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"Nearly lost" experience when "AUTO LANDING", what did I learn ?

KBerrah

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Joined
May 31, 2017
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Location
Vaud, Switzerland
Hi,

Even with 188 safe flights, I nearly lost my drone when he started auto landing: a sudden wind didn't help me, I want to share what I've learned from this 189th fly:

* avoid putting a value less than 20% for "Low Battery Warning".
* if the drone is flying (going) at max speed with some peaks above max speed, WARNING => there might be some winds that will get you into troubles when flying back!
* when the drone is flying (returning), if you can't reach max speed WARNING, some strong winds are slowing down the drone. Try first to change the flying altitude and observe the flying speed on your RC (top left).
* if you are in the "yellow region" of the flight, and flying in SPORT MODE, switch to normal mode => you'll have more time to find a solution before AUTO LANDING starts ("Red region" of the flight)
* obviously, when flying far away (better signal quality), flying high (while following regulation rules) give you more chances to bring your drone back.

If auto landing starts:
1) don't panic
2) turn the camera down to memorise the region your drone is landing (roads, paths, trees, what's on the left, what's on the the right, what's in front)
3) if you can, do quickly some screen shots of the camera view on your mobile, it will help you later identify the area (when the drone lands in a wild area, the camera is useless)
4) start immediately identifying a safe and flat landing zone, while continuing to fly forward
5) stop the horizontal speed when the drone is near 10m of altitude to reduce risk of damaging it
6) memorize the texture where your drone is landing, observe any important detail that might help you when arriving there
7) observe at which distance from Home Point your drone is. This is the distance you'll need to walk before you'll start your researchs.
8) once there, go back 50m, search 50m left, 50m right, then move 5m ahead and repeat. Be persistent and look carefully until you can exclude at 100% the area you're looking at.

Personally, I could find it back only through the "Flight record", and "replaying" the flight record allowed to better "guess" where it landed.

It was only 200m away from HomePoint, but took me 2h: I wrongly searched 200m left, 200m right, GPS location was in fact good: it landed in a large field, the grey colour of the drone didn't help me to identify it on the brown/green field. ==> I'll put some yellow/orange stickers on top of it for next time!

Having a white blinking LED at the top of it or an actionable BEEP (like cars) would probably help.

Any other "nearly lost" experience ?

KBerrah
 
I lost mine 2 weeks ago because of unexpected winds on the return.

As soon as I lost it I knew I should've had the camera facing down. If I did, I would've seen that there was a safe landing area before it headed into a small forest where it finally crashed. Was unable to recover it :(

Battery died so no accurate GPS from 'find my drone', was showing location of the controller. Flight log stopped recording around 5mins before the crash (not sure why this was).

Good advice.
 
Sorry to hear that.:(
Try go back in the forest and look for it, probably felt down from trees now.

I confirm, "find my drone" was useless too, only "flight log" helped here.
 
The pointing your camera face down is a must if you are landing at distance as you can take multiple photos on the way down and they are cashed to you mobile device so can be checked when you go serving for your drone.

I would go as far as DJI adding this to the auto landing procedure, once in the red the Mavic takes a series of photos so every pilot has a photo ( as long as you have a connection to the drone )
 
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Hi guys. I always stick (Velcro) a GPS tracker on top of the battery. At least I no longer depend on the flight logs etc if anything goes wrong and my wonderful Mavic gets lost. Some really cheap and small ones on bangood etc !
 
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I think someone needs to come up with a small on board smoke flare the could be triggered by turning on the lights. :) It could be a cool effect also for sky writing (just don’t draw any body appendages)
 
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Hi guys. I always stick (Velcro) a GPS tracker on top of the battery. At least I no longer depend on the flight logs etc if anything goes wrong and my wonderful Mavic gets lost. Some really cheap and small ones on bangood etc !

Can you recommend one? And have you tested them?
 
Good idea for the GPS tracker, but could be expensive depending on the country: you need a SIM card, pay for a yearly subscription, and more important, you need to be flying where there is mobile phone coverage, which is not always the case when you fly in the wild country. May be a light device with some sound ?
 
I recently ordered RF V16. As soon as it comes, I will test it under different conditions. Reviews about it on sites about drones are very good
Another recommendation for RF-V16.

It's a great little tracker. Im in the UK and use a PAYG sim, 5p min, text and MB.

I topped up £10 and did loads of testing and have used it about ten times on the drone. Balance is still £9.20.

Ive turned off the auto tracking where it periodically sends a location. I can either send it an SMS and it will reply or check location in app.

I flew the mavic out around 1 km in open fields and using camera hovered above a fence. Text for location and the Google map link provided was absolutely spot.

Sometimes its instant to reply and sometimes takes few minutes but always does.

Handy as well as you can call it once your close and it will ring.
 
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Can you recommend one? And have you tested them?
The one I use now is the RF-V8S from BG, but these are all variations of a similar tracker design. I used the Trax device a while back but the subscription model is much more costly. I now use a simple 2€/month subscription. These trackers are not always perfectly reliable, but are generally ok.
 
Thanks guys for your feedback, I'm willing to invest in such system rather than having to buy a second MVP! Appreciated!
Merci Sylvain pour ton retour d'experience !
KBerrah
 
Thanks guys for your feedback, I'm willing to invest in such system rather than having to buy a second MVP! Appreciated!
Merci Sylvain pour ton retour d'experience !
KBerrah
I use a tracker called loc8tor. It's a short range directional tracker that requires no subscription and can be bought for about a hundred bucks.

The idea being that find my drone gets you within 100ft of the drone and loc8tor pinpoints it
 
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