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Lost Mavic Mini after 5 days of purchase.

Prad

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Dec 31, 2019
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Location
Canberra
Hello,
I am from Canberra and I was on a holiday to Kangaroo Island, Australia. I prepared a drone to fly with fully charged battery in open area. In around 2 meters of height it alarmed as high wind in app so I landed it down and was in search of suitable location to fly. I found a good location without wind in ground home-location so I flew the aircraft but after 2 minutes of fly I didn't see an aircraft so I pressed the manual RTH button though there was no alarm on app. I was waiting for its return but it never came back.
As I am a normal drone pilot so I contacted to DJI and informed about the situation. I sent them all files on their request. They came to conclusion as drone was with 14% of battery and 1.5Km far from the location where I was flying and because of wind drone was pushed away further-down of 0.5Km and the battery was flat while drone was over the sea.
Interesting is there is no flight record from the home point to the 1.5Km distance and DJI is only focusing on pilot fault to fly in windy condition with analyzing on last record, which I haven't seen.
But my query to them is: I lost drone because of its malfunction 1) I didn't see wind alarm on app, 2) After manual RTH pressed, I didn't see any alarm on the app screen.
If I had seen that the aircraft was struggling to RTH because of opposite wind then I wouldn't rely on RTH but I would make manual landing.

I thought it would be good to share this info which was of last month and I'm happy for further discussion on it.

Cheers
Prad
 
As I am a normal drone pilot so I contacted to DJI and informed about the situation. I sent them all files on their request. They came to conclusion as drone was with 14% of battery and 1.5Km far from the location where I was flying and because of wind drone was pushed away further-down of 0.5Km and the battery was flat while drone was over the sea.
If you want a better explanation than DJI has given, or a second opinion, there are members here that can analyse your flight data.
They generally explain much better than DJI does.
To get this help, go to http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
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.
 
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As I am a normal drone pilot so I contacted to DJI and informed about the situation. I sent them all files on their request. They came to conclusion as drone was with 14% of battery and 1.5Km far from the location where I was flying and because of wind drone was pushed away further-down of 0.5Km and the battery was flat while drone was over the sea.
Interesting is there is no flight record from the home point to the 1.5Km distance and DJI is only focusing on pilot fault to fly in windy condition with analyzing on last record, which I haven't seen.
But my query to them is: I lost drone because of its malfunction 1) I didn't see wind alarm on app, 2) After manual RTH pressed, I didn't see any alarm on the app screen.
Sorry that you lost your new MM. That is never a good thing.

However, if the flight logs do show that it was a flight in strong winds and then even a low battery condition, it really is not a hardware fault or a problem that is DJI's fault.

Should the drone have given you a high wind warning? Yes it should, but as the RPIC it is always your responsibility to know the flight conditions and the limitations of your aircraft. This would be especially true since you already had one failed flight due to high winds. You should always manually check the winds at ground level and at flight altitude with one of the many available apps. If it is anywhere near the limits of the craft then do not fly. If you do fly, then always fly upwind first, keeping a steady eye on the actual location of the craft as you ascend. When you start to see it drift downwind, it is time to come down right away.

Also my general rule of thumb is to always be back on the ground with 30% battery remaining. This leaves ample time to deal with emergencies and it also leaves the battery at a good level for short term storage.

As to RTH, perhaps you had already lost contact with the drone at that point, or you did not properly initiate the RTH. Fkight logs may help to figure out what went on.

Please upload the flight logs so we can see what happened.
 
If you want a better explanation than DJI has given, or a second opinion, there are members here that can analyse your flight data.
They generally explain much better than DJI does.
To get this 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 gives you.
Thanks for this link. I can see more than whatever DJI had explained.
Still couldn't get a clear picture about why I did'nt see wind alarm on application. Could you please have a look on it and your analysis after seeing the data.
 

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Sorry that you lost your new MM. That is never a good thing.

However, if the flight logs do show that it was a flight in strong winds and then even a low battery condition, it really is not a hardware fault or a problem that is DJI's fault.

