What do I do when my Mavic Mini does a fly-away?

[mavic_minis_fly_away]

There is clearly a bug with the Mavic Mini in that if the wind exceeds a certain amount, the drone becomes totally unresponsive and maintains a level atittude; this means it drifts at the same speed as the wind. It will not respond to:

• normal control inputs
• RTH
• land

So what do I do when my Mavic Mini has a fly away? This has happened twice and I have been *extremely* lucky that it did not cause harm or damage.

Today when it did a fly-away in 15mph winds, it drifted ~450m until the RTH suddenly happened by itself. Like some miracle, the drone came over the horizon and landed in front of me. Oh, and by the way, this RTH was done going *into* the strong winds. :-X

Thanks for any experienced advice. There must be some trick to make it land.

 

[Yaros]

Can you please post the logs on PhantomHelp Log Viewer?

 

[mavic_minis_fly_away]

Can you please post the logs on PhantomHelp Log Viewer?

I can do that, but it doesn't provide a way to avoid the fly-away which is what I was asking.

I fundamentally could not make the drone move back in my direction. Does anyone know if killing the motors is possible in this scenario because RTH does nothing?

 

[mobilehomer]

First - check the weather for wind speed. UAV Forecast or something similar will give you a good idea of wind speed at altitude. Don't forget, the Mini is not a very strong flier. If the wind speed is any where near the Mini top speed, don't fly.

 

[mavic_minis_fly_away]

First - check the weather for wind speed. UAV Forecast or something similar will give you a good idea of wind speed at altitude. Don't forget, the Mini is not a very strong flier. If the wind speed is any where near the Mini top speed, don't fly.

This is a good plan.

But when it all goes to pants and you can't descend fast enough and the Mavic Mini flies away, what can you do to stop this?

 

[Phantomrain.org]

The first Mini has very little power compared to the Mini 2 and was terrible in the wind.

I would not push my luck as you will loose that drone with some good wind gusts , its just a weak model and you should consider an upgrade .

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain, Land on the Water but not with the Original Mini

 

[Kilrah]

But when it all goes to pants and you can't descend fast enough and the Mavic Mini flies away, what can you do to stop this?

Switch to sport mode and hope you've got some more leeway, but if not - well you're SOL. If the wind speed exceeds the max speed the aircraft is capable of then that's it. Come down as soon as possible since winds are typically slower close to the ground.

 

[FLDave]

If you are unsure of local wind speed and forecasts aren't close enough, then using a hand-held anemometer is a good option.
Drifting implies the drone was level at the time. You should be able to look at the drone and determine how it is handling the wind: was it tilted or showing rapid changes in angle?
How was signal strength at the time?
Analysis of flight logs is extremely important so you can learn how to handle future issues. Uploading flight logs to AirData is easy and you can learn a lot yourself.

 

[mavic_minis_fly_away]

If you are unsure of local wind speed and forecasts aren't close enough, then using a hand-held anemometer is a good option.
Drifting implies the drone was level at the time. You should be able to look at the drone and determine how it is handling the wind: was it tilted or showing rapid changes in angle?
How was signal strength at the time?
Analysis of flight logs is extremely important so you can learn how to handle future issues. Uploading flight logs to AirData is easy and you can learn a lot yourself.

Well, I am certain there was no response to any joystick inputs. I was receiving clear video for this entire process until it did its RTH which I suspect only happened because the wind dropped and it had breached its geofence - would Airdata tell me this fact?

I basically need a way to mitigate the SHTF scenario caused by the "special" way DJI has their software react to wind. Analysing the logs is not going to get me out of the windy-fly-away-software-bug scenario.

 

[Kilrah]

the "special" way DJI has their software react to wind

There is no such thing, so analyzing the logs would help find the actual cause.

 

[Phantomrain.org]

This is a quick way to check if your drone has potential in the wind.
If the drone shifts over more than 3 ft the wind is going to push you and 6 ft its never coming back and the controls are not going to seem to work because of the wind.

 

[mavic_minis_fly_away]

There is no such thing, so analyzing the logs would help find the actual cause.

Absolutely disagree. This has happened to me twice and other people numerous times.

It is far too easy to blame the user when I have flown numerous different drones and the Mavic Mini is the only one that has totally stopped responding to inputs. The cause is always the same: strong winds that are not responded to by the user within a certain time cause the drone to stop responding to inputs.

The fact that the drone decided to fly home by itself *flying straight into the "strong" winds* with no struggle at all (it moved quickly towards me) proves this point.

I have no idea why DJI has this but it is fact.

I just checked my settings and the RTH was done not due to geofencing but because it lost signal.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Why don't you simply post the logs for the relevent flight, it likely to save a lot of arguement.
Logs provide factual information rather than observation made in the heat of the moment.

