Mavic Mini Flew Away

[hiflyer201]

doing it's best it was leaving you at about 22Mph..so...about10 miles in 30 minutes...just roughly figuring...It looks like SAR has the landing spot pointed out. I sure hope you find it.

 

[Antshill]

The app messages are what is recorded in the logs.

Sorry - I meant I knew that there are warnings in app. I do not know about the decoding of logs.

 

[Rcarman]

Hi - Pretty new to flying the Mavic Mini and was hoping to get some help analyzing what I did wrong or if there was something wrong with my actual Mavic Mini when I flew it recently. Here's the flight path: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

I launched the drone with 10 satellites, set home point at 300-400 ft altitude to avoid crashing into nearby buildings when it returned, and launched it. Once it reached about 190 feet altitude the distance kept flying in the opposite direction due to high-wing and I was unable to lower it or direct the drone back and the remote controller wouldn’t take the drone back.

Once it was 450 ft away and I couldn't manually fly it back towards me, I set RTH. By then reception started going out with my controller and it kept drifting in opposite direction. Eventually I had zero reception of the drone and I couldn’t see anything around 900 feet. At a certain point I got a notification that it was going to land on its own without my control. I wanted to at least land it somewhere near land if the drone couldn’t return to me but I couldn't override anything. Instead I didn’t get any reception at all and it just landed on its own without my control into the water. I only knew about this when I came home and uploaded the flight path.

I'm going to assume that I made several user errors, including flying the drone in too high of wind, but I really would like to figure out if this was 100% my fault or if there was some internal error with the Mavic Mini as well so I can learn from this experience.

Thank you!

Your mistake was flying it in high wind speed... the Mini isn’t capable of withstanding winds like the M2 or Mpro...

 

[ferraript]

It looks like the current version of TXTlogToCSVtool isn't decoding those text fields properly.

Those text fields are not present in the logs.
PhantomHelp Viewer and AirData as well are creating them manually based on the other columns.

 

[sar104]

Those text fields are not present in the logs.
PhantomHelp Viewer and AirData as well are creating them manually based on the other columns.

Right - that makes sense. So the Mavic Mini txt logs don't include App Tip, App Warning and App Serious Warning.

 

[Capt KO]

Bad result, but the responses here were great. Hope people pay attention.

 

[Capt KO]

I certainly get wind warnings on my mini. And as others have stated, they show up even when the mini can hold position well. That’s enough of a warning for me to change what I’m doing immediately. Even flying in 10 mph winds, if I get a gust to 15, it will flash on the screen the wind warning. Those don’t worry me, just the ones where the red warning stays up. I’ve had a drone (Phantom) return by itself but never have had to push the RTH button, yet. But it’s set as low as possible, Rarely more than 120ft.
Have fun and get another drone ASAP. You’ve got the hard lesson out-of-the-way. Waiting to hear from you again, good luck.

 

[Mac Man]

First of all, your drone did not "fly away".
As we see all the time from recorded flight data, drones don't just fly away.
You put it up in a high wind and left it there to be blown away.

You mean you set the RTH height, not the Home Point.
The data shows that your RTH height was set to 456 feet.

Before it got to 190 feet there was plenty of evidence that the drone was battling a stiff wind.
When it was at 90 feet, you were only pushing the left stick up but the drone could not hold position and was already blowing away at 1 mph.
If the drone can't hover in place, you have a problem to deal with and should not be going even higher.

You took it up to 220 feet where the gusty winds were blowing it away at 3-8 mph.
If you hadn't noticed earlier, that's a screaming alarm to get back down out of that wind.

Why do you say that?
From 0:57.7 you started pulling the left stick down and the drone came down exactly as it should have.
You brought it down to 195 feet and didn't try to bring it lower so the drone was still stuck in a wind that was too strong for it.