Should the drone have given you a high wind warning? Yes it should, but as the RPIC it is always your responsibility to know the flight conditions and the limitations of your aircraft. This would be especially true since you already had one failed flight due to high winds. You should always manually check the winds at ground level and at flight altitude with one of the many available apps. If it is anywhere near the limits of the craft then do not fly. If you do fly, then always fly upwind first, keeping a steady eye on the actual location of the craft as you ascend. When you start to see it drift downwind, it is time to come down right away.

Also my general rule of thumb is to always be back on the ground with 30% battery remaining. This leaves ample time to deal with emergencies and it also leaves the battery at a good level for short term storage.

As to RTH, perhaps you had already lost contact with the drone at that point, or you did not properly initiate the RTH. Fkight logs may help to figure out what went on.

Please upload the flight logs so we can see what happened.

Hello, Thanks for your advice.

About the high wind, I experienced in 1st flight so I didn't fly and I was flying where there was no ground wind. And around after 2 minutes of the fly I didn't see a drone so I pressed with RTH button and FYI there was no any high wind alarm on the app, so got more confused. As I have attached flight record as well, so I would appreciate on your advice.

Thanks
 
Thanks for this link. I can see more than whatever DJI had explained.
Still couldn't get a clear picture about why I did'nt see wind alarm on application. Could you please have a look on it and your analysis after seeing the data.
Here's what those flight records look like:

Looking at the first time you initiated RTH at 4:04.8.
You flew out 77 metres and initiated RTH from approx the same altitude as the launch point.
The drone ascended to 23 metres without any joystick input.
While ascending, the drone should have gone straight up with a horizontal speed of zero.
But as it got higher its horizontal speed increased from zeroto 3.6 metres/sec, taking the drone 18.2 metres further from the home point.
This is an important clue.
It shows that at just 22 metres up, the wind speed from the southwest was too strong for the drone to hold position against it.

You flew until 7:31.7 when the drone was 750 metres from home and 8,5 metres higher than the launch point with battery at 40%.

By the time it had climbed to 29.5 metres it had been blown 220 metres further away from home and was blowing backwards at approx 4 metres/sec.
You left RTH to try to bring the drone home but your screen would have shown that the distance was getting larger and the drone was getting further away at aboyt 4 metres/sec.
Theat flight data ends at 9:10.4 with the drone 29.5 metres up and 1113 metres away.
Battery was now at 28%.
When you reconnected at 1:43 later the battery was down to 13% and the drone had been blown 1497 metres away from home.
At 12:00.4 with the distance now 1674 metres and the battery level down to 6%, the drone commenced autolanding so that it did not crash to the ground.
Unfortunately it was now about 100 metres out to sea.
The data ends at 13:05.8 when the drone turned into a submarine.

One of the most important things a flyer has to do is to be aware of where the drone is and what it is doing as well as the wind conditions.
The app has a direction indicator and always shows the distance, height and speed of the drone.

Looking at these would have quickly shown that the drone was always getting further away during the RTH and would never make it back.
Wind is always stronger up high so an obvious thing to try would be to bring the drone down lower where the wind is less.
If it wasn't coming home fast enough down low, you could have cancelled RTH and flown it back in Sport Mode.
And most important, you would have felt and seen the effects of the wind before you launched.
Knowing the wind was strong, you should have avoided flying downwind as that would mean you had to fight against a headwind to bring the drone back.
Flying out against the wind would have been slow and shown you that the wind was too strong to fly against and you could have given up and landed before the drone was blown away.
 
An important lesson to learn here is that even if there's absolutely zero wind on the ground there could be a very strong breeze or even stronger gusts 30 meters up or higher. Always check the current conditions before flying. UAV Forecast is an awesome app where you can set your desired thresholds and it will tell you wind speed and direction as your set height, it's saved my bacon before when I thought it was safe to fly but 100' up there were 60mph gusts.
 
