Mavic down

[Tinmania]

Yes, the toy RC sportbike is a better analogy when discussing an unmanned drone, but my point was about trusting advanced technology. If one wouldn't trust an automatic wheelie button that could give an uncontrolled lift on your bike and flip you backward, one shouldn't trust a single button to auto bring back your drone, that could have erroneously recorded the home point to be on the other side of the globe. I'm still baffled why my Upair One fell out of the sky when I activated the RTH switch, after having come back via RTH so many times before.

I agree that you are never in complete control of the mavic when flying it manually, but you're much more in control of it than when using RTH. I would compare RTH to intelligent modes like tapfly, terrain follow, etc. You basically stop using stick input and let the drone fly on programmed code, which is much more advanced than the code used for stick input. I've seen a few crashes reported on here due to intelligent flight modes failing or RTH problems. I don't recall reading about the Mavic all of a sudden having a mind of its own and flying away or crashing down when you are just flying it with stick input (I'm disregarding prop and battery failure and strong wind occurrences).

RTH has been discussed here over and over. I'd love to see that feature work flawlessly, but for now with all the crashes and flyaways reported, not so much for the Mavic, but more so for other drones, including my own experience, I'll use it as a fail safe feature only. Besides, I enjoy navigating the drone back manually, changing altitude on the way back. For example, you get a nice descending view on the return home when you're up high, say 300-400 ft, and do a full (left) throttle down and full forward on the right stick, looks kinda like an airplane landing, versus the RTH view of coming in at a certain altitude and just lowering down.

With all due respect I don’t buy into the the idea that RTH causes crashes on its own with any kind of regularity. Still, if you can cite three or five cases where RTH caused a crash I’ll be happy to see them. But don’t include cases where it ascended into a tree or ceiling because someone didn’t know how it worked. Also don’t include any where a battery failure happened during RTH— and believe me I have seen people blame RTH in exactly that case (as if the battery would not have failed anyway). You get the drift: only bona fide cases of return to home failure.

Most all of the cases I have read where RTH is blamed for a crash it really was not the culprit. For example I read one where there was a clear compass error and the Mavic was out of control. Yet in a futile attempt to do something the pilot pressed RTH, which did not cause the incident. Yet there’s always someone who will chime in with, “And that’s why I never trust RTH!”




Mike

 

[QLDMAVIC]

Was it a DJI battery, or 3rd party aftermarket? if it was the latter, these batteries are known to cause problems. Your scenario sounds just like a 3rd party battery incident.

It’s a DJI battery

 

[motopokep]

With all due respect I don’t buy into the the idea that RTH causes crashes on its own with any kind of regularity. Still, if you can cite three or five cases where RTH caused a crash I’ll be happy to see them. But don’t include cases where it ascended into a tree or ceiling because someone didn’t know how it worked. Also don’t include any where a battery failure happened during RTH— and believe me I have seen people blame RTH in exactly that case (as if the battery would not have failed anyway). You get the drift: only bona fide cases of return to home failure.

Most all of the cases I have read where RTH is blamed for a crash it really was not the culprit. For example I read one where there was a clear compass error and the Mavic was out of control. Yet in a futile attempt to do something the pilot pressed RTH, which did not cause the incident. Yet there’s always someone who will chime in with, “And that’s why I never trust RTH!”
Mike

Again, can't disagree with you that in many instances an RTH crash was caused by pilot error, such as not having RTH set to a height higher then the tallest object in the area and crashing into a building or a tree, not having the sensors on during RTH, or trying to RTH into strong headwind and on low battery. On the other hand, magnetic interference, compass error are non-user error. Let's agree to disagree. I haven't had any RTH issues with the handful of times I used it on the Mavic. To me it's an auto-pilot feature. I wouldn't put my sportbike in autopilot, and I'm cautious to put my drone in same. Maybe as I get more confident with it and experiment with RTH close by in an open field, I'll trust it more. Again, my upair one falling out of the sky upon RTH has something to do with this.