Magnetic interference while calibrating my compass

dakaunman · May 21, 2018

I have had the "Magnetic interference" message pop up both times I have tried to calibrate my compass on my new Mavic Air. Both times I moved around to try and find a place without interference and the message still came up. The second time I was in the middle of nowhere so I can't imagine that there was any reason to have interference. I went through the calibration process anyway and it seemed to work fine through all of my flights. I do have a garmin watch and I wonder if that might be the problem. Going to try it after work without my watch on to see if that is the issue. Its a gps watch with a compass on it and I didn't think about it until reading through the forum today. Has anyone else had this issue and should I not be pushing through the calibration even though it seems to allow me to do so?

christen49 · May 21, 2018

I have had that situation inflight. Very scary.
Screen flickered and message said something about interference. Tried RTH. That didn’t work. I was about 45meters up and not quite 1/2 km away. Lucky the screen came back up properly and I could use RTH again.

InvisibleName · May 22, 2018

dakaunman said:
I have had the "Magnetic interference" message pop up both times I have tried to calibrate my compass on my new Mavic Air. Both times I moved around to try and find a place without interference and the message still came up. The second time I was in the middle of nowhere so I can't imagine that there was any reason to have interference. I went through the calibration process anyway and it seemed to work fine through all of my flights. I do have a garmin watch and I wonder if that might be the problem. Going to try it after work without my watch on to see if that is the issue. Its a gps watch with a compass on it and I didn't think about it until reading through the forum today. Has anyone else had this issue and should I not be pushing through the calibration even though it seems to allow me to do so?

Are you wearing a watch with a magnetic wrist band, like an Apple Watch? They play havoc with MA’s compass!

christen49 · May 22, 2018

InvisibleName said:
Are you wearing a watch with a magnetic wrist band, like an Apple Watch? They play havoc with MA’s compass!

No, not wearing any type of watch. My phone was in the house.
But re reading things about how important it is to have the antennae’s aligned to flight..... that may have caused the problem. I use a tablet and the transmitter is beneath it so I need to pay attention to that.

sar104 · May 22, 2018

christen49 said:
I have had that situation inflight. Very scary.
Screen flickered and message said something about interference. Tried RTH. That didn’t work. I was about 45meters up and not quite 1/2 km away. Lucky the screen came back up properly and I could use RTH again.

christen49 said:
No, not wearing any type of watch. My phone was in the house.
But re reading things about how important it is to have the antennae’s aligned to flight..... that may have caused the problem. I use a tablet and the transmitter is beneath it so I need to pay attention to that.

Your event is entirely unrelated to the OP's question.

christen49 · May 22, 2018

sar104 said:
Your event is entirely unrelated to the OP's question.

Oh really. “Interference” message.

Squamer · May 22, 2018

Lose the watch

sar104 · May 22, 2018

christen49 said:
Oh really. “Interference” message.

Yes - the OP is reporting magnetic interference during compass calibration. You are reporting signal interference in flight. Those are completely different.

InvisibleName · May 22, 2018

christen49 said:
No, not wearing any type of watch. My phone was in the house.
But re reading things about how important it is to have the antennae’s aligned to flight..... that may have caused the problem. I use a tablet and the transmitter is beneath it so I need to pay attention to that.

I wasn’t referring to your ‘addition’ to this thread, I was speaking to the original post. An Apple watch wouldn’t have an effect on the RC signal to your drone, but would impact on the compass calibration

InvisibleName · May 22, 2018

christen49 said:
Oh really. “Interference” message.

Your “in flight interference” and the OP’s Compass Calibration magnetic intereference are 2 completely different topics.

dakaunman · May 23, 2018

So I took off my Garmin watch last night before I went out to fly. As always I got the "Calibrate compass" message scrolling across the banner in red so I went out to calibrate it. Still came up with the magnetic interference when I went to calibrate it. I decided to play with it a little and took it out in front of my house where there are some high tension power lines about 300 ft. away. When I went to calibrate it said the magnetic interference was too high and couldn't be calibrated. I went back out to the back of my property and although the message popped up that there was interference the compass still went through and calibrated. GPS was good and I decided to fly and all went really well. I am guessing the it isn't optimal to have any interference but if it allows you to calibrate then it must be good enough. I don't fly very far away from me as I'm not comfortable with that yet and wouldn't want to if all of my calibrations weren't spot on. Anyway, it seems like these are very sensitive to any interference but will work as long as you can calibrate it. It is just a bummer that you have to calibrate it almost every time you fly because I haven't found a place yet that doesn't have some kind of magnetic interference. Absolutely love flying this bird though and can't wait to get better with the camera portion.

sar104 · May 23, 2018

dakaunman said:
So I took off my Garmin watch last night before I went out to fly. As always I got the "Calibrate compass" message scrolling across the banner in red so I went out to calibrate it. Still came up with the magnetic interference when I went to calibrate it. I decided to play with it a little and took it out in front of my house where there are some high tension power lines about 300 ft. away. When I went to calibrate it said the magnetic interference was too high and couldn't be calibrated. I went back out to the back of my property and although the message popped up that there was interference the compass still went through and calibrated. GPS was good and I decided to fly and all went really well. I am guessing the it isn't optimal to have any interference but if it allows you to calibrate then it must be good enough. I don't fly very far away from me as I'm not comfortable with that yet and wouldn't want to if all of my calibrations weren't spot on. Anyway, it seems like these are very sensitive to any interference but will work as long as you can calibrate it. It is just a bummer that you have to calibrate it almost every time you fly because I haven't found a place yet that doesn't have some kind of magnetic interference. Absolutely love flying this bird though and can't wait to get better with the camera portion.

If you are still getting the request to calibrate each time you fly then something is wrong with the aircraft. One calibration should last almost indefinitely unless the magnetic state of the aircraft (not the environment) changes.