Super Simple Flight with Strange Disconnect and Lost :(

theman00011 · Mar 21, 2019

So I was taking some pictures and videos at night of some buildings and parking lots and things like that. I was on my 3rd and last battery and the last battery was a simple mission. Just fly to a good spot and timelapse the entire battery. Only a few minutes into the timelapse looking great, no errors or anything. Suddenly my iPad shows disconnected. I think "That's strange" so I close the app and reopen it with the same result. Okay, well my controller still shows connected and isn't yelling at me so I hit the RTH button. As soon as I do, I lose sight of the drone and my controller disconnects. Super weird. But I think "Even if my RTH didn't go through, the disconnect will initiate RTH". I wait to see if it returns but it never does. It's so strange because I was only around 1000ft away, the drone hadn't moved in the last 5 minutes, and it never returned even though it was at 350ft when it disconnected and that's well above any obstacles. The battery was at 58% when the iPad disconnected so it had PLENTY of battery to RTH. I searched the entire flight path for a couple of hours last night but plan to go back in the day and see if I can find it. Luckily I thought ahead and put my phone number on it so if it did so something weird and someone finds it, they have a way to contact me. I've attached the flight log to see if any of you guys have any ideas.

Thomas B · Mar 21, 2019

Hope you get it back. Especially difficult in urban environments.
Consider strobes and a drone locator beacon (Marco Polo, Trackit, etc)

Mavicmaniac · Mar 21, 2019

@sar104
Maybe he can help shed some light on what went wrong.

sar104 · Mar 21, 2019

Nothing obvious here - the situation was as described. The aircraft was hovering at 107 m AGL and then the log just ends. There are no unusual data relating to the battery, and there was negligible signal degradation prior to the disconnect. That's a bit suggestive of a battery disconnect, in which case it's going to be almost directly under the last recorded position - maybe a few meters to the north east given the wind, which was around 8 mph out of the southwest at 100 m AGL.

theman00011 · Mar 21, 2019

sar104 said:
Nothing obvious here - the situation was as described. The aircraft was hovering at 107 m AGL and then the log just ends. There are no unusual data relating to the battery, and there was negligible signal degradation prior to the disconnect. That's a bit suggestive of a battery disconnect, in which case it's going to be almost directly under the last recorded position - maybe a few meters to the north east given the wind, which was around 8 mph out of the southwest at 100 m AGL.

That's what I thought but figured it was worth seeing if I missed anything. I searched for a couple of hours last night and a couple of hours today in a 200ft radius mostly of where the last location was but didn't find anything. I'm going to email DJI and see what they say because even with a signal loss it should have RTH but I never saw it come towards me.