Mavic Pro gone...need feedback

[SYC12]

OP,
Other than high wind warning, there is another flight telemetry which shown at the bottom of GO4, HS as aircraft horizontal speed would certainly help in your unfortunate situation

 

[Arnold]

That looks like a pretty affluent neighborhood, They like their privacy, they may have called the police to report it... did you try calling the local P.D.?

It is. But I was flying at sunset. People are not generally hanging out in the open at that time. Sun was almost gone. There are two properties which I suspect that the MP may have landed in. But they are like 1 mansion with acres of land surrounding it. Besides, I do have my MP marked with FAA # and a cell number to call.

 

[Taylor1430]

Arnold, Thank You for posting the picture of Holly Pond. My in-laws live over in Shippan (they are in-laws...don't judge me ). We'll be visiting up there in June and was considering taking my MP. After reading your story, I'm having second thoughts lol...

 

[RayOZ]

You ever go past the speed limit driving your donkey? You follow all rules? Amazing we are in the presence of so many self righteous perfect people. Oh god I have to sit down - this is so awesome.

Maybe you should all get your website. How can you bear to be in the presence of so many imperfect losers like us?

The tone of your comment doesn’t make you any more righteous than him. Commenting other people’s family is immature.
Breaking of one law, doesn’t no justify breaking another. Sure, people do over speed sometimes. If the speed limit is 40mph, driving 45mph, ok sure, but shouldn’t be doing that all the time. 50mph, you are pushing the limit there. What about 100mph, or 160mph?
So, height restriction is 400ft, going 450-500ft to take that one perfect shot of a sunset, ok, understandable. 1000ft? 1600ft? That’s reckless.
People should stop using over speeding to justify breaking UAV regulations. If you see people driving a few mph above the speed limit, it doesn’t justify driving twice the speed limit.

 

[erkme73]

I thank you for your kind words. And I don't mind the additional useless commentary from some other users. At 41 years or age you learn to just tune out the noise. With that said, I am at an age where I don't see the MP as a toy, but as a tool to take great some great photos. I have been to 1600 hundred feet several times and each time I try to observe my surroundings (airports, aircraft, birds, etc) before going up that high or even going up at all. I even have a preflight checklist. This baby has held up like a pro in flight. It's just a solid piece of machinery. And that's when you start having to much confidence in what it can do. You are so right, it was inattention which finally got me!

I have you bested by a few years, and it burns me to see how rude and condescending people can be when behind a keyboard.

While I'm happy for you to be able to overlook such comments, my concern is that most do not. In fact, as I've remarked in the past, it's these negative posts that have a real chilling effect on lurkers and readers who, as a result, choose not to share their experiences, or ask for help. That is an immeasurable detriment to the community. All for someone to feel just a little power over others. It is a shame.

 

[Arnold]

Arnold, Thank You for posting the picture of Holly Pond. My in-laws live over in Shippan (they are in-laws...don't judge me ). We'll be visiting up there in June and was considering taking my MP. After reading your story, I'm having second thoughts lol...

Don't! (have second thoughts).....This is a really great place to take your MP. You get so many different elements of color here and it makes for great shots. I've taken my MP to a few countries around the world but they were not as good as around here. Of course it does not compare to locations like Iceland or hawaii, but it's a start. There are lots of places to fly around here unrestricted. The MP is awesome and even though there's a chance that I won't find my MP and therefor will not be able to use my DJI care refresh I will probably get another drone again. $800 for a new one is hard to swallow, but worth it. Even after this incident I would choose the MP again.

 

[Donnie Frank]

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

While I can't help you recover your Mavic, I might be able to help prevent losing another.

It looks to me like the wind may have overtaken your bird. In these situations, where the forward stick doesn't seem to be doing much, I stick her in Sport Mode and drop altitude like a rock. 1600' is pretty high, so you had a lot of altitude to work with. Pretty consistently, winds are stronger at higher altitude. So often times dropping 100' will dramatically change wind speed and, sometimes, direction. Going from a head wind to a side wind can mean the difference between making it home or not.

