Mavic Pro lost in Sweden

Forhelvdee · Oct 30, 2017

Hi Guys!

I was out yesterday and tried to film from a car..
Yeah, i know not the best way but i was not driving... I set the RTH before to a little lot by the road, and
went like 800m in to a valley and then the connection was lost.. I look for it around the RTH point and on the sides of the valley, but couldn't find it..

Find my drone function did say that i should be around the RTH, but nothing..

Can someone help me? i have attached the log!

Thanks!!

lisadoc · Oct 30, 2017

Well... you have a serious problem. It's clear from your log that you took off with significant compass errors on your bird (I take it you took off from the car itself or very near the vehicle, which caused the compass errors). Despite the fact that the home point was recorded, after you lost your signal, the Mavic would have no way of knowing what direction it needed to turn in order to head back to the home point (due to your original compass errors). Without knowing what direction to head, the Mavic either headed off in a random direction or stayed where it was when it dropped the signal. Since you lost the signal, you'll have no further flight data to answer that question or give further insight.

If you had been able to "recapture" the signal, even for just a bit, you might have an idea what the bird was doing. However, that doesn't seem to be the case here. Unfortunately, without more details or just truly good luck, I don't think you'll have much of a chance finding it. If you had your contact details on it, someone may reach out to you if they find it. Certainly I would look around the location where it lost the signal, or at least a few seconds further along the same path it was traveling in. Otherwise, I think you learned a very critical, and very expensive, lesson here - never take off and fly with a compass error. Always move it to a better location for the error to clear.

Sorry. I wish I had better news.

Forhelvdee · Oct 30, 2017

lisadoc said:
Well... you have a serious problem. It's clear from your log that you took off with significant compass errors on your bird (I take it you took off from the car itself or very near the vehicle, which caused the compass errors). Despite the fact that the home point was recorded, after you lost your signal, the Mavic would have no way of knowing what direction it needed to turn in order to head back to the home point (due to your original compass errors). Without knowing what direction to head, the Mavic either headed off in a random direction or stayed where it was when it dropped the signal. Since you lost the signal, you'll have no further flight data to answer that question or give further insight.

If you had been able to "recapture" the signal, even for just a bit, you might have an idea what the bird was doing. However, that doesn't seem to be the case here. Unfortunately, without more details or just truly good luck, I don't think you'll have much of a chance finding it. If you had your contact details on it, someone may reach out to you if they find it. Certainly I would look around the location where it lost the signal, or at least a few seconds further along the same path it was traveling in. Otherwise, I think you learned a very critical, and very expensive, lesson here - never take off and fly with a compass error. Always move it to a better location for the error to clear.

Sorry. I wish I had better news.

Thanks for a fast answer!!! Directly when i got disconnected i went out of the car, and walk around in hours to get connection again..
I have put up some "Lost my drone" signs in the neighbourhood.. See if i have some luck there!
Just one thing that seems weird to me is that "Find my drone" says that the drone is at the RTH-point?

lisadoc · Oct 30, 2017

Forhelvdee said:
Just one thing that seems weird to me is that "Find my drone" says that the drone is at the RTH-point?

DJI hasn't really been forthcoming on how the function actually works. And I haven't found anyone on the Internet that has broken it down (maybe someone on this forum knows the scoop). It's possible that the app decides that if it loses signal and had a RTH set properly, that the assumption would be it would be at the home location after signal loss - though honestly, so too would anyone with any thought at all (it's the first thing you mentioned - that you went to the home point to look for it), so I'm not sure how helpful that feature would be for someone looking for their lost drone.

Typically, even with a RTH set, the app should report the last known location it had received data from (basically pulling the info from your flight log - which is what you need in the field when you can't analyze your flight log files). In your case, it would have no way to report that the home point was the last known location, since it never reacquired the signal.

Good luck! Hope you find it.