At 1:17.3 you started trying to fly home manually in Sport Mode.
The drone was now 200 ft away.
From 1:22.7 with full stick in Sport Mode the drone started to make headway against the wind.
It was flying home at up to 12 mph against the wind and you gained 50 feet in the right direction.
But you gave it a little rudder and started flying more toward the north instead of east, then southeast and the drone was losing ground again.
At 1:48.5 you stopped trying to fly the drone and initiated RTH.
It's now 370 ft away and getting further away, being blown backwards at up to 12 mph.
RTH takes it up to 300 ft (where the wind is even stronger).
You make a few attempts to push the drone faster with the right stick, you bring it back down to 275 feet but none of that makes any difference to the main problem of being stuck up high in a strong wind.
It's now over 2000 ft away and being blown backwards at more than 12 mph.

Signal is lost at 5:30 with the drone still up 257 feet and being blown further away at 13.8 mph.
Battery level is 66%.
It will have been blown further away until low battery level forced it to autoland.

There's no hint of any problem with the drone.
The drone was responding perfectly to the controls and could have easily been brought home if you knew what you were doing.
Just another case of a lack of awareness of what was happening to the drone and leaving it to be blown away.

I have seen reports from places like Mike’s PhantomHelp. Where do you find advanced things like stick position. All I see is mode, distance, height, and battery info. Thanks

 

[Meta4]

I have seen reports from places like Mike’s PhantomHelp. Where do you find advanced things like stick position. All I see is mode, distance, height, and battery info. Thanks

On the Phantomhelp log viewer, click Download CSV.
If you want even more detail click Download Verbose CSV

 

[Gatorwills]

I certainly get wind warnings on my mini. And as others have stated, they show up even when the mini can hold position well. That’s enough of a warning for me to change what I’m doing immediately. Even flying in 10 mph winds, if I get a gust to 15, it will flash on the screen the wind warning. Those don’t worry me, just the ones where the red warning stays up. I’ve had a drone (Phantom) return by itself but never have had to push the RTH button, yet. But it’s set as low as possible, Rarely more than 120ft.
Have fun and get another drone ASAP. You’ve got the hard lesson out-of-the-way. Waiting to hear from you again, good luck.

Will do, the support from the community here was great. I'm going to pick up another one and go back to square one practicing this and learn from this experience. Even though it was lost in Florida, I will be mostly flying in a high frequency environment (Los Angeles) with frequent wind gusts.

Waiting to hear back from support for their diagnosis but not expecting anything from them. Will buy another one and sell the extra remote.

 

[Capt KO]

I have seen reports from places like Mike’s PhantomHelp. Where do you find advanced things like stick position. All I see is mode, distance, height, and battery info. Thanks

If you Google, how to calibrate DJI Mavic mini remote control, you will get a couple of excellent tutorials to explain the how to. One by GearBest is excellent. It’s a must do.

 

[Vegasdad]

Paper airplanes don’t mix with wind. No really sorry about your bird. Watch your wind.

 

[CareyL]

Another clasic example of why there are +250g drone and pilot regs and why there will be -250g regs.

2,000 feet away, over people, property, buildings, children and dogs. Just where does this notion of personal rights supersede public responsibility. Where is this "pilot's " responsibility to find out if his "fly-away" injured or killed someone and accept those consequences.

Hi - Pretty new to flying the Mavic Mini and was hoping to get some help analyzing what I did wrong or if there was something wrong with my actual Mavic Mini when I flew it recently. Here's the flight path: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

I launched the drone with 10 satellites, set home point at 300-400 ft altitude to avoid crashing into nearby buildings when it returned, and launched it. Once it reached about 190 feet altitude the distance kept flying in the opposite direction due to high-wing and I was unable to lower it or direct the drone back and the remote controller wouldn’t take the drone back.

Once it was 450 ft away and I couldn't manually fly it back towards me, I set RTH. By then reception started going out with my controller and it kept drifting in opposite direction. Eventually I had zero reception of the drone and I couldn’t see anything around 900 feet. At a certain point I got a notification that it was going to land on its own without my control. I wanted to at least land it somewhere near land if the drone couldn’t return to me but I couldn't override anything. Instead I didn’t get any reception at all and it just landed on its own without my control into the water. I only knew about this when I came home and uploaded the flight path.

