Mavic air flew away day of purchase

[useitorloseit]

Just wanted to post for yet another case of a MA fly away I own a MP for a year and a half without any problems flying on average 3-4x a week. I live in San Francisco so needless to say I have gotten pretty good at flying in high wind, between buildings... Etc and truly pushing the envelope of DJI technology, and it never let me down. However upon purchasing the MA my very first flight roughly 2 min into flight, 200 ft off the ground and 150 ft out I lost complete transmission and control. The drone proceeded to fly all over the place and then gently landing in the middle of the bay. I am currently dealing with support for the first time I am praying they equal the product and do the right thing. Either way I have to admit I can't wait to save up for the new MP2

 

[james_mav]

If you were 200 ft up then there is no telling how strong the winds were. I wonder if you lost transmission since the wind was pushing it out of range & then it couldn't come back on its own. I imagine you can download the files & someone can tell you what happened.

 

[Prismatic]

A sad story, but without log files it’s anecdotal and uninformative. Post those for analysis so that we can (hopefully) all learn something from your misfortune.

 

[CanadaDrone]

How many GPS satellites did you have and what was the signal strength? Any less than 12 satellites and any less than max signal strength means it's time to bring it in. That seems to be what happens in 90% of the flyaway cases.

Also as mentioned by someone else above, 200ft up the winds could be drastically different than what you feel on the ground.

Log files should let you know what happened.

 

[mad monkey]

Maybe an envelope pushed too far lol

 

[MegaObi]

I don’t get how the drone just flies away? Thank god never happened to me and I hope it never happens

I always make sure the home is assigned to my take off point

 

[Voltaic]

My guess here is that the drone was launched from a boat and as the boat drifted away from the RTH point, the drone then lost connection, performed a retrace of flight path as per the lost connection protocol, then returned to the home point and took a swim.

Again, that’s a guess. Let’s get the logs and see what happened.

 

[MegaObi]

My guess here is that the drone was launched from a boat and as the boat drifted away from the RTH point, the drone then lost connection, performed a retrace of flight path as per the lost connection protocol, then returned to the home point and took a swim.

Again, that’s a guess. Let’s get the logs and see what happened.

Well in that case u make sure home is assigned to where the remote is

 

[InvisibleName]

Well in that case u make sure home is assigned to where the remote is

As discussed elsewhere on here, not all devices relay a good enough GPS for the RC to be able to know where it is

 

[Lake_Flyer]

Well in that case u make sure home is assigned to where the remote is

Better set it to hover and keep the drone within a minute reach, which means well within visual range.

 

[mad monkey]

There has been numerous claims of fly away . Mostly due to bad set up /flight practices

 

[Lapeer20m]

And at least one was attributed to a bad compass or compass error where the drone flew the opposite direction it was supposed to...

 

[Voltaic]

Well in that case u make sure home is assigned to where the remote is

The Air doesn't have dynamic home point I'm afraid. I think you can set the home point at will according to the RC's location, but I don't think that would have saved him if my theory turns out to be correct.

 

[sar104]

The Air doesn't have dynamic home point I'm afraid. I think you can set the home point at will according to the RC's location, but I don't think that would have saved him if my theory turns out to be correct.

At this point I doubt that the OP is going to come back and post logs, but I'm puzzled why you think that the flight launched from a boat.

 

[Voltaic]

At this point I doubt that the OP is going to come back and post logs, but I'm puzzled why you think that the flight launched from a boat.

The dude says he likes to push the envelope! I figure what better way than to launch from a boat

Like I said, it's a flat out guess but he mentions being near the bay and every time I've seen someone saying they had a fly away and the drone starting flying erratically, it's actually retracing its steps and performing a RTH fail safe. I could be totally wrong (read: probably wrong!).

 

[sar104]

The dude says he likes to push the envelope! I figure what better way than to launch from a boat

Like I said, it's a flat out guess but he mentions being near the bay and every time I've seen someone saying they had a fly away and the drone starting flying erratically, it's actually retracing its steps and performing a RTH fail safe. I could be totally wrong (read: probably wrong!).

Actually almost all "flyaways" reported here are either a result of wind speeds to high for the aircraft (not likely in this case since the description was "erratic"), magnetic problems compromising the FC's ability to control position or flying the aircraft behind terrain/buildings and losing connection. In this case the OP mentioned being only a few hundred feet away, so loss of connection and failsafe RTH also seems unlikely.

 

[Voltaic]

Actually almost all "flyaways" reported here are either a result of wind speeds to high for the aircraft (not likely in this case since the description was "erratic"), magnetic problems compromising the FC's ability to control position or flying the aircraft behind terrain/buildings and losing connection. In this case the OP mentioned being only a few hundred feet away, so loss of connection and failsafe RTH also seems unlikely.

Fair enough, sir. I'll see myself out lol.

 

[sar104]

Fair enough, sir. I'll see myself out lol.

No criticism intended - I just wanted to clarify.

 

[John MacAulay]

I suppose flying behind buildings / terrain would not necessarily result in a flyaway since in a perfect world loss of connection should result in a RTH initiated by loss of signal. (If I understand it correctly)

 

[sar104]

I suppose flying behind buildings / terrain would not necessarily result in a flyaway since in a perfect world loss of connection should result in a RTH initiated by loss of signal. (If I understand it correctly)

Yes - but if there are now large structures between the aircraft and the home point and if the RTH height has not been set high enough (common mistake) then RTH may not be possible. The MA makes an effort to regain uplink and LOS for direct RTH by retracing the previous 30 s of flight, which improves its chances, but there has been at least one recent thread where that strategy most likely resulted in a crash.