Mavic 3 crash into tower, by a student

[jaja6009]

Hello,

I am posting the logs from a Mavic 3 E accident by a student at the college I teach at.
I just like to have an independent opinion from a neutral source.

The goal was to make a waypoint mission to collect images of a tower on campus and then process in Drone Deploy.

The flight plan was not thought out correctly in that the start point was on the opposite side of the tower. The student stated that they hit the pause button to pause the mission when they realized that the drone was going to collide with the tower.
The Drone Deploy app was used and loaded onto the RC Pro Enterprise controller.

Thank you as always crash experts.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

 

[Meta4]

Hello,

I am posting the logs from a Mavic 3 E accident by a student at the college I teach at.
I just like to have an independent opinion from a neutral source.

The goal was to make a waypoint mission to collect images of a tower on campus and then process in Drone Deploy.

The flight plan was not thought out correctly in that the start point was on the opposite side of the tower. The student stated that they hit the pause button to pause the mission when they realized that the drone was going to collide with the tower.
The Drone Deploy app was used and loaded onto the RC Pro Enterprise controller.

Thank you as always crash experts.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

With an automated mission, we have no joystick inputs showing pilot actions.
All we can tell is what you already said, that the flyer set things up so that the drone was going to fly straight through the tower to commence the mission.

 

[slup]

Yeah, that was an oversight...

The drone was still accelerating, the sticks was reported to be in neutral position, the drone was in waypoint mode & the up/downlink was 100% & collision avoidance was active when it crashed. The log reports Braking 0,2sec after the first crash signs.

Nothing in the log confirms or denies a paus command.

 

[PHZ]

The first time I used Litchi was with an Inspire 1 and I was shooting the building of a new open air(partially) sports stadium. I thought it would go straight up to first waypoint altitude then to the first waypoint, as in DroneDeploy. Nope! After takeoff it was making a beeline diagonally to the first waypoint which would have taken it through (well, not really through), a steel roof. Not knowing what to anticipate when I took off, I had my finger on the mode switch. Changing mode immediately cancels automated flight.

I feel badly for you losing your Mavic 3. Students are an unknown. Did you confirm the flight plan with the student in your preflight? I am not trying to be snarky, and apologize in advance if it sounds like that. I always use my Mavic Pro when training students. If I lost it, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as badly.

 

[jaja6009]

The first time I used Litchi was with an Inspire 1 and I was shooting the building of a new open air(partially) sports stadium. I thought it would go straight up to first waypoint altitude then to the first waypoint, as in DroneDeploy. Nope! After takeoff it was making a beeline diagonally to the first waypoint which would have taken it through (well, not really through), a steel roof. Not knowing what to anticipate when I took off, I had my finger on the mode switch. Changing mode immediately cancels automated flight.

I feel badly for you losing your Mavic 3. Students are an unknown. Did you confirm the flight plan with the student in your preflight? I am not trying to be snarky, and apologize in advance if it sounds like that. I always use my Mavic Pro when training students. If I lost it, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as badly.

You're not being snarky, your posting common sense that others can read and learn from. The students are not in the novice Part 107 class. They are in remote sensing and are at this point able to sign out drones to use on their own. This student is one of the better ones on the sticks and has the fastest time in the NIST course. But in my opinion this makes him too confident when flying and most students don't seem to realize that being a good pilot is also knowing all the modes and features of your drone as well as regulations and flight planning. That's why this is school, to get them ready for being a professional drone pilot.

Thank you to all for their time. At least lessons have been learned not just by the student pilot, but also their classmates.

The drone has 4 broken legs, the gimbal is hanging on by wires and somehow it still powers up. It was powered on when found on the ground after the flight.