Before I fly large mapping jobs with my P4P, if it seems breezy out, I'll take wind readings @ 100', 200' and 300' by tossing the bird into ATTI mode. Not only are speeds different at different altitudes, but often times wind direction changes by a few degrees. Unfortunately, ATTI Mode isn't an option on the Mavic, which is really too bad, but I digress. In lieu of being able to take ATTI Mode wind readings, with the Mavic, if I find she's having a hard time with the wind (like your tell-tale 2 mph return speed), assuming I'm already in Sport Mode, I'll drop her down 100' or so and keep dropping her until I find a good compromise between RC reception and wind speed. In your case, I would have kept the stick full forward WHILE dropping altitude. @ 6,000' away, to maintain line-of-sight (for connection reasons), you don't want to drop much below 400'. Pushing forward while you drop while keeping an eye on your horizontal speed is the best course of action. Twice this has saved my bacon.

Last week, my partner and I went out for a large mapping job. Winds were predicted to be around 12 mph with 23 mph gusts. When we arrived on the job site, it felt windier than that to me, so I took the P4P up to 100' and threw her in ATTI Mode. Wind was around 18 mph. Hmmmm.... So took her up to 200'. Wind was 24 mph. I went up to 300' and wind was 36 mph. That was enough for us to cancel the day. I dropped her down to 200' and brought her home.

I have 3 birds: Inspire 1 Gen 2, P4P and Mavic Pro. I've managed to hang on to all three. I attribute this largely to wind and environment awareness.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

 

[Melvin373]

Lost connection issues may be due to not having the current update (let’s hope it’s not an Apple like scheme) to get us to buy the latest drone—and, if you are going to fly 1,200 feet above the FFA guidelines for UAV’s, don’t do it...

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[/QUOTE]

 

[Melvin373]

Most lost drone connection failures occur when users are involved in ‘distance testing’ activities...if you use your drone for aerial photography, losing connection rarely ever is an issue.

 

[Arnold]

While I can't help you recover your Mavic, I might be able to help prevent losing another.

It looks to me like the wind may have overtaken your bird. In these situations, where the forward stick doesn't seem to be doing much, I stick her in Sport Mode and drop altitude like a rock. 1600' is pretty high, so you had a lot of altitude to work with. Pretty consistently, winds are stronger at higher altitude. So often times dropping 100' will dramatically change wind speed and, sometimes, direction. Going from a head wind to a side wind can mean the difference between making it home or not.

Before I fly large mapping jobs with my P4P, if it seems breezy out, I'll take wind readings @ 100', 200' and 300' by tossing the bird into ATTI mode. Not only are speeds different at different altitudes, but often times wind direction changes by a few degrees. Unfortunately, ATTI Mode isn't an option on the Mavic, which is really too bad, but I digress. In lieu of being able to take ATTI Mode wind readings, with the Mavic, if I find she's having a hard time with the wind (like your tell-tale 2 mph return speed), assuming I'm already in Sport Mode, I'll drop her down 100' or so and keep dropping her until I find a good compromise between RC reception and wind speed. In your case, I would have kept the stick full forward WHILE dropping altitude. @ 6,000' away, to maintain line-of-sight (for connection reasons), you don't want to drop much below 400'. Pushing forward while you drop while keeping an eye on your horizontal speed is the best course of action. Twice this has saved my bacon.

Last week, my partner and I went out for a large mapping job. Winds were predicted to be around 12 mph with 23 mph gusts. When we arrived on the job site, it felt windier than that to me, so I took the P4P up to 100' and threw her in ATTI Mode. Wind was around 18 mph. Hmmmm.... So took her up to 200'. Wind was 24 mph. I went up to 300' and wind was 36 mph. That was enough for us to cancel the day. I dropped her down to 200' and brought her home.

