My mavic tried to land in the Ocean!!! NO downward control to land?

gregw · Mar 1, 2017

Andrew F said:
Well, that makes sense I guess. Easy to test by simply putting it in sports mode. But sports mode seems to suck the life of my battery dry unacceptably fast so I stay away from it other than for short bursts and odd sensor states.

Sports mode doesn't disable VPS, only the Obstacle Avoidance for the front, so it won't really help with turning off VPS. The only way to turn off VPS is under the "Advanced" settings for the sensors in the app...

I've put the Mavic in Sports mode if I needed to get it some place further away and don't want to waste time getting there. Battery use seems to be quite OK from my experience. I've actually taken videos on Sports mode when I was chasing down a fast moving ferry, but you have to be really gentle with the controls if you want to avoid any hint of judder/shake when starting, stopping, turning, yawing... I've EXP on Sports mode set to 0.2 across all controls to help..

msinger · Mar 1, 2017

Michael Fox, did you review your TXT flight log? If not, you can upload it here. Post a link back here if you'd like others to comment on it.

cheekymonkeyman · Mar 2, 2017

Just a thought and I'm no expert... but the recorded altitude is relative to take off position which was on the boat (above the height of the water) and gps home position is locked at take off... which started on the boat but which as the boat moves forward travels behind the boat and over the water... so if you took off and went behind the boat to somewhere in the vicinity of the take off position (from a gps and altitude perspective) does it then go into a landing mode automatically? (A bit like the process when it stops a few feet off the ground before landing). I don't know but it's an angle not discussed here.
I've flown -400ft over a cliff above water with vps on and had no issues but I was far away from home point at the time.
I hope you get your confidence back.. this thing is too good not to fly!

Sent from my iPad using MavicPilots

Michael Fox · Mar 2, 2017

I never flew close to the water out in the Ocean I was always above the altitude of the take of point.The Drone was approximately 50 feet in the air when it started Landing. I reviewed the data and it shows it was intermittent between GPS Mode and Landing 3 or 4 times. Customer Service said they will get back to me in 3 or 4 days.

Andrew F · Mar 2, 2017

Michael Fox said:
I never flew close to the water out in the Ocean I was always above the altitude of the take of point.The Drone was approximately 50 feet in the air when it started Landing. I reviewed the data and it shows it was intermittent between GPS Mode and Landing 3 or 4 times. Customer Service said they will get back to me in 3 or 4 days.

I'm eager to hear what they say. I'm thinking my barometer is a bit wonky but given the horror stories I've read about DJI care, I'm not too keen on sending it in for ANY reason short of catastrophic failure.

Michael Fox · Mar 7, 2017

DJI was unable to open some of the Files I uploaded to The Cloud with their app? I posted the files to dropbox and sent them the Link today. I asked Support if anyone else was unable to land the Drone while in a Forced Landing and he called my situation a near flyaway?And would not comment until they reviewed all the data. Here is the Flight Data Link. Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

msinger · Mar 7, 2017

Your flight log shows the downward sensors were detecting your Mavic was close to the ground (water in this case). That was causing it to go into forced landing. In the future, you can prevent that from occurring by disabling the downward sensors when flying over water.

Michael Fox · Mar 7, 2017

50 ft up? Why couldn't I control the Landing?

msinger · Mar 7, 2017

Yep. The downward sensors sometimes don't work well over water.

Michael Fox · Mar 7, 2017

Why couldn't I control the Landing with the remote?

msinger · Mar 7, 2017

When the Mavic switches to forced landing mode, it wants to descend until it reaches the ground. Try landing on the ground somewhere with the downward sensors enabled and you'll see how forced landing mode works. Then, turn off the downward sensors and you'll be able to manually land.

Michael Fox · Mar 7, 2017

So when the Mavic goes into Forced Landing Mode you can not land it?

msinger · Mar 7, 2017

Right -- it can only auto land. You must turn off the downward sensors if you want to manually land.

Michael Fox · Mar 7, 2017

That make no sense what so ever?

msinger · Mar 7, 2017

How so?

Michael Fox · Mar 7, 2017

The controller should be able to override anything the mavic does.

msinger · Mar 7, 2017

True. Then again, the Mavic was only auto landing because you inadvertently instructed it to do so.

We can always hope for a better product. Until that day arrives, you'll need to turn off the downward sensors when flying in scenarios like this one.

Michael Fox · Mar 7, 2017

Why did it toggle between GPS mode and Landing mode 4 or 5 times during that flight?

msinger · Mar 8, 2017

When the Mavic's VPS detects it's below 0.5 meters and you move the throttle stick to the full down position (like you did every time it started to auto land), it'll switch to forced landing mode and start auto landing.