Unnerving Experience

clarkgodfrey · Jul 26, 2020

I've had my Mavic 2 Pro / Smart Controller (my first real drone) for about a week now, and clearly am still learning my way around. Yesterday I took it "off leash" (out of beginner mode) for the first time, and had a couple of nice flights around the neighborhood. On the third flight, the controller lost contact with the drone while it was a few hundred yards away (Why???). I wasn't too worried, because I had confirmed that RTH works nicely, so I waited for the drone to come home. After 5 minutes, I got worried.

I used Find My Drone to go to the last reported position (in deep woods, full of poison ivy, of course) and tromped around for half an hour looking for it. When I gave up and came home, the drone was sitting innocently on the launch pad!

I was recording video, and it seems like when it lost contact, the drone climbed a bit, flew to a position over a neighbor's house, and hovered there for about 15 minutes. Then it moved over my yard and landed.

Can anyone give me a hint what was going on? I assume it came home when the battery got low, but why didn't it do that when it lost contact with the controller?

I've downloaded the flight logs from the drone, but haven't found any way to read them. (Why did DJI start encrypting the log files anyway?). And of course the log in the controller stops at the point where it lost contact.

Any help understanding why the controller lost contact and why the drone behaved the way it did after that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

sar104 · Jul 26, 2020

Without seeing the txt or DAT files it's just guesswork, but from your description of the behavior it sounds as if the aircraft had not actually lost contact with the controller, and so it hovered with no stick inputs until the smart battery RTH function brought it back.

Phantomrain.org · Jul 26, 2020

clarkgodfrey said:
I've had my Mavic 2 Pro / Smart Controller (my first real drone) for about a week now, and clearly am still learning my way around. Yesterday I took it "off leash" (out of beginner mode) for the first time, and had a couple of nice flights around the neighborhood. On the third flight, the controller lost contact with the drone while it was a few hundred yards away (Why???). I wasn't too worried, because I had confirmed that RTH works nicely, so I waited for the drone to come home. After 5 minutes, I got worried.

I used Find My Drone to go to the last reported position (in deep woods, full of poison ivy, of course) and tromped around for half an hour looking for it. When I gave up and came home, the drone was sitting innocently on the launch pad!

I was recording video, and it seems like when it lost contact, the drone climbed a bit, flew to a position over a neighbor's house, and hovered there for about 15 minutes. Then it moved over my yard and landed.

Can anyone give me a hint what was going on? I assume it came home when the battery got low, but why didn't it do that when it lost contact with the controller?

I've downloaded the flight logs from the drone, but haven't found any way to read them. (Why did DJI start encrypting the log files anyway?). And of course the log in the controller stops at the point where it lost contact.

Any help understanding why the controller lost contact and why the drone behaved the way it did after that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Really it just sounds that you lost your line of sight with the drone , and you lost visual line of sight . Your drone did everything right but much of what went wrong is just not understanding how important line of sight really is when flying your drone. That will come with more understanding of when the setup is good for a longer flight.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly you Mavic in the rain.

clarkgodfrey · Jul 26, 2020

Thanks to both of you for your comments. I agree that is seems logical that the drone hadn't actually lost the signal and was waiting around for me to tell it to do something. On the other hand, the controller was definitely saying "No Signal" and I had the black & white picture on the screen. And the last position shown on the "radar plot" in the lower left corner of the display was in the woods, not near the house down the street. Is it possible for the two to not agree on whether there is a connection?

I had the antenna pointed toward the last known position, while the drone was actually hovering about 90 degrees to my left, so that wouldn't have helped at all.

More experience will certainly help. If I survive the stress of getting it.
Thanks again.

sar104 · Jul 26, 2020

clarkgodfrey said:
Thanks to both of you for your comments. I agree that is seems logical that the drone hadn't actually lost the signal and was waiting around for me to tell it to do something. On the other hand, the controller was definitely saying "No Signal" and I had the black & white picture on the screen. And the last position shown on the "radar plot" in the lower left corner of the display was in the woods, not near the house down the street. Is it possible for the two to not agree on whether there is a connection?

I had the antenna pointed toward the last known position, while the drone was actually hovering about 90 degrees to my left, so that wouldn't have helped at all.

More experience will certainly help. If I survive the stress of getting it.
Thanks again.

What do you have the failsafe action ("Remote Controller Signal Lost" in the app aircraft advanced settings) set to?