Lost Mavic Air - Loch Awe - Scotland

[Ricey]

Onyx Mavic Air with silver racing stripes lost over Loch Awe - Scotland

FAA registration FA3L7N4XC9

MA was above one of the 4 Crannogs (islands) before had communication error, pressed RTH but drone went into auto land mode, so suspect its probably in the water battery was over 70% when lost contact.

Its a long shot, and probably long lost now, but posting up in the forums in case someone trips over it, or swims past it more like!

 

[Meta4]

MA was above one of the 4 Crannogs (islands) before had communication error, pressed RTH but drone went into auto land mode, so suspect its probably in the water battery was over 70% when lost contact.

Post the flight data and perhaps someone can spot the cause of the incident and give you an idea where it may have come down.
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 gives you.

 

[Ricey]

Thanks for the reply and instructions.

Will get these files off my phone and uploaded to see where I went wrong.

Thanks

 

[BossBob]

Loch Awe is over 40 kilometres long. I think that your image is in the area of Inishail, northern end of the loch.

 

[Ricey]

Yes, northern end of the loch, the 4 small islands south of Ardanaiseig

I was getting footage of the are for one of the girls back in our US office, she had been working on her family tree, and this one one of the areas of interest for her.

Thankfully I had downloaded all the footage from earlier in the day around Spean Bridge, Glencoe, Inveraray, Dubh Loch and Dunderave, and this was the last flight of the day.

Have ordered a replacement drone, as unfortunately without a drone to send back to DJI refresh, they wont act on it, even with the flight data showing it ending over water.... it is what it is

expensive day out

 

[Ricey]

Post the flight data and perhaps someone can spot the cause of the incident and give you an idea where it may have come down.
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 gives you.

Have extracted the .txt file from my iphone of the last flight with the MA, hopefully someone can pinpoint where i went wrong on this one so i dont make the same mistake

 

[Meta4]

Have extracted the .txt file from my iphone of the last flight with the MA, hopefully someone can pinpoint where i went wrong on this one so i dont make the same mistake

Here's what your flight data looks like: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
It tells a sad tale.
You launched from a point 39 metres above the water with a fully charged battery.
You flew out 1230 metres and had a few indications of losing signal.
Signal was lost at 5:30.1.

Normally the drone will return home on loss of signal unless you change the default Loss of Signal action, but almost no-one ever does..
I checked deeper to see what your Loss of Signal action was set to and it was Landing.
Because there was no signal, there is no record of what happened, but it's pretty clear that the drone followed the setting and would have descended to the water.
With no signal, cancelling the descent was not an option.

 

[Ricey]

Here's what your flight data looks like: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
It tells a sad tale.
You launched from a point 39 metres above the water with a fully charged battery.
You flew out 1230 metres and had a few indications of losing signal.
Signal was lost at 5:30.1.

Normally the drone will return home on loss of signal unless you change the default Loss of Signal action, but almost no-one ever does..
I checked deeper to see what your Loss of Signal action was set to and it was Landing.
Because there was no signal, there is no record of what happened, but it's pretty clear that the drone followed the setting and would have descended to the water.
With no signal, cancelling the descent was not an option.

Thanks for reviewing that, and I was puzzled as to why the RTH failed (tested it twice previously) and assumed it was still set to RTH, only thing I did the night before was to update the firmware, so I must have inadvertently changed it... but only thing I did change was the RTH height as lowered it as was flying out over water, must be the "fingers like pigs tits syndrome" and hit the wrong slider .

Lesson learned, and wont make that mistake again lol, set the RTH after take off as well, stayed low at 200ft (always risk of low flying RAF and US jets in this area) and thought was all good to go, so just one of those things!

Thanks again for you feedback!

 

[jagraphics]

As the UK rules say you have to have eye contact with the drone at all times it is in the air you would know where it went.
Not saying you didn't of course but....

Also an "unattended" drone approaching a private island might not have been appreciated.

 

[The RAPier]

A quick question for those that might know; when updating software when it’s asking to be, do the custom settings remain or do they reset as the update would have them?

 

[PAW]

A quick question for those that might know; when updating software when it’s asking to be, do the custom settings remain or do they reset as the update would have them?

It seems kind of hit and miss to me. I've had some updates that leave my settings alone and some that change a few of my settings. As a rule, I re-check all my settings after each update (AC, SC, and Go4)

 

[Ricey]

As the UK rules say you have to have eye contact with the drone at all times it is in the air you would know where it went.
Not saying you didn't of course but....

Also an "unattended" drone approaching a private island might not have been appreciated.

I did have sight of it until the flight went to sh@t, stress panic and sweat with me trying to regain comms . With the low cloud to the north, the drone was visible before it "dropped", but once i looked back up from my controller I was unable to locate it again, lost against the backdrop of the hills maybe but probably already on its way to the bottom

I am very aware of peoples privacy, and why i flew that planned route out in the first place, and had researched it the evening before using OS map. There are properties on the Inistrynich peninsula to the east, so kept well clear of those, and had no intention of overflying the crannogs or the site of the old castle (islands are uninhabited) out on the Loch just to get some aerial footage from a few hundred feet out, then return ashore, but didn't go exactly to plan

Only "overfly" was a dozen or so sheep in the small field directly in front of my take off point,, and they didnt even take their faces out of the grass

 

[Ricey]

It seems kind of hit and miss to me. I've had some updates that leave my settings alone and some that change a few of my settings. As a rule, I re-check all my settings after each update (AC, SC, and Go4)

From now on, I am going to check EVERYTHING after every update, maybe I did inadvertently switch it to auto-land, lesson learned this end.

 

[Meta4]

A quick question for those that might know; when updating software when it’s asking to be, do the custom settings remain or do they reset as the update would have them?

many settings would revert to default values so you need to check things like RTH height etc.
RTH is the default value for the Loss of Signal Action setting.

 

[Dave Maine]

Always check everything with an update. Once you fix everything the update changed, you will be good to go until the next update. The changes that it may or not have made appear to me to be random.

 

[Skywalker]

"fingers like pigs tits syndrome"

Having some country relations I’m not ignorant of colorful phrasing, but hadn’t heard this one before and was having difficulty applying the symbolism. So I googled it. Yep, it’s there. Basically thick fingered. I’ll just leave it there.