For the record, my Mavic Minis have been blown away at least twice and probably more times than that and it is my impression that they have followed the commands issued by the controller perfectly whilst being blown away.
However I am checking those two flights now just to see if memory and fact correspond to one another.

"It is far too easy to blame the user when I have flown numerous different drones and the Mavic Mi...." just as it is all too common for people to blame the equipment.
True malfunctions are rare and logs have shown this.
Most often they have shown that the drone's behaviour was correct and that the pilot was unaware of what should happen in a given set of circumstances. There is nothing wrong in this, I doubt that there is a single drone flyer here who has NOT been caught out by unexpected behaviour.

"the fact that the drone decided to fly home by itself *flying straight into the "strong" winds* with no struggle at all (it moved quickly towards me) proves this point." proves NOTHING. The wind could have died or ........whatever

 

[mavic_minis_fly_away]

Why don't you simply post the logs for the relevent flight, it likely to save a lot of arguement. Logs provide factual information rather than observation made in the heat of the moment.
For the record my Mavic Minis have been blown away at least twice and probably more times than that and it is my impression that they have followed the commands issued by the controller perfectly.
However I am checking those two flights now just to see if memory and fact correspond to one another.

Is it possible to anonymise the location if I do this?

I just reviewed the footage; I had the camera facing down and the footage goes from one moment the drone being totally stationary between 25-30m altitude, and the next it almost instantly accelerates to 8m/s and drifts at that constant speed downwind.

When it eventually loses signal and does RTH, it returns at between 4-5m/s at 22m altitude, going directly upwind.

 

[GFields]

Is it possible to anonymise the location if I do this?

I just reviewed the footage; I had the camera facing down and the footage goes from one moment the drone being totally stationary between 25-30m altitude, and the next it almost instantly accelerates to 8m/s and drifts at that constant speed downwind.

When it eventually loses signal and does RTH, it returns at between 4-5m/s at 22m altitude, going directly upwind.

Anonymise? Are you asking if the location can be anonymous? If so, the answer is no. However, if you do decide to post your flight records, @Meta4 is great to analyze what may have happened (including wind factors)

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Is it possible to anonymise the location if I do this?

I just reviewed the footage; I had the camera facing down and the footage goes from one moment the drone being totally stationary between 25-30m altitude, and the next it almost instantly accelerates to 8m/s and drifts at that constant speed downwind.

When it eventually loses signal and does RTH, it returns at between 4-5m/s at 22m altitude, going directly upwind.

If you wish to do so then yes.
Download the csv of each log from phantomhelp, open the csv and delete the contents of the cells in the relevant columns BUT DO NOT delete the columns themselves nor the headers.
What information do you want to 'hide'?
Without effecting the analysis you could probably delete all Lat & long information and serial numbers but be aware they occur in multiple places.
DO NOT delete heights and I would leave distance information.
Save the csv's and upload them to a hosting site and make the uploads public and downloadable.
The likes of CsvView can process the csvs of Mavic Mini flightlogs ......though I don't remember testing it on an edited csv.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

I just reviewed the footage; I had the camera facing down and the footage goes from one moment the drone being totally stationary between 25-30m altitude, and the next it almost instantly accelerates to 8m/s and drifts at that constant speed downwind.

There is or was something in the drone's firmware that limits speed when the gimbal is at certain angles. It's not a bug, there are reasons for it but and it may also appy to the Mini 2 & SE.
You need to be aware of this behaviour and make appropriate adjustments as and when circumstance require.
The gimbal's pitch angle was one thing I wanted to look at in your log.
Firmware update may have changed the behaviour but I myself do not recollect encountering a problem with it.

 

[Meta4]

Absolutely disagree. This has happened to me twice and other people numerous times.

It is far too easy to blame the user when I have flown numerous different drones and the Mavic Mini is the only one that has totally stopped responding to inputs. The cause is always the same: strong winds that are not responded to by the user within a certain time cause the drone to stop responding to inputs.

The fact that the drone decided to fly home by itself *flying straight into the "strong" winds* with no struggle at all (it moved quickly towards me) proves this point.

I have no idea why DJI has this but it is fact.

Just post the flight data and it will show what actually happened rather than what you assumed happened.
If you are concerned about revealing your location (no real reason to), PM the flight data to me.
I'm on the other side of the world from you and don't care where you are and won't make any location data public.

Go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
That will give you a detailed report of the flight.
Come back and post a link to the report it gives you.
Or .. just post the txt file.

 

[mavic_minis_fly_away]

I'm embarrassed about my near crash and would prefer not to make the location public. It was in a legal location etc but I feel bad about it so I'll try the column removal trick tomorrow. Thanks for all the replies.

 

[Meta4]

I'm embarrassed about my near crash and would prefer not to make the location public. It was in a legal location etc but I feel bad about it so I'll try the column removal trick tomorrow. Thanks for all the replies.

Don't bother removing anything.
If you want help, just PM the data to me and no-one else will see it.