Lost connection without any chance to relink with the RC while RTH

[globetrotterdrone]

Had an incident recently with my Mini 3 Pro which was my first ever and considering the egress partly my fault on the tight start/landing point I chose but I thought I should share it anyway when there's something to learn probably for me and others.

The crux

What I have never encountered in any of my flights with previous drones and led to it was

• a complete loss of connection (video & telemetry) and
• not a chance to relink while automatic RTH with the RC (screen).

As the Mini 3 Pro still lacks precision landing, the drone descended a metre away from it's original starting point, facing an overhead beam and got stuck there for 30 s about 3 metres high.
I grabbed for a ladder and within the next 15 s it somehow wiggled beyond the beam descending onto a corrugated sheet iron roof and touch with its props the edge of the building.

Twice unlucky I would say, because waiting another couple of seconds could have provided me the chance to pick it while descending, but the drone itself is fine with just one small scratch at the right rubber tip on the buttom, some discolouration on the back left motor with 2 fine scratches as the probs most likely got the majority of damage.

So my question is, did you ever experience such a scenerio, where the drone was completely offline from your controls with no chance to link to it again?

I even tried to reboot the RC and link to the drone again, but on the dashboard screen I just got the instructions on how to do it not the blue button "Fly".

For the record:

• the flight took place with all the latest firmware in a highly congested urban area in Europe (CE), so I was expecting interference but not this. I took flights there many times before with some serious noise but nowhere near as this time
• the RC was not stuck, it was fully responsive however not a chance to rebind to the drone anymore.

Thank you for your thoughts.
Happy and safe flying ...

 

[Rchawks]

Not the mini 3 pro, but a few weeks ago I watched a friend fly my old mavic mini and unknown to me he had very little charge on his ipad and it went dead while in flight. I told him to press rth on the controller and it returned perfectly, he got lucky.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

This can sometimes happen with a bad cable, but not sure what controller you had.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Mini 3 Pro in the Rain.

 

[vindibona1]

I'm sorry to take a skeptical stance.
While some DJI drones have no issues, obviously there are anecdotes like this one. I have to wonder about the consistency and quality control that DJI executes these days. A few days ago a fellow forum member posted that his DJI RC controller was "unresponsive". I was suprised as my controller, so far it responsive and smooth. But there seems to be more stories about odd failures that didn't have the frequency of complaints of earlier models.

To try to explain my logic and reasoning, why did DJI deem the RCN1 controller the defacto controller for all drones from the Mini 2 to the Mavic 3? IMO it was a downgrade from previous controllers, with no more features than on the Mini 1 controller, only bigger and heavier. And marketing/packaging? It seems to me that the DJI Bean Counters are heavily at work, building margin- raising prices creating packages that do nothing but build (IMO sometimes excessive) margins, while eliminating things that were included in previous packages (i.e. wall chargers, prop guards, ND filters, etc). So, could it be possible that the variations in our different experiences be due to variations and QC in production of internal components in a cost saving measure?

Having to rely on the drone itself to come home after disconnect is stressful, but the level of stress and scariness gets elevated when we have no indication that it is doing what it's supposed to do- praying that we get our drone back. At some point the drone should re-connect with the controller, no?

 

[globetrotterdrone]

This can sometimes happen with a bad cable, but not sure what controller you had.

DJI RC (the one with screen) ... so definitely not a cable problem.

Having to rely on the drone itself to come home after disconnect is stressful, but the level of stress and scariness gets elevated when we have no indication that it is doing what it's supposed to do- praying that we get our drone back. At some point the drone should re-connect with the controller, no?

That is what I supposed and was doing in the past. As soon as the connection is strong/uninterrupted enough, telemetry and video should kick back in but this time it didn't.

To be fair, I had app crashes with DJI Go with my M2P and the SC 3 or 4 times in 2,5 years, but alway, and I mean always, after the restart of the app, the drone was connected and fully able to manoeuvre. Scary nonetheless but nothing what I have experienced this time with the Mini 3 Pro.

 

[Octisurfer]

Pilot error. You always have to choose a starting place that leaves enough free space for an imprecise RHT.

 

[Lister]

enough free space for an imprecise RHT.

And enough reserve battery to endure temporary loss of comms with the RC.