Very erratic Mavic flight, would like to find out why

[sswingle]

So I mostly fly a P4P. I rarely fly the Mavic and I feel like every time I try I have issues, primarily the app crashing.

So I went on vacation to Nashville so I took the Mavic for portability reasons. I was flying around the hotel we were staying at and had the craziest flight ever.

I was 3 minutes into the flight, battery at 89%. 388ft high and 546 ft away. As I was circling the building I hear the sound of a small jet, so I hover in place and am looking for the plane. Next thing I know this jet comes through in the same direction my drone is in at maybe 500 ft, maybe lower. It passes by overhead and at almost the same time my controller is now saying no signal. Fortunately a few moments later the signal resumes but the drone itself is acting like it is wobbling around uncontrollably in the air (although it could have been the camera) Unfortunately I fail to notice that recording has stopped so I have no video log of what I saw on the screen. I started flying it back towards me and noticed that the camera had also lost focus and at the same time hit record again. Once I had it directly over me again I left it in the air a moment and everything seemed normal but went ahead and landed.

I hadn't used Airdata before but just setup an account and of course everything looks perfectly normal there to me, so I was hoping someone here could look at the logs and maybe determine what happened.

Thanks!

 

[sswingle]

Attaching airdata file. I added .txt to the end of the .csv so it would go in, hope that was correct.

 

[danman999]

The turbine was flying lower than it should have been (as long as they were not in the process of landing or taking off from an airport) but neither of us are privy to the events in the cockpit or communications between the aircraft and air traffic control. Airspace is for aircraft, the burden is on the UAV operator to exercise caution and due diligence.
The wobbly reaction from your drone was most likely wake turbulence (wingtip vortices). You are lucky you were able to recover.

 

[ric96]

500 feet? You must have been pretty close to an airport!

 

[sswingle]

It was close to the airport but outside of Class C airspace. I checked on both vector map and the B4UFLY app.

 

[danman999]

It was close to the airport but outside of Class C airspace. I checked on both vector map and the B4UFLY app.

If they were in the vicinity of an airport then they may have very well had clearance to fly that low. Also FAA regulations allow a pilot to break or deviate from any regulation to the extent required to deal with an emergency.
The speed limit for aircraft below 10,000 ft. is 250 KIAS, unless flying beneath Class B airspace or through a Class B transition corridor, in which case it is 200 KIAS. Meaning although the jet was technically outside of Class C, at 200-250 KIAS they could be enterIng Class C pretty quickly at those speeds (approx. 3.5-4 miles/minute).

 

[FlyGuy8675309]

My guess is you underestimated the height of the jet -- this is very common. But --- if it was indeed at 500 feet, it shows why it's so important to stay below 400' for proper separation.

 

[Kilrah]

Seems you just had the common "gimbal reset in flight". Completely unrelated to the jet nor flight related.