Mavic Pro gone...need feedback

Arnold · Apr 7, 2018

Hi guys,

It's been a great run...1 year and i've finally lost the drone. I've always been careful but I guess not careful enough. Was by the beach yesterday (zero wind at ground level) and wanted to take some pics of the sunset. Got a little too confident and took the bird up to 1600 feet. Was not paying attention to the map and within minutes my drone had drifted 6000 feet at 12 mph without any stick input. At 1600 feet the drift is not as apparent unless you're paying attention to the map, which of course I have not. Then I started losing signal to the mavic and had sporadic reconnections and was able to initiate RTH before I finally lost connection entirely. At first I thought that the drone was not moving because of connection issues, but I did have video and the picture didn't seem to be moving forward when I pushed the drone forward. But it did respond to my left and right turns. When I lost connection for good I had about 44% battery left and had managed to descend to 650 feet. The last information that I can see is that the drone seemed to be heading back to home point at 2 mph.

So what I would like to ask anyone who can is to comfirm pilot error based on the flight data below and recommend their best guess on where the drone might have landed/crashed. I did have a getter backer installed on the MP for water landings and I do still have two months on my care refresh. Any help would be appreciated.There are 2 flight records bacause I restarted the remote while trying to reestablish a connection.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

joejaxvic123 · Apr 7, 2018

Sorry for your troubles. Hopefully you can find it. That's pretty high altitude.

Just_nick · Apr 7, 2018

That's what you get for going up to altitudes that you shouldn't have been at. I have no remorse for people that suffer the consequences of very stupid actions.

joejaxvic123 · Apr 7, 2018

Yikes!

Paul2660 · Apr 7, 2018

Sorry for the loss. I don’t understand why you had so much drift. Even at that height with good connection I would assume the drone would hover albeit give you wind warnings.

I have found that multiple wind warnings if received very close together can start to give the Mavic some strange behavior.

Hope someone can read the logs and pin point location.

Paul Caldwell

sar104 · Apr 7, 2018

Arnold said:
Hi guys,

It's been a great run...1 year and i've finally lost the drone. I've always been careful but I guess not careful enough. Was by the beach yesterday (zero wind at ground level) and wanted to take some pics of the sunset. Got a little too confident and took the bird up to 1600 feet. Was not paying attention to the map and within minutes my drone had drifted 6000 feet at 12 mph without any stick input. At 1600 feet the drift is not as apparent unless you're paying attention to the map, which of course I have not. Then I started losing signal to the mavic and had sporadic reconnections and was able to initiate RTH before I finally lost connection entirely. At first I thought that the drone was not moving because of connection issues, but I did have video and the picture didn't seem to be moving forward when I pushed the drone forward. But it did respond to my left and right turns. When I lost connection for good I had about 44% battery left and had managed to descend to 650 feet. The last information that I can see is that the drone seemed to be heading back to home point at 2 mph.

So what I would like to ask anyone who can is to comfirm pilot error based on the flight data below and recommend their best guess on where the drone might have landed/crashed. I did have a getter backer installed on the MP for water landings and I do still have two months on my care refresh. Any help would be appreciated.There are 2 flight records bacause I restarted the remote while trying to reestablish a connection.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Look at the winds aloft. They were as high as 40 mph out of the SW, blowing it directly away from you.

Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones

In that kind of wind field there is no realistic chance of it making much headway. It will have eventually auto landed due to low battery not far from its last recorded location over Scott Cove.

sar104 · Apr 7, 2018

Paul2660 said:
Sorry for the loss. I don’t understand why you had so much drift. Even at that height with good connection I would assume the drone would hover albeit give you wind warnings.

I have found that multiple wind warnings if received very close together can start to give the Mavic some strange behavior.

Hope someone can read the logs and pin point location.

Paul Caldwell

It drifted because it cannot hold position in winds of 40 mph.

Paul2660 · Apr 7, 2018

Good point. 40mph. I can understand that.

Paul C

projockey · Apr 7, 2018

Just_nick said:
That's what you get for going up to altitudes that you shouldn't have been at. I have no remorse for people that suffer the consequences of very stupid actions.

He did state having come down to 650 AGL. Relax.

jaysrmc · Apr 7, 2018

projockey said:
He did state having come down to 650 AGL. Relax.

Just_Nicole does this a lot. Comes into a thread and talks about how she is a pilot and knows pilots that have had to dodge drones, etc.. same tired stuff.. there a ton of drone police here that provide no helpful information other than to judge people although she has said in previous post she doesn't come here to judge..

No one here will stop anyone that wants to break rules from breaking them. Nicole has never went above the speed limit on highways either.