So the logs show you were flying a lot more than 2 minutes, but you repeatedly claim to have attempted to end your flight after only 2 minutes, and that you suddenly could not see the drone...not that it slowly drifted away. I think you are playing dumb because you were not flying smart and want to avoid criticism.

In my opinion, if I was flying beyond line of sight, and lost the drone due to wind, I would blame myself, not the drone. I would only blame the drone if there was a catastrophic compass, motor, imu, or propeller failure...when you cannot see the drone, you can't blame it if you run out of battery or crash by poor flying. It's a risk we take when we bend the rules :)

Fortunately I've been lucky but every time I wasn't lucky, I placed the blame on myself.
 
So the logs show you were flying a lot more than 2 minutes, but you repeatedly claim to have attempted to end your flight after only 2 minutes, and that you suddenly could not see the drone...not that it slowly drifted away. I think you are playing dumb because you were not flying smart and want to avoid criticism.

In my opinion, if I was flying beyond line of sight, and lost the drone due to wind, I would blame myself, not the drone. I would only blame the drone if there was a catastrophic compass, motor, imu, or propeller failure...when you cannot see the drone, you can't blame it if you run out of battery or crash by poor flying. It's a risk we take when we bend the rules :)

Fortunately I've been lucky but every time I wasn't lucky, I placed the blame on myself.
I think that may be a bit harsh when you say the OP is "playing dumb". Yes from the flight logs it becomes apparent that this was 100% pilot error, with lack of planning, lack of familiarity with the equipment, and improper knowledge of the environment (high wind). However, the OP may be a new pilot and just got overwhelmed/confused once the conditions were past those necessary for a safe and uneventful flight.
When one is a stressful situation (drone drifting away), time does seem to move quicker and the details of what actually happened become garbled. It could be that the OP remembers the situation exactly as posted. That is why we always need flight logs to ascertain what really happened.
In the end it becomes a learning experience not only for the OP, but also for other pilots looking at the situation.
 
I think that may be a bit harsh when you say the OP is "playing dumb". Yes from the flight logs it becomes apparent that this was 100% pilot error, with lack of planning, lack of familiarity with the equipment, and improper knowledge of the environment (high wind). However, the OP may be a new pilot and just got overwhelmed/confused once the conditions were past those necessary for a safe and uneventful flight.
When one is a stressful situation (drone drifting away), time does seem to move quicker and the details of what actually happened become garbled. It could be that the OP remembers the situation exactly as posted. That is why we always need flight logs to ascertain what really happened.
In the end it becomes a learning experience not only for the OP, but also for other pilots looking at the situation.
I agree. The pilot and others can easily see that the technical problems in this flight were caused by the choices made by the pilot. A public bashing isn't going to help anybody see that if they don't see it already. However, a public bashing will discourage others from sharing their incidents. The only benefit of a public bashing is to scratch some emotional itch of those doing the bashing.
 
No bashing intended, playing dumb is a pretty generic, not impolite, saying...I would class it as less rude than the southern saying "bless his heart". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As this link explains, playing dumb can be a good strategy. (Playing dumb doesn't mean being dumb, or doing something dumb) I've done the same before trying to get warranty repair for something that it was possible I had a small role in breaking, but it wasn't certain, just possible. Rather than starting by explaining what I might have done, I played dumb and they replaced the item without incident. We've all done that, but if we are confronted with clear evidence and new facts that shed light that our actions were the main root cause, it shifts from playing dumb, to fraud. I don't think the op is anywhere close to fraud, fwiw, because it's clear his warranty request is denied, so not posible to proceed into murkier waters. But it does seem relatively clear that the flying time was significantly more than claimed, and the loss of visibility significantly less sudden than claimed, so it's not a stretch nor malicious to claim the op was playing dumb by minimizing the facts.


Bashing is a "fierce criticism" and if you think I've been overwhelmingly fierce instead of just mildly and humorously critical, then my apologies and bless your hearts. That said, it would be just my luck to have a prop fly off in my next flight and in that case bless my heart too!
 