I have 3 birds: Inspire 1 Gen 2, P4P and Mavic Pro. I've managed to hang on to all three. I attribute this largely to wind and environment awareness.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

Hi Donnie,
Thank you for the very useful information. I do have to tell you that i was very well aware of wind speeds at different altitudes. I do normally observe drone behavior while ascending but this time overconfidence and distraction is what got to me. Plus it went so quick. It travelled 6000 feet within minutes and then lost signal. Once you lose signal, there’s is nothing you can do other than chase after it if you have enough time. My fault. Lesson learned.

 

[robmacom]

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.

You are such a kind person I have seen you do this a few times good work

 

[HapK]

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

Best of luck in finding your drone bro. I don't think it is stupid to go really high or really far but I do think you are risking doing harm to others if you do that over populated areas. That is what keeps me from going that high or far. The price of things going bad are pretty freaking high.
Anyway, that's not the title here so good luck and you sound smart enough to track your drone down if that is possible at this point. Thought I'd chime in. Best wishes to all here and keep the peace. Airplane pilots don't belong here unless they are also drone pilots. Out.

 

[wingbotics]

@Arnold, I feel sorry for your loss. Based on my reading from beginning to ending of this thread, you are a very experienced drone flyer. One suggestion that I'd make here is to attach a Marco Polo tracker in your next drone. It is an expensive little device but I coughed up $230+ to attach it to my drone. As part of my pre-fly checklist, I always turn it on upon takeoff and post-fly cleanup to turn it off.
I prefer this device over the TrackImo to avoid monthly fee. Caveats are that it has only up to 3 miles of range and the range is exponentially shrunk when under water per depth. Since wind drift could send the drone over the limit, 3 miles may not be enough even on land.

Good luck in search your lost MP.

 

[kakao]

Arnold, I have a feeling you'll find the bird ..

Please keep us posted.

 

[Snake2715]

keep us posted this was an interesting read

 

[Arnold]

Hi guys,

Thanks again for the help. I havent given up quite yet on the search even though its been over a week. There is a huge piece of porperty, almost like a little island, which is private with lots of open space. This private property covers about 50% of the distance along the projected flight path and i have a really that its there that ill find it. I approached one of the caretakers today and offer that I come back tomorrow morning to see the man in charge who might be able to grant me access to the property. All the other areas are more populated along the projected flight path which leads me to believe that if it had landed in those populated areas someone was more likely to notice it And contact me with the phone number attached to my drone. Since I haven’t heard from anyone in a week my assumption is that it landed in that private open space with no want to see or hear the drone. Let’s hope I’m right.

 

[Arnold]

One other question I had. Does the Mavic take into account altitude as well as distance when calculating the appropriate minimum return to home percentage? Or does it only use distance? At 730 feet it takes a minute to decend. I worry that upon low battery return to home it does not consider the altitude and then 200 feet in the air it finally runs out of battery because it was too high up and comes crashing down. This is just a thought on the side. Any ideas?

 

[RangerEd]

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 agree. You broke a huge safety rule and you paid for it. It's drone pilots like you that make us all look bad. I hope you find it and if you start flying again, I would encourage to obey the rules next time.

 

[Dabrain]

My opinion may be wrong but I guess this has nothing to do with wind condition. If you fly heading directly to the sun you may get the warning, since the sun will be misinterpreted as being an obstacle. In this case turn the bird 180degrees and fly backwards.

No just turn off forward sensors, see thread this forum," flyaway Not"

 

[Dabrain]

Dear AAPhoto,

In your post, the eleventh line down; you misspelled the word “PARTY.”

Dear chum, I believe you meant to use the word “PART.” Moreover, you mentioned, “THIS IS TAUGHT IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL.”

Dear chum, I didn’t realize that there are institutions designed explicitly for one subject (GRAMMAR) if so; do they have a football team?

Don’t frown Old cum... I mean chum, I’m merely trying point out your grammatical errors and lack of command, regarding the use of the English language.

Also, if I may be so bold to suggest you use a spell/grammar check the next time you feel the desire to correct a pilot, it will be in your benefit.

I bid you a good day sir.

Nice