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Mavic 3 flyaway

Here's the notification log: nothing odd except the ambient light issue when VPS went off line. And the winds aloft were minimal as stated - less than 7 mph at 300 feet. The odd thing is the drone was descending when things went bonkers. If I had to guess, the drone got below tree line, RF was lost, Auto RTH happened sans VPS, and the rest is history.

Trees are just as good as rocks for blocking RF, sometimes better. And my SWAG for a moral: never fly the drone where you can't see it.
View attachment 151995
I absolutely agree. Which is why it was a straight up, pan and get video, straight down. the entire line of it moving was not done by me, watch stick inputs as they don't kick in until it's moved a decent ways away from the home point
 
Yeah - looking back at the altitude vs speed shows the drone was making 45+ MPH in Cine mode. Pretty sure that isn't possible in a properly functioning drone. I could make up cases of the winds aloft being high and the drone losing GPS and VPS and being blown away ... but that's stretching it ... and nothing in the log even hints of that type of scenario.

Because of the weird speeds shown, I'm thinking electronics failure and nothing operator related. But I'm not an expert in this and pretty sure someone will post that I am wrong. lol.
 
Did you use your phone gps locater to go to the last known position or just your visual cues?
 
Did you use your phone gps locater to go to the last known position or just your visual cues?
Both. I got general by visual, and had the locator on the RCPro. If it was near where I was, it was in a 100ft tall pine tree somewhere, because I hiked to the top of the cliff-base area and couldn't see it anywhere, even looking up trees. And connection was lost so I couldn't reconnect to have it flash lights/make noise.
 
The entire flight lasted less than 59 seconds before the log ends.

There was a normal climb with zero forward speed through 44.3 seconds.

Then, without corresponding stick movements, the aircraft banked steeply and began accelerating. There was an attempt to correct the bank. And again without corresponding stick movements, the aircraft banked steeply (to ~60 degrees) in the oppposite direction and the flight log ends.

The data seems to match the OP's description of the flight. Something suspicious occurred in the drone's flight that wasn't prompted by control inputs. Let's let the experts have a look.
 
If the drone goes into an automatic RTH because of loss of signal, does pushing the RTH button then cancel RTH?
 
I'd bet that you were holding the controller horizontal, with the drone being mostly above you. The antennas in the drone are directional not only left and right, but also up and down. You may have been able to visually see the drone, but my guess is that the controller couldn't.

Just my guess ...
 
If the drone goes into an automatic RTH because of loss of signal, does pushing the RTH button then cancel RTH?
No. If there is no signal between the drone and the controller the controller can't send commands to the drone.

If the connection is reestablished, then presumably RTH could be cancelled by pressing the RTH button. The manual doesn't address that situation.
 
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I'd bet that you were holding the controller horizontal, with the drone being mostly above you. The antennas in the drone are directional not only left and right, but also up and down. You may have been able to visually see the drone, but my guess is that the controller couldn't.

Just my guess ...
No. There's no indication of signal loss in the log until the last entry at 58.5 seconds. And then it may have occurred because of impact with a tree or terrain.
 
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I'd bet that you were holding the controller horizontal, with the drone being mostly above you. The antennas in the drone are directional not only left and right, but also up and down. You may have been able to visually see the drone, but my guess is that the controller couldn't.

Just my guess ...
Nope, this is the RCPro controller, antennas were straight out, as is in the manual for flying directly above. Not the standard RC remote with phone attached.
 
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Yeah it would be interesting to see what this terrain looks like.
Already answered in post #5. Image file corrupted.
 
Without looking at the potential wind issues earlier the last second give a lot of information. At 58.1 sec Go Home was successfully issued. That means radio signal was OK at that point. (If you uploaded the .txt file to AirData you could see that type of information). So the failure is not radio signal lost. Once RTH is issues the drone takes over to make a valiant effort to go home. The ATL altitude was about 200 feet so climbing, bit it should have been set higher. Just after RTH issued the visual (VPS altitude is 13.5 feet meaning the drone abruptly encountered higher ground; it was too low. It was facing generally home as expected and flying at 20 mph.
At this point it looks like there was no connection error and no RTH cancelled, but no user control as signal was lost. It just encountered an unexpected obstacle.
Mountain flying is risky and can unexpected results, often due to turbulence.
 
