Mavic stops responding mid-flight

[ipaq3115]

So I had a pretty bad crash today, although I suppose it could have been a lot worse. Looking for reasons why it might have happened and advice on whether I should try to fly again or try to make some sort of warrenty claim with DJI.

I've been flying for a little over a week almost constantly and the Mavic hasn't skipped a beat up until this morning. Here's what happened:

Armed and took off pretty quickly after everything was on. Controller said it was in ATTI mode. I've flown a lot of multirotors so I know how ATTI works and I figured it would switch to GPS mode once the GPS locked up. Note: this was weird because every other time I have done this it has gone into vision mode. Maybe this should have been a warning sign?

After a minute or so it stopped responding entirely for probably 10 seconds (which seemed like an eternity) then it started flying straight up relatively slowly (still not responding to any input). Since I was under a tree at that point the Mavic hit the branches a few times and eventually (luckily??) ended up on the ground upside down where I was able to hold it down, reach under and turn it off. Somehow not getting my fingers ripped off by a prop.

So the question is what the heck happened? And is it going to happen again the next time I try to fly? As much as I hate to go through the pain of trying to get a warrenty replacement I'd rather not see my $1000 Mavic dissappearing into the sky.

I looked at the flight log with phantomhelp.com and it didn't seem to contain any useful info. Kinda looks like the log just stops when it stopped responding. Not sure why but there was no local recording either, I'm pretty sure it was streaming video but I'm not positive. I was flying line of sight.

 

[james_mav]

I don't see how you'd get a warranty repair.

#1. It sounds like you didn't do a flight check.
#2. The bird performed as intended. Once it lost contact completely then it initiated RTH & hit the tree as it was trying to achieve the preset height.

 

[ipaq3115]

I hadn't though of the RTH. You're right that makes sense if the controller disconnected. However that means that the controller lost connection from 20 feet away. That's not something that should happen right?

I always do a flight check but what kind of check exactly would have warned me that the controller would disconnect like that?

 

[james_mav]

I hadn't though of the RTH. You're right that makes sense if the controller disconnected. However that means that the controller lost connection from 20 feet away. That's not something that should happen right?

I always do a flight check but what kind of check exactly would have warned me that the controller would disconnect like that?

You've already stated "Armed and took off pretty quickly after everything was on." Did you look for error messages & why not wait the additional 30 seconds or so to let GPS lock in? I always take off, let it hover to see if there is any drift, & check out how it reacts to my stick input before sending it on a flight. I understand why you believe the bird shouldn't have disconnected but it just seems like you rushed things before the signal was locked in. Hopefully someone else has a better idea of what happened.

 

[Anthony]

Load your flight log txt that may help you understand what happened

Sent from my SM-G925F using MavicPilots mobile app

 

[ipaq3115]

You've already stated "Armed and took off pretty quickly after everything was on." Did you look for error messages & why not wait the additional 30 seconds or so to let GPS lock in? I always take off, let it hover to see if there is any drift, & check out how it reacts to my stick input before sending it on a flight. I understand why you believe the bird shouldn't have disconnected but it just seems like you rushed things before the signal was locked in. Hopefully someone else has a better idea of what happened.

The log is posted in the first post where you can see there were no error messages like this. What do you mean by the signal being "locked in"? I was flying for a good minute before I lost control, if that's not a locked in signal I don't know what is.

Load your flight log txt that may help you understand what happened

Sent from my SM-G925F using MavicPilots mobile app

Do you mean the log that I put in the first post or something else?

 

[BudWalker]

So I had a pretty bad crash today, although I suppose it could have been a lot worse. Looking for reasons why it might have happened and advice on whether I should try to fly again or try to make some sort of warrenty claim with DJI.

I've been flying for a little over a week almost constantly and the Mavic hasn't skipped a beat up until this morning. Here's what happened:

Armed and took off pretty quickly after everything was on. Controller said it was in ATTI mode. I've flown a lot of multirotors so I know how ATTI works and I figured it would switch to GPS mode once the GPS locked up. Note: this was weird because every other time I have done this it has gone into vision mode. Maybe this should have been a warning sign?

After a minute or so it stopped responding entirely for probably 10 seconds (which seemed like an eternity) then it started flying straight up relatively slowly (still not responding to any input). Since I was under a tree at that point the Mavic hit the branches a few times and eventually (luckily??) ended up on the ground upside down where I was able to hold it down, reach under and turn it off. Somehow not getting my fingers ripped off by a prop.

So the question is what the heck happened? And is it going to happen again the next time I try to fly? As much as I hate to go through the pain of trying to get a warrenty replacement I'd rather not see my $1000 Mavic dissappearing into the sky.

I looked at the flight log with phantomhelp.com and it didn't seem to contain any useful info. Kinda looks like the log just stops when it stopped responding. Not sure why but there was no local recording either, I'm pretty sure it was streaming video but I'm not positive. I was flying line of sight.

I looked at this incident. In summary, the root cause was the RC disconnect when the distance to the Mavic was only 11.7 meters. I've seen several cases where DJI covers this under warranty.

When the disconnect happened the Mavic probably initiated RTH. We could know for sure if you can provide the .DAT from the Mavic itself. Look here to see how to retrieve the .DAT. This will be on the Mavic not the tablet or RC. It'll be large so you'll need to Dropbox it and provide the link.

 

[ipaq3115]

Well, since I realized that it was just doing a RTH I have kept flying (just making sure I didn't fly anywhere that would mess with a unexpected RTH) and it looks like the internal sdcard doesn't store very much, according to the dates on the DAT files the log I want is already gone Unfortunately I didn't realize there was internal logging like this. I guess if a disconnect happens again I will grab the logs then to see what happened. Thanks for the help BudWalker.