I live in Anthem Arizona and nothing but desert and golf courses exist beyond my backyard, so it has been really fun flying my Mavic every chance I get. My house is pretty high on the hill, so when looking south from my backyard, I can see for 30+ miles. About two weeks ago, my son and I decided to fly straight out and circle one of the golf courses that’s about 1 mile from my house. Fully charged battery in both the controller and the Mavic and off we went. Camera on from liftoff.
We took it up to 390 feet right after liftoff. After flying south for about 6 minutes, we were over a popular road and decide to turn West and follow it for a few minutes. I switched on Sport Mode and flew for about 100 yards parallel to the road. We were about 5000 feet from home. My son and I could both still see the Mavic against the blue sky – although just barely, so we decided to turn it back north and get closer to home. During the entire flight, we saw no interference and signal strength -both video and controller – was great.
This is where things went wrong. Right after turning north and flying for about 30 seconds, the controller said “Connection Lost” or something similar. In an effort to get reception back, I stood up on my fire pit and raised the controller. My son got on top of the Ramada roof and took the remote from me to get even higher. During all the running around, the controller kept beeping and trying to reconnect to the Mavic. It never did. We also could no longer see it in the distance.
It was at this point that we figured the Return-To-Home would kick in and we’d be reunited with our little buddy momentarily. Nope. We waited about 15 to 20 minutes before we decided to get in the car and start looking.
My phone still shows the exact location it last reported, so this is where we figured we would start. Hiking boots on, water bottles in hand, flashlights just in case, and off we went. We spent almost 3 hours looking for it (good thing we brought the flashlights), but never found it. I kept running through the entire flight in my head. We had over 85% battery life, full signal, no wind, clear skies, home point accurately recorded, plenty of altitude, no reason for my Mavic to disappear – yet, disappear it did.
It got late and we decided to call it a night. My family and I took several missions over the next few days trying to find it. Right about the time I decided to give up, my wife, son and daughter decided to take one more trip out to look for it while I was at the office. Guess what, my daughter found it! It was upside down in the dirt. The props were all but chewed away from rocks. The battery was ejected and laying on the ground about 6 feet away from the Mavic. They took a few celebratory pics, sent them to me, and carefully brought the patient home to wait for me. The first thing I noticed when I got home was that the battery still had about 80% charge. The props were a total loss. The gimble was hanging out of the front and one of the rear arms was slightly pulled out of the body.
What I really wanted to find out is what happened. I took out the micro SD card and immediately played back the video. I was expecting to see a horrific crash with a UFO, bird, golf ball, or some other object. I was shocked when the video showed everything my controller did and quit at the EXACT same time I lost the connection. I learned how to pull the flight records and upload to HealthyDone.com in the hopes there would be something there that I could point to and say, Ahh Haaa!, that’s what caused this. But everything was completely normal up until it disappeared.
I was able to repair the done on my own. I fixed the rear arm by opening the case and pushing it back in (it’s a 1.5 Allen wrench if you ever need it). The gimble was pretty easy to fix as well since it was just knocked out of the plastic bracket at the bottom. I had extra props, so that was an easy fix too. All and all it took me an hour and cost me $0.50 because I did not have a wrench that small (Ace Hardware).
I’m flying and having fun again, but I still have no idea what happened. Every new flight I take, I think about this and wonder if this is the last flight I will have with my Mavic. The return to home feature failed to engage. Since the onboard video quite at the exact same time as I lost signal, I’m thinking that it must have completely lost power – however, the battery still had 80% charge, so does this mean it possibly popped out in midflight? I’ll probably never know, but I did want to pass my story along to other pilots just in case it helps someone else.
Happy Flying!
We took it up to 390 feet right after liftoff. After flying south for about 6 minutes, we were over a popular road and decide to turn West and follow it for a few minutes. I switched on Sport Mode and flew for about 100 yards parallel to the road. We were about 5000 feet from home. My son and I could both still see the Mavic against the blue sky – although just barely, so we decided to turn it back north and get closer to home. During the entire flight, we saw no interference and signal strength -both video and controller – was great.
This is where things went wrong. Right after turning north and flying for about 30 seconds, the controller said “Connection Lost” or something similar. In an effort to get reception back, I stood up on my fire pit and raised the controller. My son got on top of the Ramada roof and took the remote from me to get even higher. During all the running around, the controller kept beeping and trying to reconnect to the Mavic. It never did. We also could no longer see it in the distance.
It was at this point that we figured the Return-To-Home would kick in and we’d be reunited with our little buddy momentarily. Nope. We waited about 15 to 20 minutes before we decided to get in the car and start looking.
My phone still shows the exact location it last reported, so this is where we figured we would start. Hiking boots on, water bottles in hand, flashlights just in case, and off we went. We spent almost 3 hours looking for it (good thing we brought the flashlights), but never found it. I kept running through the entire flight in my head. We had over 85% battery life, full signal, no wind, clear skies, home point accurately recorded, plenty of altitude, no reason for my Mavic to disappear – yet, disappear it did.
It got late and we decided to call it a night. My family and I took several missions over the next few days trying to find it. Right about the time I decided to give up, my wife, son and daughter decided to take one more trip out to look for it while I was at the office. Guess what, my daughter found it! It was upside down in the dirt. The props were all but chewed away from rocks. The battery was ejected and laying on the ground about 6 feet away from the Mavic. They took a few celebratory pics, sent them to me, and carefully brought the patient home to wait for me. The first thing I noticed when I got home was that the battery still had about 80% charge. The props were a total loss. The gimble was hanging out of the front and one of the rear arms was slightly pulled out of the body.
What I really wanted to find out is what happened. I took out the micro SD card and immediately played back the video. I was expecting to see a horrific crash with a UFO, bird, golf ball, or some other object. I was shocked when the video showed everything my controller did and quit at the EXACT same time I lost the connection. I learned how to pull the flight records and upload to HealthyDone.com in the hopes there would be something there that I could point to and say, Ahh Haaa!, that’s what caused this. But everything was completely normal up until it disappeared.
I was able to repair the done on my own. I fixed the rear arm by opening the case and pushing it back in (it’s a 1.5 Allen wrench if you ever need it). The gimble was pretty easy to fix as well since it was just knocked out of the plastic bracket at the bottom. I had extra props, so that was an easy fix too. All and all it took me an hour and cost me $0.50 because I did not have a wrench that small (Ace Hardware).
I’m flying and having fun again, but I still have no idea what happened. Every new flight I take, I think about this and wonder if this is the last flight I will have with my Mavic. The return to home feature failed to engage. Since the onboard video quite at the exact same time as I lost signal, I’m thinking that it must have completely lost power – however, the battery still had 80% charge, so does this mean it possibly popped out in midflight? I’ll probably never know, but I did want to pass my story along to other pilots just in case it helps someone else.
Happy Flying!
