Slight veering to the left, minor but annoying still.

[Havadan Bodrumdan]

Hello again.
Recently, my Mini 3 Pro is not behaving when I push the right stick forward for a straight flight. The bird veers to left ever so slowly. I do compensate it by sliding left stick to right. That is almost in zero wind conditions or very little head or tail wind.
It is a minor thing for now.
As you can imagine, I wouldn't want it to get worse over time though.
Any ideas or suggestions will be much appreciated.
Cheers.

 

[waynorth]

The first thing you should try is calibrating the sticks, IMU and gimbal, hopefully that will help.
But I had the same problem with a Phantom 4, and I was unable to fix it no matter what I did.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

How are you assessing whether or not it flies straight?
Are you, perhaps, looking at the screen and thinking the drone moves to the left?
If so, could it be that the camera is pointing to the right of "dead ahead"?

 

[michaeldallen1]

A shot in the dark here.... maybe swap props left to right. It might just be a small irregularity that might be cancelled out.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

A shot in the dark here.... maybe swap props left to right. It might just be a small irregularity that might be cancelled out.

Taking that literally, the drone would try to become a Thunderbird's Mole, the drone's props would be turning so to push the drone into the ground.
You'd need to swap the prop FR<-->RL, FL<-->RR in order for it to fly.

 

[Cafguy]

You could have a bad prop it happens have you changed all of them out and tested that?
but yes remember to put them on correctly

 

[Havadan Bodrumdan]

How are you assessing whether or not it flies straight?
Are you, perhaps, looking at the screen and thinking the drone moves to the left?
If so, could it be that the camera is pointing to the right of "dead ahead"?

Pushing the right stick forward, drone should go straight. I guess...

 

[michaeldallen1]

Taking that literally, the drone would try to become a Thunderbird's Mole, the drone's props would be turning so to push the drone into the ground.
You'd need to swap the prop FR<-->RL, FL<-->RR in order for it to fly.

I'm sure you knew what I meant. Keeping the prop rotation the same, you can switch front left with right rear, and front right with left rear as those are working in unison. I'm only going by my Mavic 3 Classic, which is easy to change props. No screwdriver needed. Front left is same set as the right rear etc. And as Cafguy mentioned above it could be a bad prop. I had to google Thunderbird's Mole. Too Funny! If I swapped the props improperly it would burrow into the ground! Ha Ha. For those unfamiliar, Click here for Thunderbirds Mole Info. The Mole

 

[Havadan Bodrumdan]

You could have a bad prop it happens have you changed all of them out and tested that?
but yes remember to put them on correctly

I have a fresh set of props. A's to A's, B's to B's. Drone still did veer left with the previous set as well...

 

[Skydreamer]

parrot drones used to have that “glitch”,assuming problem is with rc and not with drone,….we used to reset parrot rcto fix the issue,in dji that would be settings,control,gain-expo tuning,scroll down and hit reset…..i have no idea if this will help,worth trying

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

I'm sure you knew what I meant.

Actually I was uncertain, given some of the daft suggestions seen in some threads I take things as literal.
Besides the OP might not have known what you meant.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Pushing the right stick forward, drone should go straight. I guess...

Not necessarily.
As an example, with the mavic 2 P/Z it is possible to have the camera looking almost sideways. If that is the case and you are screen watching or looking at recorded video, pure elevator results in what appears to be sideways flights.
@Kywon McCain, on here, has at least two threads where his drone seemingly drifts sideways during pure forward flight.
Why?
Because the camera on his drone is not pointing straight forward, thus, what is seen in the recording and on the screen is an apparent drifting to one side.
Expressed another way, if you are a passenger in a car or bus, on a dead straight and long stretch of road, and don't look straight ahead but rather you look off to the side then, as far as your eyes see, the vehicle is not moving towards where you are looking, rather stationary objects move across your field of view.

This is why I asked how are you judging that the drone is moving sideways?