I'm going to assume that I made several user errors, including flying the drone in too high of wind, but I really would like to figure out if this was 100% my fault or if there was some internal error with the Mavic Mini as well so I can learn from this experience.

Thank you!

 

[Lastrexking]

Another clasic example of why there are +250g drone and pilot regs and why there will be -250g regs.

2,000 feet away, over people, property, buildings, children and dogs. Just where does this notion of personal rights supersede public responsibility. Where is this "pilot's " responsibility to find out if his "fly-away" injured or killed someone and accept those consequences.

Do we really need to try and make this guy feel any worse? I'm sure we've all made mistakes in life - anyone that says they haven't is probably not being honest. He's lost his drone, it's cost him a lot of money, and he feels bad enough about it. He's come on here and is obviously willing to learn and admitted he made an error. Let's give the poor bloke a break?

 

[O9B0666]

Someone said this looks like wifi hell?

That looks like Wi-Fi after reincarnation, and going back to hell.

Sorry about your drone... I've had a fly away before sucked but atleast it wasn't as expensive I suppose.

 

[Julez]

CareyL makes a valid point. Those generous members who give their time to help locate lost drones are real stars, but we seem to be missing the point that so many fliers are putting others at risk with their irresponsible actions time after time. New 'pilots' just not bothering to read manuals then totally ignoring all the laws will sooner or later result in tragedy. A young child had an eyeball sliced in half in the UK by one such idiot. Instead of another lost-my-mini saga, we will one day be reading about those killed in a helicopter collision or similar. Helpful advice yes, but let's be robust in calling out those who should not be flying drones.

 

[Lastrexking]

CareyL makes a valid point. Those generous members who give their time to help locate lost drones are real stars, but we seem to be missing the point that so many fliers are putting others at risk with their irresponsible actions time after time. New 'pilots' just not bothering to read manuals then totally ignoring all the laws will sooner or later result in tragedy. A young child had an eyeball sliced in half in the UK by one such idiot. Instead of another lost-my-mini saga, we will one day be reading about those killed in a helicopter collision or similar. Helpful advice yes, but let's be robust in calling out those who should not be flying drones.

I agree. It seems nobody can wait to get in the air. Nobody should be allowed to buy a drone unless they can provide proof they’ve passed the CAA test here in the UK.

Also, the guy from Ikopta shared an interesting photo he took in Currys/PC World drone section which had zero info on registration requirements. Retailers need to be made to provide information on legal requirements.

 

[bigswifty]

Furthermore also note that hitting the RTH isn't the wisest thing to do in an early phase of a blow away ... 1. drop altitude quickly 2. keep away from RTH button, it's not powerful enough in that mode (for the Mini) to fight a to hard headwind, flip to Sport and manually maneuver it back.

In light of the prop issues, perhaps I'd add the extra step of rotating 180 and flying manually backwards.

 

[Dronernator]

I agree. It seems nobody can wait to get in the air. Nobody should be allowed to buy a drone unless they can provide proof they’ve passed the CAA test here in the UK.

Also, the guy from Ikopta shared an interesting photo he took in Currys/PC World drone section which had zero info on registration requirements. Retailers need to be made to provide information on legal requirements.

They certainly do. Buy a TV in the UK and they have to tell you it needs a licence but they don't have to tell you anything about a drone. TV's don't actually need a licence if you never watch BBC but let's not get into the whole BBC debate here. Not all drones need a licence but it should be made very clear on purchase, just.like a TV

 

[Lastrexking]

They certainly do. Buy a TV in the UK and they have to tell you it needs a licence but they don't have to tell you anything about a drone. TV's don't actually need a licence if you never watch BBC but let's not get into the whole BBC debate here. Not all drones need a licence but it should be made very clear on purchase, just.like a TV

Come July, all drones with a camera will, hopefully the shops will change their approach to match that.