Lost My Mavic Zoom

[Suren]

So i had a terrible end to my Birthday week. Went for a holiday to the Wild Coast Sun in KZN and had done some good flights for 2 days, yesterday afternoon I wanted to film my son fishing and sent the Zoom off, all was going well- I decided to video the river and the water park, noticed something in the river and went down for a closer look and the drone lost signal for a few seconds then i got it back and then it lost the connection again but this time it never reconnected, No Problem i decided to wait a few minutes as I have lost signal many times before and the drone always came back home. I must have waited for what felt like hours and no drone so i ran to the river and the drone was no where to be found. I searched around that area for hours and could not locate the drone walking around with the RC in hand hoping it would reconnect but nothing. In a fit of rage i threw my RC and phone on the rocks near the river mouth causing the RC to fall into the river and breaking my cellphone on the rocks. I checked the logs out and cannot for the life of me find anything that could have went wrong, no funny errors nothing, can someone look at this log - maybe i missed something here, not sure if DJI will even look at this loss given that I am in South Africa

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[DesertDan]

Looks like it disconnected because you were quite low and some high structures / trees obscured LOS. What was your RTH height set at?

 

[DesertDan]

Yikes, looks like it was only set to 30m. Looks like it might have crashed into the water park being that low?

You must have some serious balls to have it set to that low when flying with structures in between you and the drone.

 

[Suren]

Looks like it disconnected because you were quite low and some high structures / trees obscured LOS. What was your RTH height set at?

RTH was set to 30 meters which was good enough to clear those trees

 

[Suren]

Yikes, looks like it was only set to 30m. Looks like it might have crashed into the water park being that low?

You must have some serious balls to have it set to that low when flying with structures in between you and the drone.

30 meters actually clears those trees and water park easy, I have flown this area almost every 2 months and never had issues before, the strange thing for me or different should I say was that I updated to the latest firmware the day I left on holiday

 

[sar104]

There's nothing in the txt log to indicate a problem, other than it just stops. There was signal loss 42 seconds earlier but it had returned and was solid for the last 30 seconds of the recorded flight. If the DEM is trustworthy then the aircraft was around 10 meters above the water (tide was out), so an inadvertent splash down seems unlikely. A 30 meter RTH height should have been enough to clear the trees but, in any case, I would have expected it to regain downlink as it climbed. That leaves an FC crash or battery disconnect. Did you take a look at the DAT file for any precursor indications in the event stream that the FC was having problems?

 

[Suren]

There's nothing in the txt log to indicate a problem, other than it just stops. There was signal loss 42 seconds earlier but it had returned and was solid for the last 30 seconds of the recorded flight. If the DEM is trustworthy then the aircraft was around 10 meters above the water (tide was out), so an inadvertent splash down seems unlikely. A 30 meter RTH height should have been enough to clear the trees but, in any case, I would have expected it to regain downlink as it climbed. That leaves an FC crash or battery disconnect. Did you take a look at the DAT file for any precursor indications in the event stream that the FC was having problems?

Can I get the DAT file from the phone logs?
I have flow thousands of meters before and every time it lost connection in the past it always regained connection again after a while. This disconnect actually happened twice to me this holiday, once earlier on yesterday morning in the other direction of this flight on the beach about 1,5km away it disconnected and failed to reconnect again but the drone did a full RTH and landed safely at the home point, this time when it disconnected it never came back

 

[sar104]

Can I get the DAT file from the phone logs?
I have flow thousands of meters before and every time it lost connection in the past it always regained connection again after a while. This disconnect actually happened twice to me this holiday, once earlier on yesterday morning in the other direction of this flight on the beach about 1,5km away it disconnected and failed to reconnect again but the drone did a full RTH and landed safely at the home point, this time when it disconnected it never came back

Mobile device DAT file: How to retrieve a V3.DAT from the tablet

 

[Suren]

Mobile device DAT file: How to retrieve a V3.DAT from the tablet

 

[sar104]

You didn't follow the instructions carefully enough - that's a DAT file, but from the wrong directory. The filename you are looking for will end in FLY003.DAT.

 

[Suren]

You didn't follow the instructions carefully enough - that's a DAT file, but from the wrong directory. The filename you are looking for will end in FLY003.DAT.

Would this be it

 

[sar104]

Would this be it

That's it. Nothing obvious in there either. Confirms that it was 8 - 10 m above the water.

 

[RayOZ]

The last bit of the log says VPS altitude was 0”. Did it just land, just as connection was lost?

 

[sar104]

The last bit of the log says VPS altitude was 0”. Did it just land, just as connection was lost?

No - the OSD_isSwaveWork flag went to "False" at that point and the FC disregarded it. It was the only slightly strange thing I saw in the txt log.

 

[Suren]

That's it. Nothing obvious in there either. Confirms that it was 8 - 10 m above the water.

That is really strange, what could have caused the disconnect and most importantly where could the drone have flown off too

 

[sar104]

That is really strange, what could have caused the disconnect and most importantly where could the drone have flown off too

I doubt it flew off anywhere - I suspect that it suffered mid-flight failure and dropped into the water.

 

[Suren]

I doubt it flew off anywhere - I suspect that it suffered mid-flight failure and dropped into the water.

Maybe I need to go back to that river to have another dive and look, any ideas as to what failures it could have suffered?

 

[sar104]

Maybe I need to go back to that river to have another dive and look, any ideas as to what failures it could have suffered?

The two kinds that have been seen are an FC process crashing or a battery disconnect. This doesn't seem like a great candidate for either of those, but there are no obvious alternatives.

 

[Suren]

The two kinds that have been seen are an FC process crashing or a battery disconnect. This doesn't seem like a great candidate for either of those, but there are no obvious alternatives.

Thanks for your help, appreciate it

 

[paulatkin73]

Maybe I need to go back to that river to have another dive and look, any ideas as to what failures it could have suffered?

bird attack? any eagles/hawks in the area? i get hawks chasing my smaller models all the time, it is crazy annoying.
i know it will not help much, but, for the future -

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