Lost connection to Aircraft

[nikog]

Have flown my Mavic Air several times now without any issues. I had a scary incident this afternoon where my controller came up with "Aircraft Disconnected" whilst I was flying and no video transmission or anything, it carried out RTH, meanwhile I was trying to reconnect to the aircraft while this was happening and it would not reconnect. The indicator light on the top left of the controller was red during this process. As it was returning home, it began its decent although right above a tree, thankfully using its sensors, it detected the tree underneath (meanwhile I was panicking thinking it wasn't going to stop) and began hovering above the tree. I tried to reconnect again to the aircraft but still nothing. I quit the app, turned on and off the airplane mode, re-entered the DJI Go 4 app, went through the process of connecting/linking the controller to the aircraft and it worked. I safely landed the aircraft to the ground.

I have read a similar incident on the forum, except my incident was not interrupted by anything (i.e. text message/phone call). I haven't flown my Mavic Air since the scenario. I downloaded the flight log and have attached it to this thread.

Has anyone had the same problem, or able to help me with this issue according to the flight log, as I can only understand so much from it.

 

[Ewenbell]

I have this problem almost EVERY time I launch. It goes into NO SIGNAL (greyscale FPV) within 60 seconds of take off, even when I haven't gone anywhere. Air can be 10m away and the app reports lost signal. The RC usually still works for a little bit, then it drops out and the green light turns red. It flaps in and out on the RC, and I land it again while the screen is in NO SIGNAL. The signal returns in less than 5 seconds, and I take off, and everything behaves just fine and I can fly it 1000m away and it works fine. This is highly reproducible. Never used to happen when I first started flying the Mavic Air, but now it will happen every time I power up.

I have about 9 hours of flight time with this drone, in a very very wide range of conditions and terrain. Have failed to find anything that correlates with the NO SIGNAL problem. I now simply wait a little bit when I first take-off, wait for the error, land the aircraft again, wait for signal to return and then take-off once more. I recently spent the weekend completing my certification and once or twice the NO SIGNAL problem popped up again during those manoeuvres. The whole time the drone is not more than 30m away from us.

A few people on youtube have described a similar problem.

As best as I can tell the firmware updates are current for the aircraft and the controller.

 

[mistygrey_]

I had a similar situation a day back, the drone was 500m+ into the sea from the beach and suddenly I got a BW screen indicating Aircraft Disconnected, I was in shock and didn't knew what to do, fortunately I always carry my binoculars spotted the drone and checked if it responds to the joystick and it worked brought it back visually seeing it and made it land by stick itself. It was very scary experience, for a moment i had almost thought I lost my 1000$ first drone.
Now when I fly i clear all running processes, restart phone and put in flight mode before starting the app.

 

[vedkontho]

I have this problem almost EVERY time I launch. It goes into NO SIGNAL (greyscale FPV) within 60 seconds of take off, even when I haven't gone anywhere. Air can be 10m away and the app reports lost signal. The RC usually still works for a little bit, then it drops out and the green light turns red. It flaps in and out on the RC, and I land it again while the screen is in NO SIGNAL. The signal returns in less than 5 seconds, and I take off, and everything behaves just fine and I can fly it 1000m away and it works fine. This is highly reproducible. Never used to happen when I first started flying the Mavic Air, but now it will happen every time I power up.

I have about 9 hours of flight time with this drone, in a very very wide range of conditions and terrain. Have failed to find anything that correlates with the NO SIGNAL problem. I now simply wait a little bit when I first take-off, wait for the error, land the aircraft again, wait for signal to return and then take-off once more. I recently spent the weekend completing my certification and once or twice the NO SIGNAL problem popped up again during those manoeuvres. The whole time the drone is not more than 30m away from us.

A few people on youtube have described a similar problem.

As best as I can tell the firmware updates are current for the aircraft and the controller.

Having the same problem. Did u find any solution. How can u be certain that it wont disconnect again after u fly it the second time. Also did this problem start after u updated the dji app in may 2018

 

[Derek_M]

I have seen people with this problem, try swapping out the cable on your rc. It is usually a cable issue.

 

[vedkontho]

I have seen people with this problem, try swapping out the cable on your rc. It is usually a cable issue.

Maybe u r right. I didnt check it. Will get back to u on this

 

[Ewenbell]

I have seen people with this problem, try swapping out the cable on your rc. It is usually a cable issue.

Have tried other cables with no luck.

 

[Derek_M]

Many people are reporting that after the firmware, they are getting this problem so you can try downgrading

 

[Ewenbell]

Having the same problem. Did u find any solution. How can u be certain that it wont disconnect again after u fly it the second time. Also did this problem start after u updated the dji app in may 2018

I contacted DJI support and they said to send it back to the service dept for inspection. I haven't had a chance to do that. I rarely get a second disconnect after that initial problem. I did find that locking in the wifi channel (instead of allowing it to auto-negotiate each time) did reduce the frequency of the problem, but even that didn't prevent it from happening.

 

[Ewenbell]

Many people are reporting that after the firmware, they are getting this problem so you can try downgrading

To be clear, the problems people are reporting relating to firmware are different to this one. Have seen other scenarios listed on the forums which are not the same as this one. It adds to the confusion.

When I get a chance to be home for long enough to send off for inspection I will. Hopefully DJI will have a fix, or will be able to isolate a cause at that time. For now I have to live with it. It is at least very reproducible and usually causes a delay in starting off rather than a total failure.

 

[swooshdave]

I had a very similar problem when I first flew my Air. It would take off and immediately lose connection.

You can see it here.

The solution wasn’t to downgrade the firmware rather just reinstall the firmware. While you would think this wouldn’t work this has solved the connection issue and more recently compass errors.

Try this and report back.