when the battery gets too low would bring my bird home. It didn't work. Must have hovered until power gone and then crashed. This is a very treacherous area and would be looking for a needle in a haystack. Won't attempt it. For curiosity, I will try to examine the flight log in the archive folder on my smart controller.

I am attaching a closeup of the microwave tower (I drove there after the
crash, did not fly there). I hear cell phone towers are less of an issue than
microwave towers. Still, thought I was plenty far enough away from it to have caused any complications.

I will be replacing my drone in a couple weeks. Too much recreational fun for aerial photography and I also use it to collect data for my native bee research. Does anyone know IF the signal boosters (parabolic or other configuration) for the antennae on the controller really work? Can anyone please suggest a make/model to get? Would that have saved me from losing my Mavic2?

thanks for any advice!
Best,
Steve
Tucson, AZ

 

[E90RAW]

Not a good day flying yesterday. Lost my drone. Have flown a Mavic2 Pro for about 15 months with many dozens of safe flights. Decent pilot. No previous issues with drone. Flying at a remote country park (Painted Desert Rim Drive about 8 miles NE of Winslow, AZ). Gorgeous Triassic badlands. I have flown there before with no issues. Standing on cliff. Start flight out over badlands with fresh battery and having calibrated compass. Flying with my smart controller. No telephone poles or high voltage lines nearby. One tall microwave tower 0.5 to 0.8mile away. Never flying toward the tower, always away from it. Last flight of the morning. Not much wind 5 - 10mph. I'm hovering in place at 100 ft. AGL making camera adjustments. Drone is 700 feet out from me. With no previous signal strength warning, there are two red alerts that the aircraft signal has disconnected from the smart controller. I was a bit panicked. Tried using the RTH button (did not work) and going in and out of the DJI Go app several times. Nothing. Signal never reconnected. I was hoping that the emergency setting for RTH when the battery gets too low would bring my bird home. It didn't work. Must have hovered until power gone and then crashed. This is a very treacherous area and would be looking for a needle in a haystack. Won't attempt it. For curiosity, I will try to examine the flight log in the archive folder on my smart controller.

I am attaching a closeup of the microwave tower (I drove there after the
crash, did not fly there). I hear cell phone towers are less of an issue than
microwave towers. Still, thought I was plenty far enough away from it to have caused any complications.

I will be replacing my drone in a couple weeks. Too much recreational fun for aerial photography and I also use it to collect data for my native bee research. Does anyone know IF the signal boosters (parabolic or other configuration) for the antennae on the controller really work? Can anyone please suggest a make/model to get? Would that have saved me from losing my Mavic2?

thanks for any advice!
Best,
Steve
Tucson, AZ

I had the same occur with my M2P and SC several weeks ago. Complete disconnect over a golf course at twilight. The bird was only about 1/2 mile away but due to low light I could not see it. The screen on SC was blank as I recall with no GPS map available. Just nothing. Now here is the weird part. I kept trying to bring it in even though I had no data from the SC and I could not see the bird. Luckily(and I emphasize this word luck) I somehow got the bird near enough to see it and the SC is actually working. In other words, when I push forward it went forward. The problem was no video link with the SC but I still had control somehow. So once I saw the M2P I was able to direct it home. So just to recap, ostensible the SC is not functioning but yet I still had control somehow. Interestingly, I have a cell tower about 1/4 mile away. I have even buzzed it at close range (6 feet) to take pictures. By the way, I am a previous Tucson resident (Sabino Canyon area) and U of Az grad from the medical program. We love painted desert, the crater, canyon de chelly, Glen Canyon area, et cetera. I would be going nuts if I still lived there with a drone. How about taking off from the Catalinas or Mt Lemmon with your drone. How cool would that be?

 

[brettbrandon]

Not a good day flying yesterday. Lost my drone. Have flown a Mavic2 Pro for about 15 months with many dozens of safe flights. Decent pilot. No previous issues with drone. Flying at a remote country park (Painted Desert Rim Drive about 8 miles NE of Winslow, AZ). Gorgeous Triassic badlands. I have flown there before with no issues. Standing on cliff. Start flight out over badlands with fresh battery and having calibrated compass. Flying with my smart controller. No telephone poles or high voltage lines nearby. One tall microwave tower 0.5 to 0.8mile away. Never flying toward the tower, always away from it. Last flight of the morning. Not much wind 5 - 10mph. I'm hovering in place at 100 ft. AGL making camera adjustments. Drone is 700 feet out from me. With no previous signal strength warning, there are two red alerts that the aircraft signal has disconnected from the smart controller. I was a bit panicked. Tried using the RTH button (did not work) and going in and out of the DJI Go app several times. Nothing. Signal never reconnected. I was hoping that the emergency setting for RTH when the battery gets too low would bring my bird home. It didn't work. Must have hovered until power gone and then crashed. This is a very treacherous area and would be looking for a needle in a haystack. Won't attempt it. For curiosity, I will try to examine the flight log in the archive folder on my smart controller.