MavicCF · Apr 7, 2018

Arnold said:
Hi guys,

It's been a great run...1 year and i've finally lost the drone. I've always been careful but I guess not careful enough. Was by the beach yesterday (zero wind at ground level) and wanted to take some pics of the sunset. Got a little too confident and took the bird up to 1600 feet. Was not paying attention to the map and within minutes my drone had drifted 6000 feet at 12 mph without any stick input. At 1600 feet the drift is not as apparent unless you're paying attention to the map, which of course I have not. Then I started losing signal to the mavic and had sporadic reconnections and was able to initiate RTH before I finally lost connection entirely. At first I thought that the drone was not moving because of connection issues, but I did have video and the picture didn't seem to be moving forward when I pushed the drone forward. But it did respond to my left and right turns. When I lost connection for good I had about 44% battery left and had managed to descend to 650 feet. The last information that I can see is that the drone seemed to be heading back to home point at 2 mph.

So what I would like to ask anyone who can is to comfirm pilot error based on the flight data below and recommend their best guess on where the drone might have landed/crashed. I did have a getter backer installed on the MP for water landings and I do still have two months on my care refresh. Any help would be appreciated.There are 2 flight records bacause I restarted the remote while trying to reestablish a connection.

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

This one was harder to estimate due to the two flight logs and the fact that RTH was not engaged most of the time it was drifting, I really don't know how accurate it will be but I gave it a shot. I estimated the drift by using Google Earth to measure the heading of the drift from the first log and then applying it to the last known point of the second log, hoping that the drift patterns would be the same.

For this graph, solid red is battery level, dotted red is battery estimated down to the 10% auto-landing, and solid green is distance with dotted green being the estimated distance in relation to the 10% battery.

This second image is where I estimate you Mavic is (roughly), search near where the circle and line meet.

The last image is a close up of the second.

Again, there are a lot of factors that make this difficult (for me at least) I'll ask @sar104 to see how far off he thinks I am. Hopefully this will help you find it! -CF
EDIT: pictures have been updated.

macoman · Apr 7, 2018

Just_nick said:
That's what you get for going up to altitudes that you shouldn't have been at. I have no remorse for people that suffer the consequences of very stupid actions.

I have the same feeling as well. The rules and policies are in place to follow safely. The highest you get, the more difficult is going to be to control it.

JMF · Apr 7, 2018

Just_nick said:
That's what you get for going up to altitudes that you shouldn't have been at. I have no remorse for people that suffer the consequences of very stupid actions.

Do you feel better now ?

MavicCF · Apr 7, 2018

Update on the above post I made, realized I made my Google Earth plots using feet not meters (this is my most common problem) stand by for an update on the images...

MavicCF · Apr 7, 2018

Ok, pictures have been updated, I'll check the elevations tomorrow to make sure it didn't run into anything down wind. -CF

sar104 · Apr 7, 2018

MavicCF said:
This one was harder to estimate due to the two flight logs and the fact that RTH was not engaged most of the time it was drifting, I really don't know how accurate it will be but I gave it a shot. I estimated the drift by using Google Earth to measure the heading of the drift from the first log and then applying it to the last known point of the second log, hoping that the drift patterns would be the same.

For this graph, solid red is battery level, dotted red is battery estimated down to the 10% auto-landing, and solid green is distance with dotted green being the estimated distance in relation to the 10% battery.
View attachment 35287 This second image is where I estimate you Mavic is (roughly), search near where the circle and line meet.View attachment 35294
The last image is a close up of the second.View attachment 35295
Again, there are a lot of factors that make this difficult (for me at least) I'll ask @sar104 to see how far off he thinks I am. Hopefully this will help you find it! -CF
EDIT: pictures have been updated.

The problem here is that there is no consistent drift velocity to work with. If you look at the end of the second log, the aircraft is drifting away almost until the end, but then starts slowly making progress back. Not enough data to extrapolate though - hence my assumption that it will end up approximately where it was last seen.

MavicCF · Apr 7, 2018

sar104 said:
The problem here is that there is no consistent drift velocity to work with. If you look at the end of the second log, the aircraft is drifting away almost until the end, but then starts slowly making progress back. Not enough data to extrapolate though - hence my assumption that it will end up approximately where it was last seen.

View attachment 35297

The graph pictured is from log number 1 correct?

sar104 · Apr 7, 2018

MavicCF said:
The graph pictured is from log number 1 correct?

Yes - but the behavior in log #2 changed significantly. The graph I posted above is a composite of logs #1 and #2. The drift had slowed to a stop in log #2.

MavicCF · Apr 7, 2018

I just saw that between log #1 and #2 the flight path deviates very little, but stays roughly on a heading of 39.82 even when RTH is initiated in #1 no progress is made, in #2, RTH does start to gain back and then it cuts out. I was just assuming that #2 would end up looking more like #1, but...your probably right, I just wanted to explain my reasoning.

MavicCF · Apr 7, 2018

I guess I was relying more on the KML files as far as what distance was doing than on the txt. Probably not a good thing. On the KML of log 2, it follows the same route as log 1 then turned at the end with RTH but doesn't seem to come back much if at all. Should have looked more closely at the txt of log 2...