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New Pilot Mavic Air 2 Kent UK

Ianbickerton

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I was fortunate to win a Mavic Air 2 in a competition at the beginning of the month. Thoroughly enjoying the ease of flying until yesterday when hovering at 27 meters to take a photo it suddenly tumbled to earth. With my knowledge of aircraft, I suspect maybe something damaged a propellor like an insect, is this likely or is some other fault likely?
 
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Welcome to the forum.
I hope you will find our site helpful and look forward to any input , photo's/video's you might post .
Don't be shy and ask anything if you can't find it by searching . ?
 
welcome to the forum ,if you can download the Dat files then one of our resident experts ,will be able to help you find out what happend
 
go into the forum,mavic crash and flyaway assistance ,and at the top of the list is a sticky that explains how to retrieve the correct files
 
Assuming everything with the Air 2 works in a similar way to the Mavic mini. Using a windows computer and an android phone connect the phone to the computer via a USB cable.
In "my computer " navigate through the following folder tree
computer\phone's_name\Phone\DJI\dji.go.v5\FlightRecord
in that folder you will find the .txt flight logs AND a folder named "MCDatFlightRecords" the latter contains the .DAT flight logs.
With Apple stuff the folder tree is from memory similar but you have to use itunes or something to gain access.
I'd guess OMM is pointing you to Mavic Flight Log Retrieval and Analysis Guide which is a VERY good read
 
Hi Ianbickerton Welcome to Mavic Pilots.
Congrats on the win.
I doubt it was an insect, props tend to chop them up pretty good.
Most likely damaged in transit or not fitted correctly, wise to inspect before a flight.
Is your MA2 still flying ?
I know I had installed the props correctly and had done 3.85 hours flying time when this occurred.

As a private pilot I make a habit of doing preflight checks. As for flying again only if put into a big catapult, see photos
 

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I saw 3 props attached to the motors and what looks like the remains of a 4th detached. Was the detached prop attached to the drone when you recovered it? If not was it anywhere near the drone when you found it? Was it intact? i.e. did it have both blades and at a guess all three hooks attached?

Does it power up? If so and the insurance company doesn't want the remains the bits may have some resale value or be a source of spares.
 
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Ok, that done I saw 3 props attached to the motors and what looks like the remains of a 4th detached. Was the detached prop attached to the drone when you recovered it? If not was it anywhere near the drone when you found it? Was it intact? i.e. did it have both blades and at a guess all three hooks attached?

Does it power up? If so and the insurance company doesn't want the remains the bits may have some resale value or be a source of spares.
Of the fourth prop you can see what I recovered about three feet away from the drone.The other half was not to be found, and yes it does power up and the insurance company have stated they are not interested in the remains. The blood you see on the blade was from my hand as the seemingly dead drone sprung to life when I picked it up ;-) lesson one always switch off.....

They have seen the photos and were satisfied with my claim as was. Like you I was also thinking that I might hold onto the pieces for spares.
 

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The state of the detached prop suggests to me either a failure of the prop as in a crack opening up, or a minor crack which might have led to distortion and a subsequent major failure or a severe strike. If you can get the logs they will likely show oddities in the motor speeds.
CsvView, useful free software from CsvView Downloads
can (for the mini's flight logs) process the .DAT file and produce a chart of the motor speeds. I imagine it can do the same for the Air 2. The gurus will be able to dig out a lot more info than that if you post the logs to this thread
 
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Sorry for the crash - thankfully for the insurance - besides that - welcome to the forums - a lot of good info here. So, take a look around and hope you enjoy some of the fine photography and information posted by the members.
 
One other thing has just come to mind, your comment about stopping the props.
There is a stick position known as CSC, it is both control sticks fully back AND simultaneously either fully towards each other (down and in) or fully away from each other (down and out), with the combination being held for a certain period of time. You might use the combination to start the motors.
With the motors running it is supposed to stop them.
In the fly app the function has two modes of operation. For me, with the mini, they are called "anytime " and "emergency only".
In "anytime" mode the position seems to stop the motors after it has been held for around 2 seconds and that is irrespective of whether the drone is in the air or on the ground, I did some low altitude testing of this and the mini fell about 18" onto grass.
However and I have bug up my .".....".about this, in "emergency only" mode it will apparently only stop the motors when the drone decides that it has encountered an emergency e.g. it HAS crashed into something or IS tumbling etc.. To my mind the drone is already going to be coming down in an uncontrolled descent after such an emergency so why would it be of use to stop the motors?
It would probably have worked in the situation where you wanted to stop the motors and it may indeed have been what you did use and in the light of your exprience I can now see some point to that mode. I would however like to stress that it seems it will NOT stop the motors if the drone is in normal flight .i.e if the function was in "emergency only" mode and your drone was being blown away and towards a town or crowd you could not drop the drone, or if an aircraft suddenly appeared and was on a collision course with your drone you could not drop it. In such circumstances In order to drop the drone It would be necessary to switch to "anytime " mode and then execute the CSC.
Infact in one of my recent flights to test this I sent the mini up to 100+m then, with the mode set to "emergency only", I held the CSC position all the way down to around 2m, it was a 'controlled' descent the whole way down and as soon as the sticks were released it hovered.
 
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Many thanks for your input. I will look at the instructions on how to download the DAT file
One other thing has just come to mind, your comment about stopping the props.
There is a stick position known as CSC, it is both control sticks fully back AND simultaneously either fully towards each other (down and in) or fully away from each other (down and out), with the combination being held for a certain period of time. You might use the combination to start the motors.
With the motors running it is supposed to stop them.
In the fly app the function has two modes of operation. For me, with the mini, they are called "anytime " and "emergency only".
In "anytime" mode the position seems to stop the motors after it has been held for around 2 seconds and that is irrespective of whether the drone is in the air or on the ground, I did some low altitude testing of this and the mini fell about 18" onto grass.
However and I have bug up my .".....".about this, in "emergency only" mode it will apparently only stop the motors when the drone decides that it has encountered an emergency e.g. it HAS crashed into something or IS tumbling etc.. To my mind the drone is already going to be coming down in an uncontrolled descent after such an emergency so why would it be of use to stop the motors?
It would probably have worked in the situation where you wanted to stop the motors and it may indeed have been what you did use and in the light of your exprience I can now see some point to that mode. I would however like to stress that it seems it will NOT stop the motors if the drone is in normal flight .i.e if the function was in "emergency only" mode and your drone was being blown away and towards a town or crowd you could not drop the drone, or if an aircraft suddenly appeared and was on a collision course with your drone you could not drop it. In such circumstances In order to drop the drone It would be necessary to switch to "anytime " mode and then execute the CSC.
Infact in one of my recent flights to test this I sent the mini up to 100+m then held the CSC position all the way down to around 2m, it was a 'controlled' descent the whole way down and as soon as the sticks were released it hovered.
Why i said about the props stopping was because the drone was flying, in fact hovering and the sound was normal and the next moment it was in a steep decent straight to the ground but tumbling side over side if you know what i mean.It was not like a helicopter in a spin but just tumbling to the ground and nothing i tried on the controls had any effect as i suspect if a prop was missing then there would be no control as with a helicopter that loses its rotor.....
 
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Ah sorry I was referring to stopping the motors or perhaps stopping them from starting in connection with " The blood you see on the blade was from my hand as the seemingly dead drone sprung to life when I picked it up ;-) lesson one always switch off..... "

The tumble is, I think, what you would expect if one prop, for whatever reason, stops to produce lift, that non lifting 'corner' drops and chaos ensues.
 
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