Moral of this epic crash is when you define a waypoint mission, be sure to take off from the same location each time!
I decided to try out the latest Maven release with the new radius curve algorithm by flying a previous mission that I had flown a couple of months ago. That first mission in the mountains was under windy conditions and a temp of 2ºF. Little wind and 60ºF this time. In my springtime euphoria, I pulled into a parking lot was was several hundred yards from my original launch location and about 60' in elevation below it.
About 600' into the flight and on its way to the first defined mission waypoint, the Mavic Air 2 came face to face with innumerable trees growing right before my eyes. I watched on my screen as the drone tried to recover itself, but kept tumbling until it came to a stop. It wasn't immediately clear if it was atop an 80' tree, somewhere else in the dense tree cover, or on the ground. I was not recording at the time as the video was programmed to turn on at the first waypoint. So for posterity in case the battery died before finding it, I saved a minute of video where it came to a rest, and took a screen shot of the location along with coordinates.
I flipped over to the DJFly app and clicked on Find My Drone. Bingo, there it was about 600' away. I headed into the woods, post-holing through couple of feet of snow. I turned on the lights and audio, and could just hear the beeping as I got closer. Within about 20' of the drone, I found it partially buried in the snow - with the speaker buried causing the attenuated audio.
The drone tried to avoid the trees, but it had been traveling at 27 mph with a slight tail wind. I'm not sure it that created an issue for obstacle avoidance. Data shows it started falling almost as soon as it stopped moving forward at a distance of 666'. Within 5 seconds it had hit the ground and the data showed Motor is Blocked notifications. During the previous 5 sec there were 39 Not Enough Force/ESC Error notifications.
Three of the props were damaged and had to be replaced. I had to recalibrate the IMU, Compass, and Gimbal before I could fly it again. The video below shows what was going on after it had hit the ground:
I decided to try out the latest Maven release with the new radius curve algorithm by flying a previous mission that I had flown a couple of months ago. That first mission in the mountains was under windy conditions and a temp of 2ºF. Little wind and 60ºF this time. In my springtime euphoria, I pulled into a parking lot was was several hundred yards from my original launch location and about 60' in elevation below it.
About 600' into the flight and on its way to the first defined mission waypoint, the Mavic Air 2 came face to face with innumerable trees growing right before my eyes. I watched on my screen as the drone tried to recover itself, but kept tumbling until it came to a stop. It wasn't immediately clear if it was atop an 80' tree, somewhere else in the dense tree cover, or on the ground. I was not recording at the time as the video was programmed to turn on at the first waypoint. So for posterity in case the battery died before finding it, I saved a minute of video where it came to a rest, and took a screen shot of the location along with coordinates.
I flipped over to the DJFly app and clicked on Find My Drone. Bingo, there it was about 600' away. I headed into the woods, post-holing through couple of feet of snow. I turned on the lights and audio, and could just hear the beeping as I got closer. Within about 20' of the drone, I found it partially buried in the snow - with the speaker buried causing the attenuated audio.
The drone tried to avoid the trees, but it had been traveling at 27 mph with a slight tail wind. I'm not sure it that created an issue for obstacle avoidance. Data shows it started falling almost as soon as it stopped moving forward at a distance of 666'. Within 5 seconds it had hit the ground and the data showed Motor is Blocked notifications. During the previous 5 sec there were 39 Not Enough Force/ESC Error notifications.
Three of the props were damaged and had to be replaced. I had to recalibrate the IMU, Compass, and Gimbal before I could fly it again. The video below shows what was going on after it had hit the ground:
