Why does Mavic elevate on RTH?

[driverseven]

I'm still getting my sea legs with my Mavic Pro and I don't understand why this happened.

I was flying at an elevation of about 20 feet and hit the RTH button. It was only 10 feet or so from home at the time. But instead of moving into position and hovering, it immediately elevated -- it looked like it was going up to 100. I heard a verbal confirmation it was returning to home, but it freaked me out a little, so I cancelled and landed manually. This happened twice.

When I was in beginner mode, I used RTH without incident.

It would be great if someone could explain.

 

[laura schlenker]

Return to home is set to go above your highest obstacles. For example, if you had a 70 foot tree around you and you hit rth and it didn't rise above the tree to come home it would crash into it... You want to set your rth higer than anything that is around you so it will go straight up and avoid it and come home.

 

[msinger]

Check out your TXT flight log to see if it explains what happened. You can upload and view it online here. If you'd like other people to review and comment on your flight log, then please post a link back here after you upload it.

 

[westonmavicpilot]

Its good that you've joined the forum as there's a wealth of knowlege here including many posts on the way RTH works and the various issues you might experience with it as others have detailed above. Also check out the link below and read the manual cover to cover for detailed features / instructions / controls of the Mavic (latest release v1.8 1st Sept 2017)

Mavic – Specs, FAQ, Tutorials and Downloads

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Preset RTH is 30m, which happens to be 98 feet, 5 7/64 inches.

 

[rydfree]

Sometimes the Mavic does things just to see if you have read the manual .

 

[tcope]

First, please read the online manual on how the Mavic operates before flying. This is not explained by DJI and it's very important.

I don't remember the distance but RTH should not work when the Mavic is within a certain distance of the home point. I want to say 30'.

There is a setting and it's _VERY_ important that tells the Mavic to RTH at a certain height. This is so that it can clear obstacles, such as buildings and trees if it needs to. Kind of important. While collision avoidance is good, it's not perfect and can sometimes lead to other issues.

Take note of how high objects are in the areas you fly (buildings, trees usually) and set RTH about 50' above that height. Every times you fly, consider if this setting works in that area. Setting RTH way too high means, on low battery, the you may be having the Mavic climb needlessly high, waste battery power and it won't be able to get all the way home.

 

[msinger]

I don't remember the distance but RTH should not work when the Mavic is within a certain distance of the home point. I want to say 30'.

A few specials scenarios come into play when the Mavic is less than 67 feet from the home point. The Mavic manual explains it best in the following section:

 

[driverseven]

Thanks for all of the explanations. I was trying out RTH when the aircraft was close to the home point and the ironic thing is that there were trees behind me (thought not between the aircraft and RTH) To me, it appeared that it was getting too close to the trees when it ascended.

 

[gnirtS]

Please read the manual. It details exactly how these modes work and how the drone behaves. Not just RTH functions.
A large number of crashes and supposed fly aways are from users not understanding the systems involved because they havent bothered reading the manual.