I am attaching a closeup of the microwave tower (I drove there after the
crash, did not fly there). I hear cell phone towers are less of an issue than
microwave towers. Still, thought I was plenty far enough away from it to have caused any complications.

I will be replacing my drone in a couple weeks. Too much recreational fun for aerial photography and I also use it to collect data for my native bee research. Does anyone know IF the signal boosters (parabolic or other configuration) for the antennae on the controller really work? Can anyone please suggest a make/model to get? Would that have saved me from losing my Mavic2?

thanks for any advice!
Best,
Steve
Tucson, AZ

From my understanding, microwave towers transmit a very narrow beam and not sure what would happen to the electronics of your bird if you happened to pass right through the beam.

 

[Jet skier]

Not a good day flying yesterday. Lost my drone. Have flown a Mavic2 Pro for about 15 months with many dozens of safe flights. Decent pilot. No previous issues with drone. Flying at a remote country park (Painted Desert Rim Drive about 8 miles NE of Winslow, AZ). Gorgeous Triassic badlands. I have flown there before with no issues. Standing on cliff. Start flight out over badlands with fresh battery and having calibrated compass. Flying with my smart controller. No telephone poles or high voltage lines nearby. One tall microwave tower 0.5 to 0.8mile away. Never flying toward the tower, always away from it. Last flight of the morning. Not much wind 5 - 10mph. I'm hovering in place at 100 ft. AGL making camera adjustments. Drone is 700 feet out from me. With no previous signal strength warning, there are two red alerts that the aircraft signal has disconnected from the smart controller. I was a bit panicked. Tried using the RTH button (did not work) and going in and out of the DJI Go app several times. Nothing. Signal never reconnected. I was hoping that the emergency setting for RTH when the battery gets too low would bring my bird home. It didn't work. Must have hovered until power gone and then crashed. This is a very treacherous area and would be looking for a needle in a haystack. Won't attempt it. For curiosity, I will try to examine the flight log in the archive folder on my smart controller.

I am attaching a closeup of the microwave tower (I drove there after the
crash, did not fly there). I hear cell phone towers are less of an issue than
microwave towers. Still, thought I was plenty far enough away from it to have caused any complications.

I will be replacing my drone in a couple weeks. Too much recreational fun for aerial photography and I also use it to collect data for my native bee research. Does anyone know IF the signal boosters (parabolic or other configuration) for the antennae on the controller really work? Can anyone please suggest a make/model to get? Would that have saved me from losing my Mavic2?

thanks for any advice!
Best,
Steve
Tucson, AZ

The parabolic antennas do give me a little more range I’m not sure it would’ve helped in your situation you can get them on Amazon pretty cheaply make sure you get the one with the rubber gaskets around the hole so they stay on the others just fall off

 

[Simone L]

My SC and AC have disconnected several times while shooting video but I fly VLOS and could use controller to return home. The warning it gives says the AC ha disconnected but the SC is still working so I can bring her home.
I have noticed this seems to happen when I ask the SC to do more than one operation in a short period of time. I have gotten very slow at initiating commands....sounds ridiculous but it seems the app gets overwhelmed and just wants to shut itself down.

 

[Buzzman]

Simone,
Thanks for your response about your SC and AC disconnecting. I'd never had that happen
and was unprepared, although I remember reading about going in and out of the app. That did not work and neither did changing the orientation of the SC antennae. They were pointed directly at my bird. I didn't want to power off the SC. I was flying VLOS and could still see the drone, albeit a tiny speck against the blue AZ sky. The SC screen was grayed out (the last image from the camera?) and I had no control of the drone with the sticks. It didn't budge. I assumed the RTH button might work but likely not due to the disconnect. Going in and out of the app did not give me SC control once again of the aircraft. The most worrisome thing was why the failsafe (internal settings) for the drone to return to home when the batteries became low is a puzzle. It should have returned to the home point even with a disconnect. That's the function of that setting.

