Lost Mavic Pro 2

gw1azd0r · Nov 11, 2018

That's sooooooo cool. Bet you happy man to get it back. Congrats on persistence !!

gw1azd0r · Nov 11, 2018

sar104 said:
It looks, almost certainly, that you flew it into the trees that are visible in the last cached photo. Looking at the final recorded motion;

View attachment 52494

Extrapolating the flight path on Google Earth:

View attachment 52497

It was going to hit the hillside anyway, but there are some very tall trees on the flight path, and so the predicted impact with the Google DEM is not useful. Looking at the height differences, the marked location should be 40 m lower than the flight path but, as the photos show, the DEM does not reflect the terrain (typical in that kind of steep tree-covered area).

View attachment 52499

Comparing gimbal yaw when the photo was taken with the subsequent flight path, the most likely offending tree is shown above. It's visible on GE, and is the location of the marker above. It is only around 20 m from the last recorded point.

If you don't mind me asking , how did you get the diagrams of the flight ?

sar104 · Nov 11, 2018

gw1azd0r said:
If you don't mind me asking , how did you get the diagrams of the flight ?

The flight path visualization is done using Google Earth. The graphed data is from the txt and DAT logs, and analyzed using Igor Pro.

Jim D · Nov 11, 2018

Wow, great story, with a happy ending. I've got a similar one to share when I get the time. Please let us know how it works when dried out (mine had a faulty front left sensor that I send to DJI for repair).

vanessallj · Nov 11, 2018

I’m sorry about that. Well, we all experienced it and these painful experience help us to become a better pilot in future

vanessallj · Nov 11, 2018

vanessallj said:
I’m sorry about that. Well, we all experienced it and these painful experience help us to become a better pilot in future

But your video is super cool, btw the view is just breathtaking!

cloneme · Nov 11, 2018

Sty Cooper said:
Glory to the persistent!
View attachment 52515
I have retrieved the drone.. I can't really believe it, but it is saved.
When I was hiking up the hill to the presumed crash site and the nearby location where the suspected tree is lurking, I took a slightly different path than previous hikes.
About half way up the hill, I suddenly saw this sad little gizmo lying on the ground...
View attachment 52516
The location was not really on any of the routes or locations where I focused my search, I don't know where it was heading really.
Not a single scratch on the drone, not even the propellers were broken.
Of course I will let it dry and attend to it before I try flying again.

Here comes the bonus! When finding the drone, I also got the images and video from the incident.
HI hope this will shed more light on what happened.
In the the video you can see the drone suddenly stopping, turning around and on its way back to the RTH the way got blocked by the tree (Yes, I think its THE tree @sar104 ) . It hovered there for about 5 minutes before taking of in a direction pretty far from the route back to the RTH.
This is where I found the drone.
60.657022,15.033512
View attachment 52517

I hope the video and seeing what happened will help you in future hunts for lost drones.
At last, thank you for your great support. You are the best.

The video (The connection was lost at approx at 0.10 , just before it starts panning.) :

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Excellent video and a great story with a great ending and lesson to be remembered. I hope to buy a Mavic 2 Pro soon and this Forum gives new comers the confidence to have a go.

Jason how · Nov 11, 2018

i am new, i am just confused on RTH. is it suppose to re-trace the path back? My guess is RTH is designed to just turn back and head back to the original GPS location where it started its flight and not re-tracing its path(which may then drain more power).

DanMan32 · Nov 11, 2018

I don't think RTH will go around obstacles, only over them. Only exception would be loss of signal where later models will retrace path take in the last 60 seconds, with the assumption that if it had the signal a bit ago, there's a good chance it could regain it in the locations it was at during the last 60 seconds

sar104 · Nov 11, 2018

Jason how said:
i am new, i am just confused on RTH. is it suppose to re-trace the path back? My guess is RTH is designed to just turn back and head back to the original GPS location where it started its flight and not re-tracing its path(which may then drain more power).

You could read the manual, then you wouldn't have to guess, and you wouldn't get it wrong.

Carly Swinson · Nov 11, 2018

Congrats Cooper, you are one lucky guy but also you put some great effort in finding your drone and got the prize for it.

ruggb · Nov 12, 2018

are u kidding me! I can't believe u found it. Persistence pays and there are obviously some experience, intelligent ppl here. Please post ur lessons to be learned from this beside clearing the cache.

dannybgoode · Nov 12, 2018

That’s astonishing- great you found it. I’ll not give up now if my ever doesn’t make it back.

Have you tried flying it yet?

MavicProYutan · Nov 12, 2018

OMG, glad you recovered drone and have video on that epic journey. Wow

m chaussettes · Nov 26, 2018

Really glad you got it back.

This is why I just ordered a very small GPS tracker.

I would lose my nut if I had to search in terrain like that.

Oconnb910 · Nov 28, 2018

That is some amazing Luck on so many fronts! Congrats for the Find! Shows how the people in this forum / Community are such an incredible Resource at times!!!

Oconnb910 · Nov 28, 2018

m chaussettes said:
Really glad you got it back.

This is why I just ordered a very small GPS tracker.

I would lose my nut if I had to search in terrain like that.

I use the Trakimo and it has helped me out on 2 occasions!

Mavhawk · Dec 22, 2018

Sty Cooper said:
Thank you @sar104 !!
I'm heading back out there in a few minutes, will climb to that tree and have a serious talk with it.

I´ll check in again in a few hours to let you know how it goes...

Sty, I wouldn't "just" be concerned about the drone, but you too. You seem pretty adept at climbing around in that kind of terrain. Looks pretty steep to me. I hope you don't get lost there, implying that you have some sort of compass or GPS. I'm thinking too, it looks darn hard to do, but if you could set up any kind of grid pattern, you might not have to retrace your steps. Certainly, to me, it could have landed in one of the trees, so keep looking up too. I really hope you find it. You know we're all rooting for you out here. Marc T.

Mavhawk · Dec 23, 2018

Wonderful ending! A couple of questions, or thoughts- I'm pretty sure the Pro 2 has sensors on all sides. What I'm wondering is while it certainly seemed to sense those trees while it was pondering during hover, I'm wondering what it's supposed to do once it sees an obstacle. Should it rise and go over it, or try and go around it. The other thing, I'm kind of wondering is if maybe there were so many needles and branches so to speak it was looking at, maybe it just got too confused by that, because it took so long to do anything while that was going on. I can certainly see how and why it would land right there if the battery was on critical, otherwise why would it land. Marc

Mavhawk · Dec 23, 2018

Sty, I re-read your original post and you said "after a while you lost RC signal". I'm wondering if you ever tried turning off your RC and re-booting it again? I read somewhere where that sometimes works to re'establish connection. If that worked, and you were lucky enough to "catch it" while it was pondering that tree, you might have been able to cancel return to home, fly manually up and then back home. That's probably a long shot, but it could work if it would have re-established connection. Marc.