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To provide another view of this, the flight was doomed from the start. The wind issue at the first attempted launch should have been a clear warning. Finding another sheltered location on the ground to launch from was obviously not going to change the wind speed once the aircraft ascended out of that sheltered location. The prevailing wind speed was around 30 mph out of the SW - far too high for the Mini to handle.

Battery.png

Once the pilot ascended the aircraft up to just 10 meters it was exposed to the wind and started to drift. Switching to RTH didn't help at all, because the RTH height was set to 30 meters and so the aircraft climbed even higher. The correct response, of course, would have been to descend immediately and make an emergency landing. But at 30 meters height the result was inevitable - it was blown out to sea by the wind until the battery depleted and it autolanded.

DJI is correct that this was entirely pilot error - there was no malfunction.
 
To provide another view of this, the flight was doomed from the start. The wind issue at the first attempted launch should have been a clear warning. Finding another sheltered location on the ground to launch from was obviously not going to change the wind speed once the aircraft ascended out of that sheltered location. The prevailing wind speed was around 30 mph out of the SW - far too high for the Mini to handle.

View attachment 89409

Once the pilot ascended the aircraft up to just 10 meters it was exposed to the wind and started to drift. Switching to RTH didn't help at all, because the RTH height was set to 30 meters and so the aircraft climbed even higher. The correct response, of course, would have been to descend immediately and make an emergency landing. But at 30 meters height the result was inevitable - it was blown out to sea by the wind until the battery depleted and it autolanded.

DJI is correct that this was entirely pilot error - there was no malfunction.

Thanks for your graphical clarification.
Firstly, I didn't see any wind alarm on the app for that flight, so, I was confused. Otherwise, I would make a forced landing.
Secondly, I was considering why the drone didn't come back after RTH apply which I was taking as a drone malfunction and they couldn't explain it till now. I didn't know RTH height was set to 30mtrs and it went more up and prone to more wind. Also, what is your idea about RTH algorithm " Is it right to go to preset level if the pilot hit RTH while the aircraft was below then its preset level?"
 
Firstly, I didn't see any wind alarm on the app for that flight
When the flight data on the screen shows the drone can't hold position or that it's being blown away, that's all the alarm you need.

Also, what is your idea about RTH algorithm " Is it right to go to preset level if the pilot hit RTH while the aircraft was below then its preset level?"
That's how it is programmed.
On loss of signal, the drone will climb to the set RTH height and attempt to return home.
If the drone is already above the RTH height, it will come home without descending to the RTH height.
 
Here's what those flight records look like:

Looking at the first time you initiated RTH at 4:04.8.
You flew out 77 metres and initiated RTH from approx the same altitude as the launch point.
The drone ascended to 23 metres without any joystick input.
While ascending, the drone should have gone straight up with a horizontal speed of zero.
But as it got higher its horizontal speed increased from zeroto 3.6 metres/sec, taking the drone 18.2 metres further from the home point.
This is an important clue.
It shows that at just 22 metres up, the wind speed from the southwest was too strong for the drone to hold position against it.

You flew until 7:31.7 when the drone was 750 metres from home and 8,5 metres higher than the launch point with battery at 40%.

By the time it had climbed to 29.5 metres it had been blown 220 metres further away from home and was blowing backwards at approx 4 metres/sec.
You left RTH to try to bring the drone home but your screen would have shown that the distance was getting larger and the drone was getting further away at aboyt 4 metres/sec.
Theat flight data ends at 9:10.4 with the drone 29.5 metres up and 1113 metres away.
Battery was now at 28%.
When you reconnected at 1:43 later the battery was down to 13% and the drone had been blown 1497 metres away from home.
At 12:00.4 with the distance now 1674 metres and the battery level down to 6%, the drone commenced autolanding so that it did not crash to the ground.
Unfortunately it was now about 100 metres out to sea.
The data ends at 13:05.8 when the drone turned into a submarine.