A good point about going slowly and not overloading the app on the SC. I'll remember that
when I get my new Mavic2. I am also thinking about getting some of the parabolic signal boosters based upon a reply to my post on the forum.

I am researching the frequency, directionality and signal strength of "old" horn type
microwave towers the type I was within 0.8 mile of. I imagine others have had difficult around these but I was almost a mile away.

An experienced archaeologist/drone pilot (part 107 etc.) and someone in AZ who does a lot of photogrammetry to create 3D models for museums and private clients mentioned something. There is some discussion about flying UAV's in dusty dry environments (try all of southern AZ where I live) that extreme static can build up on the drone due to friction with the dry air. In extreme cases, this can result in something like St. Elmo's Fire that can play havoc with the AC and cause disconnects. I'd never heard this before, but also worrisome for all pilots if this is indeed possible. Someone on the forum might have heard of this happening?

thanks so much for your feedback!
Steve

 

[peterc4]

I had exactly the same inApril exactly i looked for mine for hours but could not find it, i contacted DJI they examined the data and said the crash was inconclusve i ended up gettin 30% of a new on. definately contact them as 30% is better than nothing mine was roughly the same age as yours awell i think. Good Luck

 

[Simone L]

Simone,
Thanks for your response about your SC and AC disconnecting. I'd never had that happen
and was unprepared, although I remember reading about going in and out of the app. That did not work and neither did changing the orientation of the SC antennae. They were pointed directly at my bird. I didn't want to power off the SC. I was flying VLOS and could still see the drone, albeit a tiny speck against the blue AZ sky. The SC screen was grayed out (the last image from the camera?) and I had no control of the drone with the sticks. It didn't budge. I assumed the RTH button might work but likely not due to the disconnect. Going in and out of the app did not give me SC control once again of the aircraft. The most worrisome thing was why the failsafe (internal settings) for the drone to return to home when the batteries became low is a puzzle. It should have returned to the home point even with a disconnect. That's the function of that setting.

A good point about going slowly and not overloading the app on the SC. I'll remember that
when I get my new Mavic2. I am also thinking about getting some of the parabolic signal boosters based upon a reply to my post on the forum.

I am researching the frequency, directionality and signal strength of "old" horn type
microwave towers the type I was within 0.8 mile of. I imagine others have had difficult around these but I was almost a mile away.

An experienced archaeologist/drone pilot (part 107 etc.) and someone in AZ who does a lot of photogrammetry to create 3D models for museums and private clients mentioned something. There is some discussion about flying UAV's in dusty dry environments (try all of southern AZ where I live) that extreme static can build up on the drone due to friction with the dry air. In extreme cases, this can result in something like St. Elmo's Fire that can play havoc with the AC and cause disconnects. I'd never heard this before, but also worrisome for all pilots if this is indeed possible. Someone on the forum might have heard of this happening?

thanks so much for your feedback!
Steve

Hi Steve. I am located in the Smoky Mountains so there isn’t a dry/dust issue here. The only thread I can see from my personal experience is requesting a series of tasks and it’s like the app just has a nervous breakdown....no wait! That was me the first time. Ha. I wish DJi would respond to this issue. I have reported it and I am quite certain others have as well. I still adore the SC and wouldn’t change back But it does cause some serious anxiety when this happens. Hopefully they can get this solved so we aren’t all having to brain storm with other sufferers.

 

[Buzzman]

Hi Peter,
Thanks so much. This is encouraging. It gives me more incentive to look at the archive folder and last flight log on my SC. I may post it here on the forum and see what the experts think happened.

Best,
Steve

 

[Buzzman]

Hi Steve. I am located in the Smoky Mountains so there isn’t a dry/dust issue here. The only thread I can see from my personal experience is requesting a series of tasks and it’s like the app just has a nervous breakdown....no wait! That was me the first time. Ha. I wish DJi would respond to this issue. I have reported it and I am quite certain others have as well. I still adore the SC and wouldn’t change back But it does cause some serious anxiety when this happens. Hopefully they can get this solved so we aren’t all having to brain storm with other sufferers.

Thanks, Simone.
I also adore the look/feel and ruggedness of the DJI SC. Some things to consider and maybe others will weigh in with their experiences.
Best,
Steve

 

[peterc4]

Hi Peter,
Thanks so much. This is encouraging. It gives me more incentive to look at the archive folder and last flight log on my SC. I may post it here on the forum and see what the experts think happened.

