Odd behavior with Mavic Air and getting worse

[islandivan]

Hey folks I have a Mavic Air that has been generally giving me some odd behavior and today I almost crashed it into a canal and luckily managed to it crash into some reeds. What is going on is that it will be flying just fine and then start to wander mostly down but sometimes up then seemingly lose power and rapidly descend. It does to a point respond to my inputs and will rise back in the air but seems to struggle to do so and immediately tries to descend. On 2-3 occasions I have managed to get it on the ground but rapidly (impacting type of landing where it will bounce) and it will just sit there and slowly rotate all 4 props and I have no error messages showing on screen and it will not respond to any input with the controller and the status light is showing green. As a last resort to stop the props from spinning I hit press to land and it will respond by shutting down the motors. I have been flying for about 3 years and this drone and I have been all over the planet. Looking for best course of action on figuring out what is going on.
One thing to note I have managed to get it on the ground see no errors and reboot both the controller and the drone and it will fly just fine but not 100% of the time. I have also removed and replaced the battery as well just to see if the behavior improves and most of the time it will fly just fine but once again not 100% of the time. Sorry for being wordy but figure it may help to ascertain what is going on.

Thanks, Ivan

 

[lannes]

Have you refreshed the firmware on the AC and RC ?

What version of DJI Go4 have you been using when these problems occurred ?

 

[Jordaneer]

Try it again and monitor your battery voltage especially when you put a lot of power draw on them (like try flying forward in sport mode), if they drop significantly (3.5v per cell is about the lowest voltage they can get to before being totally ruined).

Ideally, charge up your battery, open up go4, pull up the voltage, take off your Mavic air, then fly forward in sport mode, if they are fully charged, the cells should be at about 4.1 then drop to 3.7-3.8v, if they go lower than that, the cells in your battery are probably bad

 

[Dave Maine]

Does it maintain a good GPS connection during these odd periods of behavior? What flight mode is displayed on the tablet? Loosing it and dropping into atti mode can be quite confusing if you are not used to it and practiced in flying in that mode.

 

[1bad]

I bet one of these bad *** dudes on here can look at your logs and figure it out. Should post them

 

[islandivan]

Hey folks who replied to this thread. I managed to find another flight that exhibited this behavior and ran it through AirData and much to my annoyance it did not display the drones behavior directly but indirectly. It did display an odd battery behavior which is a good thing but does not show the drones behavior. What I can tell you as the pilot that the Auto Land Message was initiated by me as a last resort to turn the motors off. It was already on the ground and just idling. This event happened almost immediately after takeoff and I promptly gathered it up enough to get it on the ground but hard enough it bounced 2-3 inches upon landing.

 

[islandivan]

Have you refreshed the firmware on the AC and RC ?

What version of DJI Go4 have you been using when these problems occurred ?

How can I tell what version of firmware I have? It has been forever and a day since I have had a firmware update or push come from DJI.
I have found a flight from April where it displayed the same issue. I ran it through AirData. (see attached). Key point here is it does display a battery issue but not the drones behavior. The Auto Land message displayed was initiated by me as a last resort to shut off the motors. The drone was already on the ground after I managed to control crash it hard enough for it to bounce 2-3 inches off the ground. Once it landed the motors were idling. Once I hit Auto Land they shut off. I was just a guess to shut them down. Have any ideas?

 

[islandivan]

Try it again and monitor your battery voltage especially when you put a lot of power draw on them (like try flying forward in sport mode), if they drop significantly (3.5v per cell is about the lowest voltage they can get to before being totally ruined).

Ideally, charge up your battery, open up go4, pull up the voltage, take off your Mavic air, then fly forward in sport mode, if they are fully charged, the cells should be at about 4.1 then drop to 3.7-3.8v, if they go lower than that, the cells in your battery are probably bad

 

[islandivan]

How can I tell what version of firmware I have? It has been forever and a day since I have had a firmware update or push come from DJI.
I have found a flight from April where it displayed the same issue. I ran it through AirData. (see attached). Key point here is it does display a battery issue but not the drones behavior. The Auto Land message displayed was initiated by me as a last resort to shut off the motors. The drone was already on the ground after I managed to control crash it hard enough for it to bounce 2-3 inches off the ground. Once it landed the motors were idling. Once I hit Auto Land they shut off. I was just a guess to shut them down. Have any ideas?

Does it maintain a good GPS connection during these odd periods of behavior? What flight mode is displayed on the tablet? Loosing it and dropping into atti mode can be quite confusing if you are not used to it and practiced in flying in that mode.

 

[islandivan]

I bet one of these bad *** dudes on here can look at your logs and figure it out. Should post them

Attached is another example of the problem. At least this shows a battery issue. What it does not show is the behavior. The problem started almost immediately after launch with a loss of positional holding and then altitude. I managed to get it to the ground in a semi-controlled crash landing but upright but it bounced 2-3 inches on impact. The motors never shut off but only idled at a low RPM. I hit Auto Land as a last resort to try to shut it down and luckily the motors shut off. Any ideas?? See link: