Mavic Mini windy day flyaway and recovery

[wjkrysak]

Quick story of my first flyaway. I chanced a windy day, here in Georgia. Thought I would fly low, sheltered by a building and trees. Got careless and gained altitude, wind warnings ignored and off she went. Tried to control it, RTH and she turned briefly, but wind carried her off, with intermitent connections, I watched her path in camera. I thought all was lost

She remained connected up until, low battery. forced to land. I activated the "locate my drone" feature and high tailed it to the location, 3.1km away. Airdata mapped with last altitude of 177ft. GPS placed her in a private gated school, closed on Sunday. I google mapped it with last known GPS, placing it on roof of the school, near HVAC. Was not too hopeful of survival, but recovery was important for report, piece of mind and DJI refresh.
Stopped by the office this morning. Staff was interested, curious and very helpful. Security and I checked last known location and...WE FOUND it on the ground, about 50 feet from GPS location. NO visible damage, and time to share the marvels of the MM and DJI with Security. Got it home; gimbal test, test flight, connections, battery to one light (charging now). All OK. Lesson learned, careful in the (high) wind. BTW: I found out later that gusts were up to 26mph.

 

[ChrisOutdoors]

Avoiding the high winds is a great lesson learned. Take it further, next time something goes wrong (and it will) take a breath and find a landing zone. Having flown with other UAS operators I'm amazed at how many of them panic when something goes wrong, little things too like video feed cutting out, low battery and a headwind, app crash, etc. When you know your UAS isn't coming back, look down and land that sucker in a safeish spot and shut it down (emergency shutdowns are good to practice). I've had a few situations where my MPP wasn't going to make it due to an unexpected headwind increase, it's only a matter of thinking differently. You trying to remedy the problem by lowering your altitude puts you ahead of many UAS operators but when that doesn't work (and sportsmode isnt doing it either) accept it's not coming back, no big deal, find a good LZ and put her down then walk and get her. Remember, when something goes wrong this UAS will just sit there and hover in almost all situations (except high winds of course and RC transmission lost, which you should program to altitude climb followed by RTH) you always have options to fix a problem.

Just my ramblings and .02!

 

[wjkrysak]

Thanks for the feedback and advice. Yes, I was looking for landing spots. Unable to hold it into the wind and with intermittent transmission, I was looking at potential sites to reduce altitude and land. Just did miss another school yard across the street from landing. All is well and good learnings. Interesting, I was calm, much more than I would have been with my Mavic Air, and thinking the MA would have held the wind better (?)

 

[GerdS]

Why do you guys always rely on RTH???
RTH usually increases altitude, so there is even more wind impact.
RTH also limits max. speed to P mode speed, so it will not succeed in strong headwind conditions

The correct way would have been switching into S mode, reducing altitude and flying with max. speed back to your home position manually.
And in case this does not work you should have looked for a safe place to land which you can easily find.

 

[TDZHDTV]

After reading a few reports about wind fly aways I decided to initiate one today as I’d never experienced this issue with my Mavic Air. With good battery levels I took the mini up towards 120m in P mode, at around 90m I could see it was start to get carried by the wind. I was prepared to switch to S mode, pop the map open and throttle forward while descending, but it was all very exciting all the same and I can see how a lot of these drones are going to disappear over the horizon especially given a lot of these are going to be gifts during the winter months with extremes of cold and wind.

I still think it is a great little drone, and fits my requirements perfectly, you’ve just got to respect it’s limitations or opt for a more expensive and capable model.

 

[wjkrysak]

Why do you guys always rely on RTH???
RTH usually increases altitude, so there is even more wind impact.
RTH also limits max. speed to P mode speed, so it will not succeed in strong headwind conditions

The correct way would have been switching into S mode, reducing altitude and flying with max. speed back to your home position manually.
And in case this does not work you should have looked for a safe place to land which you can easily find.

Thanks for feedback. Yes, correct way to return. I was flying in a densely populated urban area, with intermittent connection as it sailed further away. I was eyeballing the maps and ended up just overshooting a landing spot across the street from the gated school, where it came to rest. Good learnings continue.

 

[WooZie]

as a sugestion, maybe will help if we have time to take a picture from the air to see exactly where landing

 

[floyd]

I'm really not understanding how winds (strong or not) are causing these flyaways. The "Ready Set Drone" guy blasted the Mini with a leaf blower (constant 50+ mph wind pointed directly at the drone) and it pretty much stayed in place. Yeah, it danced a little. But it didn't say see ya later!