I suspect that if you look through the menus of the fly app you will find a manual adjustment for the forward facing alignment of the camera. From memory it might be +-10deg with the Mavic mini and Mini 2.
You might also find that there is a "re-centre camera" function possible with one of the multi function buttons on the controller, the function that toggles the camera between fully down and horizontal.

 

[WanderLost]

Not necessarily.
As an example, with the mavic 2 P/Z it is possible to have the camera looking almost sideways. If that is the case and you are screen watching or looking at recorded video, pure elevator results in what appears to be sideways flights.
Kywon McCain, on here, has at least two threads where his drone seemingly drifts sideways during pure forward flight.
Why?
Because the camera on his drone is not pointing straight forward, thus, what is seen in the recording and on the screen is an apparent drifting to one side.
Expressed another way, if you are a passenger in a car or bus, on a dead straight and long stretch of road, and don't look straight ahead but rather you look off to the side then, as far as your eyes see, the vehicle is not moving towards where you are looking, stationary objects move across your field of view.

This is why I asked how are you judging that the drone is moving sideways?

Those were my thoughts. I sometimes have this "problem" when flying my Matrice 30 when I forget to re-center the gimbal. I move it slightly to the side to avoid getting the edge of the left prop in the view with the wide camera.
If I don't recenter, then I notice when I'm flying forward that the drone is "drifting" to the left, but only because, it's being commanded to fly straight and my view is slightly to the right.
A quick gimbal return to center fixes it.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Those were my thoughts. I sometimes have this "problem" when flying my Matrice 30 when I forget to re-center the gimbal. I move it slightly to the side to avoid getting the edge of the left prop in the view with the wide camera.
If I don't recenter, then I notice when I'm flying forward that the drone is "drifting" to the left, but only because, it's being commanded to fly straight and my view is slightly to the right.
A quick gimbal return to center fixes it.

LOL I had just added a re-centre bit to my post. Then saw your post.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Pushing the right stick forward, drone should go straight. I guess...

Additionally it might be an idea to replay the flight/s in the app or look at the csv of the flight log and check whether or not you are unintentionally giving some aileron.

 

[Meta4]

I have a fresh set of props. A's to A's, B's to B's. Drone still did veer left with the previous set as well...

It's quite unlikely that there is anything wrong with your drone at all.
It's probably flying straight, but you don't know it.
If you want to confirm whether the drone is or isn't flying straight, that's easily done by looking at recorded flight data.
The most common cause of drones reported as turning to one way or the other is that their cameras are not pointing straight ahead and need to be realigned..
If you really want to get to the bottom of this you need to post data from a flight that you believes is showing the issue.

There are a couple of options ...

1. Go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
That will give you a detailed report on the flight data.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides and someone might be able to analyse it and give you an understanding of the cause of the incident.
or
2. Just post the .txt file here
or
3. If you use Airdata, you can view the flight data on Airdata and post a link for the Airdata report

 

[Felix le Chat]

Hello again.
Recently, my Mini 3 Pro is not behaving when I push the right stick forward for a straight flight. The bird veers to left ever so slowly. I do compensate it by sliding left stick to right. That is almost in zero wind conditions or very little head or tail wind.
It is a minor thing for now.
As you can imagine, I wouldn't want it to get worse over time though.
Any ideas or suggestions will be much appreciated.
Cheers.

Best way to assess the problem is to find a nice long, straight concrete path, flip the gimbal to 90 degrees down and pitch slowly forward. This is a problem I've seen reported before and addressed in a YouTube video

 

[Havadan Bodrumdan]

Thanks everyone for responses full of information. Will try each and get back to you with the results.
Cheers.

 

[tuxtard]

If calibrations didn't help and you are sure it is not controller then there is not much you can do but send it for repair. I had the same problem and DJI replaced my unit under warranty. They've said it was the faulty IMU/GPS module. In the next clip I was pushing only forward on the controller, and you can see how drone behaved.