Best,
Steve

Definately mate you never know it might say there fault and they will replace it for, you never know post your dat file on here i am sure someone will decipher it for you

 

[Paul2660]

Any chance you can post the logs? It would be interesting to see if anything shows up that might address this. Log would be in SC. And should be accessible with the file manager on SC copy it to SD card inserted to SC. Or usb connection to computer. Believe that requires assistant 2 for Mavic software on pc or Mac.

Paul C

 

[Juggler]

Well so much for 8km! Went out over water this morning and only made 1270mtr. I rotate RC direction to try and impove signal but nothing. The height says only a few meters but I took off from approx 17mtr ASL so i was actually about 20 mt ASL. I had clear line of sight across the bay.
Any ideas how to improve the range or am I doing something wrong.
I had wifi and cell activate but this ipad mini 5 is only for the drone. Should I have it in flight mode? I read I believe in a prior post that cell lets you get maps.

my setup currently is a polarpro flight dec

 

[Ken.]

Buzzman said:
Simone,
Thanks for your response about your SC and AC disconnecting. I'd never had that happen
and was unprepared, although I remember reading about going in and out of the app. That did not work and neither did changing the orientation of the SC antennae. They were pointed directly at my bird. I didn't want to power off the SC.

Were the end of the antennas pointed at the bird, or were the flat side pointed toward the bird? Since the antennas do not fold to a upright position, they must be pointed down for max signal if the bird is other than overhead.

This is not to criticize, just a question.

Ken
w3kmp
Advanced Class
SW PA

 

[Buzzman]

Buzzman said:
Simone,
Thanks for your response about your SC and AC disconnecting. I'd never had that happen
and was unprepared, although I remember reading about going in and out of the app. That did not work and neither did changing the orientation of the SC antennae. They were pointed directly at my bird. I didn't want to power off the SC.

Were the end of the antennas pointed at the bird, or were the flat side pointed toward the bird? Since the antennas do not fold to a upright position, they must be pointed down for max signal if the bird is other than overhead.

This is not to criticize, just a question.

Ken
w3kmp
Advanced Class
SW PA

Ken,
Good point. I usually fly with the antennae straight down, as I've heard that is the strongest signal. That day was so traumatic that I can't honestly remember if the antennae were up (toward the UAV) or in the down position
with their blunt/wide sides toward the aircraft. Hmmm. Assume I would have noticed that since I tried everything I could think of without powering down and
then on again.
Best,
Steve

 

[Jeff A]

That sucks. The Mavic 2 Pro is about as good as you can get.

 

[Buzzman]

That sucks. The Mavic 2 Pro is about as good as you can get.

Thanks Jeff. The Mavic 2 Pro was my first and only drone so far. Had it for 15 months. Oh wait, there's that little Tello. I will be getting another Mavic 2Pro in a few weeks because I don't want to be without one. My impression is that when SARS-CoV-2 hit China, it knocked out most of the manufacturing including DJI. I'd love to get a Mavic 3 but its vaporware right now and I don't truly expect we'll see anything until 2021. I flew a friend's, professional cinematographer, Inspire1. That was pretty cool. ;-)
Can't beat the looks or the camera and exchangeable lenses.
Fly safe.

 

[TampaTC]

What was your RTH settings set at "Height"?
What did you have the M2P settings set to for loss of signal?

 

[Buzzman]

What was your RTH settings set at "Height"?
What did you have the M2P settings set to for loss of signal?

Hello TampaTC,
Thanks for your input. RTH settings were either 100 or 200' can't remember. Was flying most of the time 50 - 100 feet AGL over some badlands, so no tall trees, telephone poles/wires etc. In fact, the terrain dropped away in front of me.
Settings for loss of signal were to return to the home point, so that is what shocked me when the bird did not return to the nest. :-(

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

PLEASE post the logs.

• You may get help from DJI if it was their fault, but if not:
• Are you buying another bird? You need to know what happened so you don't repeat it.
• We all benefit from the accumulated knowledge as well.
• YOU ALSO benefit from the reports from other people, to learn what to avoid, so please contribute.

You can also eliminate possibilities, such as radar towers (the logs will probably help determine if they were or were not a contributing factor).

We can only guess without the logs. The AC just going 'poof' from the controller sounds like a possible battery fault / disconnect, but I can only guess from your description.

Chris

PS: just to be sure: the appropriate antenna orientation is flat side toward the aircraft, not the tip, not the flat side toward the ground.