Mavic 3 Pro Erratic Flight issue

[psybear]

Hi All.

I hope someone here might be able to advise what was going on with my Mavic 3 Pro last week.

I took off from a coastal location, conditions were good, visibility was good. Home point updated, sats were locked, no errors.

Almost as soon as the drone was airborne I could see that it was not stable. The horizon was tilting all over the place on the controller. The drone itself appeared to be rocking from side to side. It was still flying forward in the direction I wanted it to go, but was not flying level. My friend was a few yards away, also flying a Mavic 3 Pro, took off just before me, flying roughly in the same direction, and had no issues.

I checked for error messages, there were none.

I aborted the flight and returned to the home point, I could see that the drone was unstable even as it was coming in to land.

I restarted both drone and controller and carried out a gimbal calibration (ground wasn't totally level). Took off again and the drone performed totally normally.

I have uploaded the flight data to Airdata UAV - I'm not seeing anything obvious to explain what happened but then again I'm not sure what it is I am looking for. I suppose my main concern is that there was clearly something wrong but there were no error messages and obviously I wouldn't want this to happen again.

Happy to post any other necessary screenshots here if someone can help.

Thanks.

 

[SkyeHigh]

I had exactly the same issue on Monday with a M2P for the first time since 2018. No ironwork nearby, no wind. Gimbal did its usual dance on startup, good GPS etc. On take-off I first noticed the gimbal was shaking and the horizon off axis. All controls operating normally except the gimbal - I had no control of it. No error messages displayed.

Landed, power cycled just the drone and then normal flight and gimbal control.

Can’t download logs yet but will check.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Hi All.

I hope someone here might be able to advise what was going on with my Mavic 3 Pro last week.

It is all but impossible to work off screen shots, we need the actual .txt flight log itself. If you want assistance make the airdata general page public an post its URL here.

 

[psybear]

Here you go:

 

[KJC Imaging]

I took off from a coastal location,

Were you flying in an updraught caused by an on-shore breeze reaching the coast and rising up the cliff face between you and the sea? This could explain your symptoms.

 

[psybear]

It didn’t feel anywhere near windy enough for updraft issues. My friend beside me had no similar issues. And after my reboot and calibration I had a normal flight on same trajectory and normal landing.

 

[Meta4]

Almost as soon as the drone was airborne I could see that it was not stable. The horizon was tilting all over the place on the controller.

I've gone over your flight data and can't see anything obvious that's showing this.

The drone itself appeared to be rocking from side to side. It was still flying forward in the direction I wanted it to go, but was not flying level.

Did you see the drone rocking around, or just the view on screen?
I'm wondering if your gimbal was glitching, which can make you think the drone is very unstable even though the drone is flying normally.
Unfortunately in your flight data, the columns for gimbal data are blank so I can't tell what the gimbal was doing.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Almost as soon as the drone was airborne I could see that it was not stable. The horizon was tilting all over the place on the controller.

The log on phantomhelp
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
The out bound flight was into a 'headwind' with a sidewind from the north, look at the difference in the drone's pitch on the outbound and inbound legs.
Do you have a screen capture from the controller?
As I understand the log, the gimbal's pitch and roll were rock sold 0 & 0 respectively.
I am not sure what the gimbal mode "free "means but I suspect it means it should try to hold the camera level.

 

[psybear]

I've gone over your flight data and can't see anything obvious that's showing this.


Did you see the drone rocking around, or just the view on screen?
I'm wondering if your gimbal was glitching, which can make you think the drone is very unstable even though the drone is flying normally.
Unfortunately in your flight data, the columns for gimbal data are blank so I can't tell what the gimbal was doing.

The drone itself was not stable. I could see it rocking from side to side. Although I suppose I was looking for this because of what I was seeing on the controller. A glitching gimbal would make sense as I would have expected it to compensate for any erratic movement of the drone. But I would have expected a warning of gimbal issues and there wasn’t one.

I should add (in case anyone thinks I was imagining this) that I showed my controller screen to my friend and he said ‘get that back now’.

 

[slup]

As said earlier... the drone in it self doesn't show any obvious instabilities neither in pitch or roll, some odd larger deflections in roll that doesn't correspond to your stick commands can be found on the outbound flight though, but could have been wind gusts also.



