Lost my Drone,

[NeilRob]

I did

I did say

say I “think” so. But I might well have been confused. But I have learnt a lot from these discussions, thanks again, appreciated.

 

[Tufargon]

Hard to say why the downlink was lost. Could be environmental issues such as noisy RF environment and/or malfunctioning radio HW.

He did mention earlier "I set the RTH so high because there were some radio antenae close by and wanted to be sure to miss them.". Could be that.

 

[NeilRob]

Thanks to all for all the advice. I’ve got it. With your help I managed, with Google Earth, to find the property identity. Fortunately the owner was very friendly and helpful, climbed the tree and rescued the drone. So alls well that ends well, thanks again all.

 

[eva2000]

Thanks to all for all the advice. I’ve got it. With your help I managed, with Google Earth, to find the property identity. Fortunately the owner was very friendly and helpful, climbed the tree and rescued the drone. So alls well that ends well, thanks again all.

Wow very lucky outcome!

 

[deanbush]

Still a very newbie and took my drone out for a fly, probably my 5th flight. I was flying at about altitude 50 mts was 48 mts away, when I got a red message “RC not connected to mobi… long and the short of the story, couldn’t communicate with the drone and eventually it landed in the trees in an inaccessibility area. Expensive mistake, what could I have done wrong and how do I prevent it from happening again.

Sorry to hear that! Which drone and controller were you using. I heard that Mini 3 Pro users who were using the RC (Dumb) controller with it lost connection with their drones and they were only able to gain connection with the original Mini 2 RC231 controller.

 

[NeilRob]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I was fortunate enough to be able to retrieve my drone. But still have no idea why it lost signal. It was really my first flight away from home and I might have just panicked and backed it into the tree.

 

[RayKelly]

Still a very newbie and took my drone out for a fly, probably my 5th flight. I was flying at about altitude 50 mts was 48 mts away, when I got a red message “RC not connected to mobi… long and the short of the story, couldn’t communicate with the drone and eventually it landed in the trees in an inaccessibility area. Expensive mistake, what could I have done wrong and how do I prevent it from happening again.

Sorry to hear this. Always check RTH height prior to take off and make home point is established as well as you have enough satellites. Replace it and don't give up. All the best.

 

[fiberdude]

Hi all,

I am late to the party

Hi, thanks for your reply. I was fortunate enough to be able to retrieve my drone. But still have no idea why it lost signal. It was really my first flight away from home and I might have just panicked and backed it into the tree.

Mavic Mini 1 and Mini SE (the one NeilRob just lost to a nearby tree) are two Mavic models _unlike_ any other DJI drones (I have owned 4 other types of DJI drones, including a Phantom 4 Pro and 3 more serious models of the Mavic series). Their signals are totally bad, and could disconnect 100 meters vertically over your head in a location free of signal interferences. If you add environmental factors, such as interference from train power lines to this, these Mini models can lose RC connection within 20 m (Note: in the DJI manual, a drone within 20 m with no connection to RC will autoland where it is, instead of triggering RTH).

Recently, I was in the Czech border town of Usti nad Labem, awaiting a connecting train back to Dresden. I had three drones in my backpack, but the larger drones all ran out of batteries earlier in the day when I was sightseeing in Prague. I decided to launch the Mavic Mini just outside the train station (the sun was setting at the time). Mini 1 was about 90 m from me in VLOS and 20 m in altitude when I realized the drone did not respond to stick inputs at all. There was still clear downlink video and all the data on the screen. But I cannot move the drone in any directions. Worse, it was at the time autolanding into an adjacent river. Luckily, I was able to run toward the river to regain full connection with the drone before it dipped into water.

Later I looked into the flight log discovering the autolanding mode kicked in at 18m from the Home Point, without me realizing it (it was a bit dark, and the videolink was perfect). That's why there was not RTH triggered when RC signal was lost. There were RC-signal reconnections which allowed me to move the drone higher and further away and onto about 25m above the river. Guess what? Despite the reconnections, the "autolanding" mode was NEVER cancelled by the drone (DJI software engineers should be doing a better job). At 90m away, RC signals were gone again (but oddly, the downlink was totally fine). If I was not able to move closer to the drone and reestablish full connection, the Mini would be resting at the bottom the Elbe river (called Labem in Czech).

The flight log notifications are attached in part.