Yesterday afternoon I was flying my Mavic, trying to put together a video for a friend of a golf course. The golf course was built on top of a field beside an old smelter and there is a lot of slag, metallic, rock waste in the area. (It was actually built on top of the stuff.)
I have flown my drone in the area before with minimal interference, besides the odd warning, and had been flying over the same spot all day when, briefly after a battery swap and take off, the magnetic interference warning came up on my controller. I ignored it as usual, because it typically hadn't affected the actual flight of the drone, but this time by Mavic began to drift to the side. I increased elevation so as not to hit a post and began to manually attempt to counter the drift so that I could land the drone. Then the drift tuned into a full throttle flight path away from me, I raised the elevation again so as not to crash into any trees but at this point my manual corrections had no effect of the drones flight path.
Thankfully, after running after the drone for a while and watching the controller to see where it was facing I was able to bring it back to me and perform a small crash landing, because it was still drifting while I was landing it.
I know that the problem was caused by the magnetic interference and I don't plan on flying my drone anywhere near that place ever again. I'm just wondering what was different from this flight and the others i had performed the same day. The only difference on my end was that I took of from a new position which was lower in elevation, so it had more slag around it, which i'm assuming would have been the issue. But i don't know how the drone was able to seemingly ignore my inputs and fly away? I've attached the DAT file that I believe corresponds to the specific flight:
Dropbox - FLY021.DAT
My main concern now is that my region has many other similar areas, i'm going to try to avoid them, but if this were to happen again what should I do? At the point where my controls weren't working I tried that Return To Home feature but nothing happened. Is there some way I can switch on full manual control or emergency land so that I don't have to just crash it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have flown my drone in the area before with minimal interference, besides the odd warning, and had been flying over the same spot all day when, briefly after a battery swap and take off, the magnetic interference warning came up on my controller. I ignored it as usual, because it typically hadn't affected the actual flight of the drone, but this time by Mavic began to drift to the side. I increased elevation so as not to hit a post and began to manually attempt to counter the drift so that I could land the drone. Then the drift tuned into a full throttle flight path away from me, I raised the elevation again so as not to crash into any trees but at this point my manual corrections had no effect of the drones flight path.
Thankfully, after running after the drone for a while and watching the controller to see where it was facing I was able to bring it back to me and perform a small crash landing, because it was still drifting while I was landing it.
I know that the problem was caused by the magnetic interference and I don't plan on flying my drone anywhere near that place ever again. I'm just wondering what was different from this flight and the others i had performed the same day. The only difference on my end was that I took of from a new position which was lower in elevation, so it had more slag around it, which i'm assuming would have been the issue. But i don't know how the drone was able to seemingly ignore my inputs and fly away? I've attached the DAT file that I believe corresponds to the specific flight:
Dropbox - FLY021.DAT
My main concern now is that my region has many other similar areas, i'm going to try to avoid them, but if this were to happen again what should I do? At the point where my controls weren't working I tried that Return To Home feature but nothing happened. Is there some way I can switch on full manual control or emergency land so that I don't have to just crash it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.