New Mavic Air almost flyaway.

Silverarrow66 · Jul 24, 2018

Hello!
I have been using DJI products for about 4 years now and I have never had this happen... This is a brand new Mavic air, about 2 days old. I had done a recent compass calibration and had flown about 6 other batteries on the same day with no issue.

Tonight, I had flown out about 3500 feet away, and still had a solid 5.8ghz signal, there was very little wind on ground level. The Mavic was sitting still, and recording video. I look down at the controller to see the Mavic's gimble tilted, and the horizontal speed reading 65 MPH (Probably not true when looking at the video). I go into full panic mode. I try to give it full stick forward and throttle down, but nothing happens, it keeps going in random directions. After about 30 seconds, smart RTH turns on, and the Mavic attempts to come home but heads the wrong direction for a few seconds. Then, it suddenly corrects itself and returns to home successfully like nothing ever happened.

I'm not sure if this was due to wind (unlikely on such a calm night). A faulty product, Wifi interference, or what. I'm now scared to fly this thing, and potentially lose my 1k investment...
I have the video the Mavic took while all this happened, as well as flight logs.
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
(Event starts at around 9:45)

RayOZ · Jul 25, 2018

How come the log starts 3m37s into the flight at >3700ft away? It's got extra payload?

Silverarrow66 · Jul 25, 2018

RayOZ said:
How come the log starts 3m37s into the flight at >3700ft away? It's got extra payload?

The app crashed a little bit before the incident, causing a new log to be created when I reopened the app. Don't know why it gave that warning, the prop guards were not on, and there was no extra payload.

Blaksony · Jul 25, 2018

Hi, silverarrow66, I’m interested in why you were in 5.8 instead of 2.4, I’m still pretty new to this drone hobby but 5.8 is less crowded but lower range? 2.4 can be more noisy but has a longer range, maybe the experts online can help but yeah I’m really glad your drone recovered itself, in my case I seem to be in a geo fence, I can’t get more than 500-800 feet away from home point without the threat of catastrophic failure, I had my first drone stop during a IMU failure and crash from over 100 feet less than 400 ft distance away. I now fly my replacement Mavic Air almost on a tether never letting it out of my sight