Warnings sound and power cuts out in turbulence

[swb_mct]

When I fly from my home, I have to thread my way through trees to reach blue sky. When landing, even with a 5-8 mile breeze the neighbors houses can create a lot of turbulence. I have to come down extremely slow (a creeping hover) to navigate through the trees and often the Mavic gets upset by an updraft or other turbulence. I have seen it get tipped sideways approaching 45 degrees. I get audible warnings and seems like the power cuts for some part of a second. I guess my question . . . is the Mavic possibly close to crashing when this happens?

 

[MavicCF]

When I fly from my home, I have to thread my way through trees to reach blue sky. When landing, even with a 5-8 mile breeze the neighbors houses can create a lot of turbulence. I have to come down extremely slow (a creeping hover) to navigate through the trees and often the Mavic gets upset by an updraft or other turbulence. I have seen it get tipped sideways approaching 45 degrees. I get audible warnings and seems like the power cuts for some part of a second. I guess my question . . . is the Mavic possibly close to crashing when this happens?

If I remember correctly the AC will be shut down by the FC if the tilt exceeds 70 degrees. What is the warning you are getting? The power cuts may just be the result of the FC trying to really hard to compensate for the drastically changing environment

 

[swb_mct]

If I remember correctly the AC will be shut down by the FC if the tilt exceeds 70 degrees. What is the warning you are getting? The power cuts may just be the result of the FC trying to really hard to compensate for the drastically changing environment

The on-screen warning that comes with the audio alarm disappears so fast that I have never read what it says. Does your answer suggest that some brief but extreme turbulence could cause the Mavic to cut power and just fall to the ground? It seem like it should try to recover if its still at altitude.

 

[MavicCF]

The on-screen warning that comes with the audio alarm disappears so fast that I have never read what it says. Does your answer suggest that some brief but extreme turbulence could cause the Mavic to cut power and just fall to the ground? It seem like it should try to recover if its still at altitude.

I guess I was trying to say that the FC is constantly adjusting motor speeds to compensate wind and other small changes. In your case, it could be making fairly drastic changes in order to stay stable. Say for instance it cuts way down on motor 2 to compensate for wind from that direction.
When you hear it "cut power" that may be what it's doing, adjusting motor speeds, sometimes drastically, to compensate the wind.

 

[drone_video]

When I fly from my home, I have to thread my way through trees to reach blue sky. When landing, even with a 5-8 mile breeze the neighbors houses can create a lot of turbulence. I have to come down extremely slow (a creeping hover) to navigate through the trees and often the Mavic gets upset by an updraft or other turbulence. I have seen it get tipped sideways approaching 45 degrees. I get audible warnings and seems like the power cuts for some part of a second. I guess my question . . . is the Mavic possibly close to crashing when this happens?

There might be an easy way to test this. Hand catch the drone, and tilt it the same angle you suspect the wind is tipping it, and see what happens as you move through the angle you think is cutting power. However, I'm with MavicCF that the motor sounds changing is the flight controller quickly adapting. If one side is really high up, it will cut power to that side to try and bring it back to level. This happens really quick in the flight controller and can sound like a full power off, but I suspect its only to the motors that are highest up from the level plane, the wind buffeting it will change the pitch of the props cutting the air also.

If you want to know for sure, testing the motor cut off when holding it as suggested, will help you understand approx. where that cut off is and get comfortable with the motor sounds. I cant recall if the Mavic Pro works like the Air, where If I tilt it like 80% the engine shuts off when I hand catch. I almost never hand catch the Mavic Pro, but the Mavic air does shut off when I tilt it 80% approx.

 

[drone_video]

The on-screen warning that comes with the audio alarm disappears so fast that I have never read what it says. Does your answer suggest that some brief but extreme turbulence could cause the Mavic to cut power and just fall to the ground? It seem like it should try to recover if its still at altitude.

I think the experience base required to answer your question will be limited. Flying in high winds tends to not be common. The Mavic (and all DJI based Flight Controll systems) will work really hard to bring the craft to level. there is a thread on the DJI forums where someone asks if you can restart the motors from their mavic from a freefall. The thread goes on describing that if the drone is upside down, the motors are shut off to prevent acceleration towards the ground at an even faster pace, to reduce damages once it connects with the ground.

The dialog continues with conversations around a 'hack' to turn on the ability to restart the motors in that free fall. My best educated guess is that if you must hack the flight controller to restart the motors after its tipped upside down, then that means the motors will turn off when they flip.

Lots of sounds reasons to do this, as that thread calculates the terminal velocity at around 50km/h (if memory serves me right, but they do debate it on that thread, I'm not smart enough to calculate this), the damages to people and property at 50km/h is significantly reduced.

I wish I could find the thread for you but the DJI forums... I tried but I cant see to find it with any ease.

 

[JamesA]

When I fly from my home, I have to thread my way through trees to reach blue sky. When landing, even with a 5-8 mile breeze the neighbors houses can create a lot of turbulence. I have to come down extremely slow (a creeping hover) to navigate through the trees and often the Mavic gets upset by an updraft or other turbulence. I have seen it get tipped sideways approaching 45 degrees. I get audible warnings and seems like the power cuts for some part of a second. I guess my question . . . is the Mavic possibly close to crashing when this happens?

Do you have GPS lock when you take off. If you have to thread your way down through the trees that sounds like a good way to loose satellite connection.
I know, been there and done that.

 

[swb_mct]

Good point. The tree have no leaves now so GPS stays pretty good and Visibility is pretty good. Visibility will be so bad in a month that I will have to put a hold on spontaneous flights from my yard.

 

[MavicCF]

Good point. The tree have no leaves now so GPS stays pretty good and Visibility is pretty good. Visibility will be so bad in a month that I will have to put a hold on spontaneous flights from my yard.

The other option being to use your Mavic as a chain saw and cut a path for going in and out...

 

[MavicCF]

Good point. The tree have no leaves now so GPS stays pretty good and Visibility is pretty good. Visibility will be so bad in a month that I will have to put a hold on spontaneous flights from my yard.

If you have a flight log of this happening that you could post, we could take a look at that too.