I'm always quite careful before I takeoff to avoid situations like this. I have a full pre-flight checklist that I follow every time. Tonight I had "safe to fly", and the only thing I noticed is that it took some extra time to go from 4 GPS to 9 GPS as it was sitting idle on the landing pad waiting for my commands. Typically I have a higher count but there were a couple garages to the south that I figured blocked a couple satellites. I waited a couple minutes and it stayed stable at 9 satellites so I started the motors, gave it a moment to update the home point and then took off. From the moment it was in the air it started to tip forward and backward as if i was moving the sticks to go forward and backward or as if it was detecting obstacles. I know it had low light and obstacle detection wouldn't work, but I've never had low light cause it to react to nothing.
I tried to bring it back to me but it ignored all stick inputs and was headed for an open field as you’ll see on the map. I pressed the pause button and it didn’t stop flying forward, then I tried to gain altitude but it only went up a couple feet before clipping the fence surrounding the field and falling down. The motors didn’t stop as DJI always says they will, so I had to do CSC to cut them. I was disappointed that it clipped the fence and crashed at first but in hindsight I now realize that if it didn’t, the drone probably would’ve flown away and I wouldn’t have been able to recover it since it was ignoring all input right after the IMU exception. Thankful I have it to send in for a swap.
Could one of you fine pilots tell me if this was a malfunction or if I just didn't have enough satellites? I have already chosen to skip damage assessment just to get back in the air, Care Refresh Express case is done and I've got a replacement on the way. Just curious for future reference.
Thanks all! |