One of the most important things a flyer has to do is to be aware of where the drone is and what it is doing as well as the wind conditions.
The app has a direction indicator and always shows the distance, height and speed of the drone.

Looking at these would have quickly shown that the drone was always getting further away during the RTH and would never make it back.
Wind is always stronger up high so an obvious thing to try would be to bring the drone down lower where the wind is less.
If it wasn't coming home fast enough down low, you could have cancelled RTH and flown it back in Sport Mode.
And most important, you would have felt and seen the effects of the wind before you launched.
Knowing the wind was strong, you should have avoided flying downwind as that would mean you had to fight against a headwind to bring the drone back.
Flying out against the wind would have been slow and shown you that the wind was too strong to fly against and you could have given up and landed before the drone was blown away.

Thanks for your detail explanation to me as a new drone operator. I understood now that the drone was blown away by the high wind.
Interesting is: I didn't see any wind alarm on the app for that flight, so, I was confused. Otherwise, I would make a forced landing. Later I applied RTH while I didn't see the drone. I noticed the drone has gone to submarine, after 3 weeks of an accident on the basis of DJI analysis.
 
Good question about rth--you want the altitude high enough to avoid the tallest thing that could be blocking your signal and could cause a crash in a direct return. Trees, buildings, etc. Rth, if I'm not wrong, does not fly as fast as sport mode, and the old advice with mavic pro was use app to orient yourself facing you, then use sport mode to fly as close as possible. Theory is better to run out of town power on land. You csn set Rth each flight.

The one time I almost lost the drone due to wind, I used sport mode and caught the drone at the last seconds of power, not enough for maintaining height more like a controlled fall. I had checked the wind when launching but out st sea it was stronger and now I check more frequently. When in doubt, I don't fly. But it's also insured :)
 
When the flight data on the screen shows the drone can't hold position or that it's being blown away, that's all the alarm you need.


That's how it is programmed.
On loss of signal, the drone will climb to the set RTH height and attempt to return home.
If the drone is already above the RTH height, it will come home without descending to the RTH height.

As I am a new operator and was focusing on the "Strong Wind Warning" display which I had seen before but not on that flight. There were other measurements as well like hight, distance, and speed but couldn't take care at that moment and was looking from the warning display.
 
Good question about rth--you want the altitude high enough to avoid the tallest thing that could be blocking your signal and could cause a crash in a direct return. Trees, buildings, etc. Rth, if I'm not wrong, does not fly as fast as sport mode, and the old advice with mavic pro was use app to orient yourself facing you, then use sport mode to fly as close as possible. Theory is better to run out of town power on land. You csn set Rth each flight.

The one time I almost lost the drone due to wind, I used sport mode and caught the drone at the last seconds of power, not enough for maintaining height more like a controlled fall. I had checked the wind when launching but out st sea it was stronger and now I check more frequently. When in doubt, I don't fly. But it's also insured :)

Thanks for your response mate, but I believe the drone operator wouldn't proceed for the flight if there was a wind warning. I didn't see any warning on that last flight which I had seen before as" Strong Wing Warning".
 
Thanks for your response mate, but I believe the drone operator wouldn't proceed for the flight if there was a wind warning. I didn't see any warning on that last flight which I had seen before as" Strong Wing Warning".

Right - but you had just experienced a high wind warning on your previous attempt to launch. And then you said that you found a sheltered location. Why did you think that just because you found a sheltered location on the ground that the wind wouldn't still be blowing above? You have to apply some common sense here - if you are entirely relying on notifications to keep the aircraft safe then you will likely lose more of them.
 
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Right - but you had just experienced a high wind warning on your previous attempt to launch. And then you said that you found a sheltered location. Why did you think that just because you found a sheltered location on the ground that the wind wouldn't still be blowing above? You have to apply some common sense here - if you are entirely relying on notifications to keep the aircraft safe then you will likely lose more of them.

Right but please see that location on google map. My plan was to send it to below the home point location to see the creek reason between two hillsides.
 
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