Mavic 2 Pro crash in urban area between tall glass buildings

[Meta4]

Hi Ajlholt

I just had ‘exactly’ the same experience with a Mini 3 Pro at 4.30am filming a city scape in Vancouver - drone took off fine but within a minute whilst facing one of the mirrored glass buildings it started flying itself erratically & stopped responding to the RC. It then flew at the building & dropped to the ground, braking the casing, losing an arm, destroying the gimble & camera & effectively writing off the drone.

It seems either, as you say, the glass of buildings confuses the satellite signal & / or the sensors to the point its CPU is so confused it won’t accept instructions from the RC.

Your recorded flight data would show your GPS status for the flight and this is likely to be the cause of what you describe.

Glass has no effect on GPS, but if your drone gets down in a "canyon" where buildings block its view of the sky, the number of satellites avalable is restricted.
Without GPS, the drone has no ability to hold position and will drift on any wind.
It also has no "brakes" and will continue moving when you take your hands off the sticks.
If you haven't experienced flying without GPS, it will be confusing and feel like the drone isn't responding to your control inputs.

 

[fiberdude]

There are certainly warnings about flying over water and the difficulty of the vertical positioning sensors being able to recognise height over water. There are no warnings about flying in the vicinity of glass clad buildings however and I wonder if GPS signals reflect off them altering the effective distance to satellites.

About 5-6 years ago when I was a newbie with a Mavic Pro (my 1st DJI purchase), I once launched the drone between two tall glass buildings with a home point clearly set up. Everything seemed to be fine until I pressed the RTH button -- instead of flying back to the HP, it flew away from it! Luckily it was within my VLOS. I cancelled RTH, and flew it back to safety manually.

To question you posed: "I wonder if GPS signals reflect off them altering the effective distance to satellites", the answer is yes.