Mavic Air ascends on its own without touching remote

MavicAirRock · 2024-10-09T03:35:55-0400

G’day folks
Question - haven’t flown my Mavic Air for a number of months now and last time I did, it was acting a little weird like landing a little hard when I brought it down.

Then yesterday I took it out, launched it off my large flat pelican style storage case and the voice said it was in “atti mode”. I waited for GPS to kick in however it didn’t seem to very quickly. I lifted it up to maybe 5 feet off the ground and let go of joystick, however then it just started lifting on its own.
I got concerned as it was a little windy and had trees all around so to be safe, I attempted to bring it back down.
Pulling down on the sticks seemed to bring it down but not at the speed it usually would. Then I let go again and it continued to descend on its own looking like a hard landing was coming.
I powered it back up again in the air and it seemed to do the same thing again. It wasn’t drifting side to side, more up and down like.

So I didn’t risk it any further as my gut was feeling was something bad would happen if I continued to push my luck so I packed it up and went home.

Last night I did a IMU recalibration and also a remote control joystick calibration however I can’t test it out until the coming weekend.

In the meantime, I’m looking for some help / advice.
Has anyone had a similar issue and a simple fix ? Will the IMU calibration have fixed my vertical “drifting” so to speak.

Meta4 · 2024-10-09T06:29:06-0400

MavicAirRock said:
In the meantime, I’m looking for some help / advice.
Has anyone had a similar issue and a simple fix ? Will the IMU calibration have fixed my vertical “drifting” so to speak.

It's quite possible that there was nothing wrong with your drone.
Rather than recalibrating things that might have no effect, it would be better to try to identify what happened and why and work from there.
A look at the recorded flight data will show what, if anything was wrong.

To post your flight data there are a couple of options ...

1. Go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
That will give you a detailed report on the flight data.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides and someone might be able to analyse it and give you an understanding of the cause of the incident.
or
2. Just post the .txt file here
or
3. If you use Airdata, you can view the flight data on Airdata and post a link for the Airdata report

If you are using one of the controllers with an integrated screen, the txt files are to be found here:
Android\data\dji.go.v5\files\FlightRecord

AeroJ · 2024-10-09T07:21:17-0400

If you don't wait long enough on the ground for more than sufficient GNSS signal (at least 18-20 sats), you can then lose that when you take off and couple of sats drop off for some reason, taking you under the minimum of (I want to say) 13 again, which would put you in Atti mode. But I don't think GPS is used to determine vertical position, so not sure that is even related !

Hard to speculate further without that flight log, but 1 easy thing to check / eliminate would be to look for dirt / fluff on any of the sensors on the bottom of the craft.

Meta4 · 2024-10-09T07:29:30-0400

AeroJ said:
If you don't wait long enough on the ground for more than sufficient GNSS signal (at least 18-20 sats), you can then lose that when you take off and couple of sats drop off for some reason, taking you under the minimum of (I want to say) 13 again, which would put you in Atti mode. But I don't think GPS is used to determine vertical position, so not sure that is even related

There is no magic number of sats that ensures proper GPS reception.
It might be 12 sometimes, but other times it might be 17 or 24 or any other number.
What you need to do is to wait until the drone tells you it has proper GPS reception and has recorded a home point.

Watch the satellite icon on screen and you'll see it change from red to yellow and when it has good GPS reception it will change to white and the number of sats isn't what's important.