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Mavic Air lost connection over the sea and i lost it

nas1124

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Had my Mavic air for lil over a month, wanted to take a sunset picture/video. any way the mavic lost connection, before i could do anything to save it, it landed in the OCEAN never to be seen again. this sucks. to spend all that money with DJI for drone to make it so difficult to get a replacement with dji care purchased. right now i'm in the hard process of getting a replacement from DJI. being i dont have the old mavic. after reading warrantee i think i have a chance ,being the mavic disconnected and went for a dive. i can only assume that its a malfunction and being the accident took less than a minute. if this was any other time it would had went up to suggested altitude then go home but it didn't even do that. PLEASE HELP!!! see link of last video's

Sand Bar & the dock
 
Had my Mavic air for lil over a month, wanted to take a sunset picture/video. any way the mavic lost connection, before i could do anything to save it, it landed in the OCEAN never to be seen again ...
the mavic disconnected and went for a dive. i can only assume that its a malfunction and being the accident took less than a minute. if this was any other time it would had went up to suggested altitude then go home but it didn't even do that.
Disconnection is normally no great issue and the drone stays hovering where you left it and will RTH if signal is lost for long enough.
But if you get the message because the Mavic has suffered a sudden total power loss, that's a different issue.

A look at the recorded flight data should go some way to eliminating some possible causes and give a better idea of what happened.
o to DJI Flight Log Viewer - Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
Come back and post a link to the report it gives you.
 
Had my Mavic air for lil over a month, wanted to take a sunset picture/video. any way the mavic lost connection, before i could do anything to save it, it landed in the OCEAN never to be seen again. this sucks. to spend all that money with DJI for drone to make it so difficult to get a replacement with dji care purchased. right now i'm in the hard process of getting a replacement from DJI. being i dont have the old mavic. after reading warrantee i think i have a chance ,being the mavic disconnected and went for a dive. i can only assume that its a malfunction and being the accident took less than a minute. if this was any other time it would had went up to suggested altitude then go home but it didn't even do that. PLEASE HELP!!! see link of last video's

Sand Bar & the dock
If it happened in GCM, I would see if there is a diver that might dive for a recovery mission. You'll need that thing.

Also, as stated in the first reply, post your flight log.
 
We need flight logs otherwise we are just guessing - Meta4 posted a link that should get you going there.

Things that come to mind though:

What was your battery percentage? Best practice is to return home around 30%.

How many satellites did you have and what was the satellite signal strength?

Did you get any wind warnings?

If your drone loses connection with the remote it should return home automatically unless there were other factors at play.
 
Better check your flight data . You will find the reason there i hope.
 
So i woke up this morning to a email saying Dji will not replace my lost drone, BUT THEY WOULD GIVE ME A 15% DISCOUNT ON MY NEXT PURCHASE. apparently a weak signal was the cause, the drone then RTH. and they will not cover the warranty even though the drone is less than 2 months old, and the Dji care service is not valid as i cannot recover the drone, maybe i should contact the little mermaid or sebastian from the little mermaid to recover it, id have a better chance than to have to deal with DJI.

so in closing this experience has left a sour taste in my mouth and i will not waste money on a drone again
 
Post your flight logs already. There has been many times that the experts here can prove what caused the accident. But be aware that 8 out of 10 times the pilot actually flew the aircraft into the crash.
 
apparently a weak signal was the cause, the drone then RTH.
That makes no sense.
A weak signal causes nothing.
No signal causes RTH
Post your flight data and we can see what really happened.
 
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That makes no sense.
A weak signal causes nothing.
No signal causes RTH
Post your flight data and we can see what really happened.
 

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Sorry ... I don't read .dat files.
If you follow the instructions given in post #2, I'll have a look.
 
Unless I'm missing something, this appears to have been entirely self-inflicted. There was no disconnect as far as I can tell. At 30 seconds into the flight, RTH was initiated but, since the aircraft was only 4.5 meters from the home point it commenced autolanding, as expected. That was cancelled 3 seconds later but, at 39 seconds, autoland was requested by the GO app autoland button, 3.5 meters from the home point. It then auto landed, since no stick input or cancel commands were issued to prevent landing.

Graph0.png
 
Thanks ... it looks like you were flying from a boat?
You were impatient to launch and took off before you had GPS and a home point recorded.
Your mavic acquired GPS and recorded a home point at 0:15.5 secs and you had not moved it far in that time.
But on a boat that won't be a problem at all since you don't want to land the drone on the boat.

You mentioned "weak signal" .
The only weak signal is a message at 8 seconds.
Weak GPS signal. Positional accuracy may be compromised. Please fly with caution.
That's just a warning that your Mavic had not yet got full GPS, but 7 seconds later it had full GPS.
This had no effect on the loss of the drone.

I was going to type more but SAR104 has just come in with what I was going to say anyway.

From a boat is an unforgiving flying environment and you need to be very familiar with all controls and actions you will use because one mistake can easily cause the loss of the drone, particularly when you don't have much altitude.
Using RTH or autoland close to the boat was a mistake.
Hand catching is what you have to do when flying from a boat.
 
Last edited:
Thanks ... it looks like you were flying from a boat?
You were impatient to launch and took off before you had GPS and a home point recorded.
Your mavic acquired GPS and recorded a home point at 0:15.5 secs and you had not moved it far in that time.
But on a boat that won't be a problem at all since you don't want to land the drone on the boat.

You mentioned "weak signal" .
The only weak signal is a message at 8 seconds.
Weak GPS signal. Positional accuracy may be compromised. Please fly with caution.
That's just a warning that your Mavic had not yet got full GPS, but 7 seconds later it had full GPS.
This had no effect on the loss of the drone.

I was going to type more but SAR104 has just come in with what I was going to say anyway.

You are correct, i was flying from a boat, as it went up. seconds after i lost control and that was all she wrote, splash.
 
You are correct, i was flying from a boat, as it went up. seconds after i lost control and that was all she wrote, splash.
If you get another drone, practise a lot on land before taking it out on the water.
In this incident, simply letting go of the controls before you tried RTH would have left the Mavic hovering while you worked out where it was and what you wanted it to do.
The Mavic would have happily waited safely but panicking caused the problem.
.
 
You are correct, i was flying from a boat, as it went up. seconds after i lost control and that was all she wrote, splash.

What do you mean by "lost control"? From around 25 seconds into the flight you stopped applying any stick inputs. Then you requested RTH, followed by autoland.
 
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Nas, Sorry to hear about the loss of your Mavic but this was definitely not a control loss incident. Root cause was a lack of pilot experience flying in a challenging environment (from boat), conscious decision to stop flying the aircraft (releasing the sticks), and invoking RTH in an inappropriate environment failing to understand how RTH works (immediate landing when selected within 20m of home point). There is no aircraft failure here.
 
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