Without looking at the potential wind issues earlier the last second give a lot of information. At 58.1 sec Go Home was successfully issued. That means radio signal was OK at that point. (If you uploaded the .txt file to AirData you could see that type of information). So the failure is not radio signal lost. Once RTH is issues the drone takes over to make a valiant effort to go home. The ATL altitude was about 200 feet so climbing, bit it should have been set higher. Just after RTH issued the visual (VPS altitude is 13.5 feet meaning the drone abruptly encountered higher ground; it was too low. It was facing generally home as expected and flying at 20 mph.
At this point it looks like there was no connection error and no RTH cancelled, but no user control as signal was lost. It just encountered an unexpected obstacle.
Mountain flying is risky and can unexpected results, often due to turbulence.
Right, and there as no wind where I was. I was still 4-500ft below the mountain walls (it steps down where I was) and it just went wonky. Video was choppy and not recording in cache. I am thinking this was a major malfunction somewhere. At first I though jammer, but it'd just land if that was the case. Then I thought MAYBE some water spray from the falls, but I was about 100yd back from it and no water got to the lens either. It's just really odd.
 
Google Earth, Google Street View, and the independent photos posted on Google give a very good view of the area.
Hmm, so Google Street View shows a wide valley with plenty of open skies above the falls, by the power station.

But the trail leading to the bottom of the falls, it still seems pretty wide and open?
 
Hmm, so Google Street View shows a wide valley with plenty of open skies above the falls, by the power station.

But the trail leading to the bottom of the falls, it still seems pretty wide and open?
Kind of. There's another valley stop the falls with another sheer cliff back about 200 yards from the power station. Also, I got no wind warning on the drone. It always yells at me if there's wind. I fly in Pueblo CO a lot and it can get windy. As soon as it starts moving the drone it starts warning
 
...and it started going backwards...
No...according to the log it started to drift sideways.

...I was definitely facing the falls the entire time...
Again... not according to the log.

...those 45+ MPH speeds in Cine mode are suspicious...
Unfortunately very typical in cases like this...

The reason for this incident was very likely a yaw error coming from powering on the drone in a magnetically interfered spot... that caused the IMU yaw to be wrongly initialized, plain and simple, when the drone took off it didn't have a true heading direction (look at the attached picture)

This made the flight controller to use the wrong motors to keep the position when the drone started to be pushed by the wind... it looks like the yaw error was about 90 degrees which usually cause a curved flyaway path like what we see here.

This isn't a hardware error...it's a pilot error. In the past it's been a bit of a hit & miss from DJI in cases like this, you might be lucky.

(Click on the picture to make it larger)
Screenshot_20220719_011210.jpg
 
No...according to the log it started to drift sideways.


Again... not according to the log.


Unfortunately very typical in cases like this...

The reason for this incident was very likely a yaw error coming from powering on the drone in a magnetically interfered spot... that caused the IMU yaw to be wrongly initialized, plain and simple, when the drone took off it didn't have a true heading direction (look at the attached picture)

This made the flight controller to use the wrong motors to keep the position when the drone started to be pushed by the wind... it looks like the yaw error was about 90 degrees which usually cause a curved flyaway path like what we see here.

This isn't a hardware error...it's a pilot error. In the past it's been a bit of a hit & miss from DJI in cases like this, you might be lucky.

View attachment 152014
What's odd is that it worked perfectly fine on launch. And very slow ascent while aiming at and recording the waterfall. Got to the top and started to pan when it started drifting. I got no IMU warnings or anything after waiting a few seconds after launch while hovering and checking all the controls, home point, etc.
 
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