This is stated early in the Airdata notifications... (& in the .txt also)


... so something was sensed by the software. Have you checked the prop blade hinges, any blade that sticks & maybe preventing the blade to fully unfold? The pitch & roll data where I have placed the chart marker suggests that something maybe can glitch in the rear right corner.

 

[psybear]

The log on phantomhelp
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
The out bound flight was into a 'headwind' with a sidewind from the north, look at the difference in the drone's pitch on the outbound and inbound legs.
Do you have a screen capture from the controller?
As I understand the log, the gimbal's pitch and roll were rock sold 0 & 0 respectively.
I am not sure what the gimbal mode "free "means but I suspect it means it should try to hold the camera level.

No screen capture available, never thought of it in the panic to get the drone home.

 

[psybear]

As said earlier... the drone in it self doesn't show any obvious instabilities neither in pitch or roll, some odd larger deflections in roll that doesn't correspond to your stick commands can be found on the outbound flight though, but could have been wind gusts also.

View attachment 177191

This is stated early in the Airdata notifications... (& in the .txt also)

View attachment 177192
... so something was sensed by the software. Have you checked the prop blade hinges, any blade that sticks & maybe preventing the blade to fully unfold? The pitch & roll data where I have placed the chart marker suggests that something maybe can glitch in the rear right corner.

I’ve checked the props visually. All in as new condition. No evident stickiness

 

[psybear]

Okay so I just checked my recollections with my friend, who was obviously paying more attention than me and has provided a much more accurate description of what was going on….

“The drone itself was unstable and rocking side to side. But the gimbal was like a newborn baby trying trying to keep its head upright without support. It was wobbling all over the place. Or a very drunk man trying desperately to stay awake”

 

[Meta4]

As I understand the log, the gimbal's pitch and roll were rock sold 0 & 0 respectively.
I am not sure what the gimbal mode "free "means but I suspect it means it should try to hold the camera level.

The gimbal data isn't correct, it's blank.
No matter what the pitch and roll actually is, the gimbal yaw data should be showing approximately the drone's heading.
At a minimum it should be 180° different for the outward flight vs the return.
But it just shows zero at all times.
I'm not sure, but perhaps the gimbal data would be different if the actual original txt file was available, rather than Airdata's version of it??

The drone itself was not stable. I could see it rocking from side to side. Although I suppose I was looking for this because of what I was seeing on the controller. A glitching gimbal would make sense as I would have expected it to compensate for any erratic movement of the drone. But I would have expected a warning of gimbal issues and there wasn’t one.

I should add (in case anyone thinks I was imagining this) that I showed my controller screen to my friend and he said ‘get that back now’.

It's uncommon, but not unusual to occasionally have a gimbal glitch that can give an alarming screen view that makes you think the drone is going crazy.
I've gone over your data again and cannot see any pitch or roll data for the drone that would indicate it was doing anything different from what it should have done for your joystick inputs.
There was no crazy or out of the ordinary drone movement.

It appears that Airdata isn't showing any data at all for the camera gimbal.
Given your description of the incident, the most likely explanation is a gusty sidewind caused an erratic gimbal glitch which would be obvious if we had actual gimbal data.

 

[psybear]

Really appreciate the advice to date.

Full flight log here:

DJIFlightRecord_2024-08-18_[19-14-04].txt

drive.google.com

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Full flight log here:

DJIFlightRecord_2024-08-18_[19-14-04].txt

drive.google.com

Access denied.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

But it just shows zero at all times.

Ahhh ok.

 

[psybear]

Access denied.

Apologies.

I think I’ve unrestricted it now.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

This sounds more like the camera was just flipping from wind gusts as the others have mentioned above.
This happens when flying into a headwind and then slightly turning against it as shown in this video .
The Gimbal flip starts about 8:20 Seconds but there are several of them on the video.

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Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water.

 

[psybear]

This sounds more like the camera was just flipping from wind gusts as the others have mentioned above.
This happens when flying into a headwind and then slightly turning against it as shown in this video .
The Gimbal flip starts about 8:20 Seconds but there are several of them on the video.

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water.

Appreciate the post and the video, but this is nothing like my symptoms.

Both the drone and the gimbal were moving much more erratically, and much more violently than this.

And as I said, my friend took off beside me, took roughly the same heading, and had a totally normal flight. As did I after doing the RTB/Reboot/Recalibration process.

I guess it's going to remain a mystery.