 

[BenF]

Wind will take the mini if not in sport mode. Strong wind will. I was 400 feet up offshore in sport mode taking a sunrise shot at the Scarborough, Perth, beach, when I saw it drifting out towards the ocean. Full stick forward and it was staying in place. Once I dropped it to 300 feet, the mini started to come inshore. I still had 300 feet to play with, so I didn't feel too stressed. The wind where I was standing was not strong at all. Previous day was with my Mavic Air, which didn't blink at the wind.
As a side note, My scariest crash was in my backyard flying sideways getting a shot of the cat tails on the pond. So, the MA crashed somewhere in the cat tails, (Low battery lady barking at me, so I full stick'd it, didn't want to go down in the pond) after the crash, I activated the "Locate my drone" and to my surprise, the app said it was in Europe somewhere. Luckily the video was still active, pointing outwards so I could see me when I walked by.

 

[Clockman]

Those of us who have flown a lot know that the wind can be a fickle thing. The winds just a 100ft up can be a lot stronger than what we're experiencing on the ground and they can be sustained winds. Go higher than that, and there can be a huge difference. The little Mavic Mini is not going to handle sustained head winds in excess of 50 mph very well.

 

[Ger]

I wish people would stop posting these leaf blower videos. People watch these and think they can fly in 50mph winds. I learned the first day, flying my MM in light wind, that these small motors will not handle wind very well. I was only up 40 feet when I noticed mine going backward with full sticks forward in P Mode. I immediately put it in S mode, thinking it would give more power, but it just kept drifting away. The only thing that saved me was dropping in height. Don't rely on S mode to save your drone.

 

[Rockycat]

I like to use an app called Kittyhawk. If you open up the weather forecast, and select "By Height"
you can see the temp. and wind speed from 0 Ft. too 3000 Ft.
This is a very handy app. I use it every time as part of my pre-flight check list.

 

[GerdS]

Don't rely on an app for that purpose. These apps are not aware of your local geography and are based on a raw grid of measurement points. They should be used just for a raw hint about the wind to be expected, but the real wind strength can be VERY different.

 

[Rockycat]

Don't rely on an app for that purpose. These apps are not aware of your local geography and are based on a raw grid of measurement points. They should be used just for a raw hint about the wind to be expected, but the real wind strength can be VERY different.

Works just fine for me, I live in a very flat section of the US. I've checked the data from this app. and it is accurate.
How do you check for the temperature and wind speed in your area?

 

[GerdS]

By experience, observation and cross-checking local app data.

 

[ThorDar]

As mentioned, don't rely only on apps but that said, one of the better ones that can give at least an indication of the conditions from the nearest weather sensors to your flying location is UAV Forecast. It uses the Weather Underground sensor network which gets its data from many more localized sources than just the main weather sources.

One of the reports is a current wind profile which shows the wind from the ground up. Mainstream weather reports only give the wind speed at ground level but wind gets higher the higher the altitude from ground level. The units and all thresholds are customizable.

For example, the rated wind resistance for the Mini is 8m/s or 18mph/29kph. I live in Canada so I've set the max wind before showing red to 29kph and to include gusts. The app also shows aerodromes, KP index cloud cover and so on. I resized the aerodromes to match Canada's regulations and set the redline for the KP index to 4. A high KP index can affect GPS and compass.

UAV Forecast

UAV Forecast combines weather forecasts, visible GPS satellites, and solar flare (Kp) activity, to produce a comprehensive report and forecast of flying conditions for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

www.uavforecast.com

PWS Network Overview | Weather Underground

www.wunderground.com

 

[WooZie]

super app, very useful

 

[Meta4]

Quick story of my first flyaway. I chanced a windy day, here in Georgia.

After reading a few reports about wind fly aways

Using the term "flyaway" implies that the drone just flew away.
If you have trouble finding your drone because you put it up in a strong wind and didn't know how to handle the situation, the drone did not fly away.

I'm really not understanding how winds (strong or not) are causing these flyaways.

If are rowing your boat upstream at 8mph and the current is flowing at 10 mph, guess what happens.

 

[TDZHDTV]

Using the term "flyaway" implies that the drone just flew away.
If you have trouble finding your drone because you put it up in a strong wind and didn't know how to handle the situation, the drone did not fly away.

If are rowing your boat upstream at 8mph and the current is flowing at 10 mph, guess what happens.

I agree, I deliberately took mine up in high wind again yesterday (this is the last wind test I will do), the drone did really well fighting the wind a 80m, I’m Impressed with this little drone to be honest.

 

[grahamjohnson10]

Using the term "flyaway" implies that the drone just flew away.
If you have trouble finding your drone because you put it up in a strong wind and didn't know how to handle the situation, the drone did not fly away.

If are rowing your boat upstream at 8mph and the current is flowing at 10 mph, guess what happens.

I call it a blow away.