Near Catastrophe... Newbies read

[kvn_roberts]

Nearly lost my Mavic this afternoon after it attempted to auto-land in the middle of the Savannah River. I was at about 44m in a hover when I attempted to lower the Mavic and got the "landing" prompt from the controller followed by a normal descent as if coming down from a RTH. Realizing I was over water I began to panic and quickly pushed up on the left stick with no joy. I also attempted to hit the "Red X" on my device to cancel landing and it would not respond. I then switched to Sport Mode which cancelled the landing and I was able to recover the Mavic. My initial thought is the Mavic sensed I was over land and I pushed the left stick full down during my descent which caused it to go into landing mode.

If it wasn't for this forum, I may not have realized what options I had to correct the error and most likely would have watched my Mavic slowly descend to its death at the bottom of the river. I encourage all new pilots to read as many forum posts as possible. It's a great way to familiarize yourself with different issues you may not know about. It saved my ***.

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

There is an awful lot of great advice and experience on this forum.
Agree with you about reading up everything you can on here.
Glad you recovered from a potential loss.

 

[Bunny Too]

Nearly lost my Mavic this afternoon after it attempted to auto-land in the middle of the Savannah River. I was at about 44m in a hover when I attempted to lower the Mavic and got the "landing" prompt from the controller followed by a normal descent as if coming down from a RTH. Realizing I was over water I began to panic and quickly pushed up on the left stick with no joy. I also attempted to hit the "Red X" on my device to cancel landing and it would not respond. I then switched to Sport Mode which cancelled the landing and I was able to recover the Mavic. My initial thought is the Mavic sensed I was over land and I pushed the left stick full down during my descent which caused it to go into landing mode.

If it wasn't for this forum, I may not have realized what options I had to correct the error and most likely would have watched my Mavic slowly descend to its death at the bottom of the river. I encourage all new pilots to read as many forum posts as possible. It's a great way to familiarize yourself with different issues you may not know about. It saved my ***.

It went into landing mode because the water confused the sensors, ultrasonic and/or visual, and you are correct you can find many threads regarding this issue; if you disable landing protection you will avoid the issue (but will then have to ensure that you do not smash it into the ground when landing.)

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

Yep easiest thing is disable Landing Protection

 

[enohp15]

I wouldn't have thought that the mavic would have done this at 44m??? I thought auto landing only activated much lower....

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

I wouldn't have thought that the mavic would have done this at 44m??? I thought auto landing only activated much lower....

The OP stated that he start to go lower from his height, meaning he was pulling left stick back to make MP descend.
That's when it began to go into Landing mode.
Also if the Landing Protection became confused it would have thought it was lower than it really was.

 

[kvn_roberts]

The OP stated that he start to go lower from his height, meaning he was pulling left stick back to make MP descend.
That's when it began to go into Landing mode.
Also if the Landing Protection became confused it would have thought it was lower than it really was.

Update: I went out with a fresh battery in an open field this time and it continued to go into landing mode from about 50m this time. I tried to mess this the settings again and cancel auto landing without any success. Again flipped to sport mode and cancelled the auto landing. I might have to upload some files here to see if anyone can decrypt what's causing the issue. I plan to try again soon to see if it's possible the RTH button is getting stuck or the connection with my cables is coming loose. I would think if that's the case it would initiate a RTH instead of just going into landing mode. I still tend to think it's some type of downward sensing issue. I am still running the 700 firmware... could that be an issue?

 

[Toruk Makto]

I cant help much as inexperience in diagnostics... someone should help soon. Could it be a NFZ issue?

 

[Turnerm]

Something must be up with your downward facing sensors. Have you tried cleaning them off?

Also - I spent a few minutes the other day playing around with getting the Mavic to go into Auto Landing and then I pushed up on the left stick and it stopped an ascended right away. The pause button also stopped the auto landing for me.

So I'm surprised that neither of those worked for you?

 

[Bunny Too]

I wouldn't have thought that the mavic would have done this at 44m??? I thought auto landing only activated much lower....

It is at the upper limit of what the sensors can reach, however water can sometimes play havoc with the sensors and cause the Mavic to land in the water and sink; there are a couple document cases of this on the forum.

 

[Brojon]

It went into landing mode because the water confused the sensors, ultrasonic and/or visual, and you are correct you can find many threads regarding this issue; if you disable landing protection you will avoid the issue (but will then have to ensure that you do not smash it into the ground when landing.)

From 44m? I doubt that height confused the sensors since ultrasonics don't have that kind of range - at least not the flea-powered ones on the Mavic. I suspect the OP called it correctly when he said he simply goofed on the down stick.

 

[Bunny Too]

From 44m? I doubt that height confused the sensors since ultrasonics don't have that kind of range - at least not the flea-powered ones on the Mavic. I suspect the OP called it correctly when he said he simply goofed on the down stick.

I will agree with that, I miss read it as 44 feet.

 

[scooot]

Something must be up with your downward facing sensors. Have you tried cleaning them off?

Also - I spent a few minutes the other day playing around with getting the Mavic to go into Auto Landing and then I pushed up on the left stick and it stopped an ascended right away. The pause button also stopped the auto landing for me.

So I'm surprised that neither of those worked for you?

+1
I'm also able to abort as suggested above.

 

[Skupper67]

In my limited experience I will say that when in doubt, hitting the pause button seems to work.
I like that option because it relys upon a hard mechanical button rather than software in emergency situations