Hello all,
Am hoping to get some assistance please in regard to a flight with my
Air 3 a few hours ago. Was about a minute or two into a flight when I noticed on the RC2 the drone seemed to flip sideways or upside down and I thought it was about to go down into the river below. It then suddenly lost connection to the controller and I was not able to gain any control over it, other than press the return to home button on the controller.
I breathed a huge sign of relief as the last picture I saw on the screen was the drone appearing sideways, looking like it was going down I and was convinced I lost it. Luckily, after pressing RTH it then began returning without issue. Landed it as soon as I could and checked the drone over as I was convinced it was a bird strike and was looking for claw marks on the props/on drone etc, but could not see any marks. I was confused though as a bird strike would not cause a loss in connection to the controller surely and I had visual line of sight. The props were all fitted properly as well as the battery inserted fully.
Upon looking at the video off the sd card, I could not identify any bird that may have flipped it over and also did not hear any obstacle avoidance sensor going off on the RC2 as far as I can remember. Unfortunately, was not doing a screen recording as I could then have noticed if a bird was close to the drone.
I do know I was close to some large power lines and I thought I may have clipped some wires, but reviewing the video footage again showed the drone had not reached the wires and so ruled that out.
I ended up moving to a local park a short time later, putting he drone back up using the same battery, flew for 20 mins or so and there were no issues with the flight. So would really like to know what may have happened on the previous flight and whether I should send it into DJI for assessment.
The only things I can think of possibly are a bird strike, a sudden and momentary loss of power or some type of interference from the power lines nearby. With any of these possibilities though, I can't fathom why signal was also almost immediately lost straight after the drone lost control/flipped. I guess it could also be an internal component fault, such as the motherboard, but unsure if that could cause the behaviour witnessed on this flight.
Link to flight video:
DJI_20240317102110_0002_D.MOV
Link to flight log:
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
Appreciate any thoughts on what may have been the cause. Thank you.