Mavic Air Lost Connection: Trying to learn lessons and preventative measures

[Epp1983]

Hate to contradict this but when my AIR lost contact it tried to return in a straight line. Unfortunately it clipped a tree and failed to return. I was lucky that it was found about a week later. Had my phone number on a label inside the battery bay.

I don't know the algorithm behind the programming of the Air, but during my tests it sometimes retraced the path and others it flew a straight line.
What the manual says is that the vision system creates a real-time map during flight.
I'm guessing that if this map shows an abstruction it then does a retrace, if it doesn't, then it flies in a straight line...

 

[BlackRider]

For long flights I use waypoints in Litchi, safest way to fly!

 

[ChrisW81]

Hate to contradict this but when my AIR lost contact it tried to return in a straight line. Unfortunately it clipped a tree and failed to return. I was lucky that it was found about a week later. Had my phone number on a label inside the battery bay.

I have to agree with you on this one. Made a couple flights today and had my RC lose connection so RTH kicked in, 3000m out. Drone flew a Bee Line straight back. Since I was higher than my RTH Altitude Setting, it just stayed there and descended once at Home Point.
If there is a retrace option, then I’d love to here about it.

 

[Stevezphoto]

The very first post in this thread has my flight log of the lost connection. Its definitely did not retrace the flight path when it came back.

 

[daasmangi]

That's interesting to hear, thanks for sharing that! The reason I mentioned to never do it was because I read that during a signal loss, the controller is the only downlink left with the craft, and resetting it could potentially break the controller's attempt to reconnect. This however contradicts that massively.
I'll agree that its best to wait it out for a bit before trying to restart the controller. That would be the safest way to go at it.
I guess if the quad does automatically RTH, that it's best to wait with rebooting it until the quad has reached a point where you can get to, in case a reconnect causes the drone to behave unexpectedly.

Hi guys
I accidentally turned my RC off while trying to hit the RTH button. My P4P remained in the air but got blown away.. I panicked when I realised what I had done.. I dreaded for the worse. I looked at my phone and there was no connection.. I quickly turned my RC back on and thankfully it reconnected and I was able to fly it back and land it
Cheers
Daasmangi

 

[daasmangi]

Hate to contradict this but when my AIR lost contact it tried to return in a straight line. Unfortunately it clipped a tree and failed to return. I was lucky that it was found about a week later. Had my phone number on a label inside the battery bay.

That’s why you need to set your RTH altitude higher than any trees or buildings in your flight path

 

[daasmangi]

Hate to contradict this but when my AIR lost contact it tried to return in a straight line. Unfortunately it clipped a tree and failed to return. I was lucky that it was found about a week later. Had my phone number on a label inside the battery bay.

That’s why you have to set your RTH altitude about your highest tree or building around the area your flying. Where I live 30m is high enough but I put in 60m
Cheers
Daasmangi

 

[Thwyllo]

Wj

The other thing I do on my android is make sure no unnecessary apps are in the background and I always run it in airplane mode.

What he said. Find yourself a phone cleaning app that can shut down all unwanted running apps, then stick the phone in Flight Mode so that there are no spurious updates, notifications etc that might interfere with DJI Go when you subsequently fire it up.