watuse Posted at 2016-11-27 20:45
Natalia if you can talk to the engineer about putting a thermal wind detector for the next Mavic 2 ...

If the thermal gusts are so strong, strong enough to knock out the RC connection, what would seeing the drone help with?

How does seeing the drone lose connection and fall from the sky prevent it from happening?

Perhaps seek medical attention? Perhaps slow down on huffing the paint? Perhaps stop posting mindless bullshit? Up to you I suppose...

DJI, are you really going to blatantly rip this guy off?

Is there a way r
To "ignore" watuse so I stop seeing his thermal spam?

robble Posted at 2016-12-1 15:27
Is there a way r
To "ignore" watuse so I stop seeing his thermal spam?

No but it will fade into oblivion in time. Just a shame for KKimac that it hijacked his thread.


@ fans898d22bc "DJI, are you really going to blatantly rip this guy off?"
I have to disagree.  I mean the photo of the flight path pretty much shows why signal loss occurred.  That part is entirely predictable.
KKimac has not told us what RTH altitude he had set and those buildings look mighty high to me. DJI could simply compare the RTH alt in the log with the height of the buildings and the aircraft cruise height to see if there was an innappropriate RTH alt set. Even if the aircraft was above RTH when it was triggered and flew home towards a higher obstacle it is not guaranteed to detect it and avoid it. If you intentionally fly behind a block of skyscrapers at very least set the RTH above them!
Further more KK is basing his fly home search path on where the RC stopped loggin the aircraft when its signal was lost. This is not necessairly exactly where the Mavic would have triggered failsafe RTH. It could have flown on further before it was triggered. So it could have hit another building or landed in a totally different location.  Maybe he is searching in entirely the wrong place.
If it was me I would continue the vector of the Mavics last known path along further before drawing the beeline back to the home point.  Then see what it might of hit.

I totally agree with Logger, the image posted does indeed look like a disaster waiting to happen. And the Mavic could have crashed into any of those tall buildings, so unless he searched around all the buildings in the photo there is no way of telling exactly where the mavic went down.

Logger Posted at 2016-12-1 15:57
No but it will fade into oblivion in time. Just a shame for KKimac that it hijacked his thread.

well, I guess this is what happens if you are to anxious to fly this bird and forget about all the standard rules you mention. The point is however that I am not claiming that this was not a pilot error, I just claim that there is currently no 100% that the RTH was actually initiated which leaves the likelihood that the bird fell into the water and can therefore never be retrieved by myself. The only reason why this is important is the fact that I signed up for the care refresh package which does however not jump in, if you cannot present the broken copter.

@ DJI-Ken: The fact that the Mavic may have continued on its path and may have initiated the failsafe RTH at a later stage thus having a different trajectory to the homepoint than what I was assuming so far, is surely interesting. Is this something you would technically also consider to be possible, the way the mavic is programmed?

Stokke Posted at 2016-12-1 16:53
I totally agree with Logger, the image posted does indeed look like a disaster waiting to happen. An ...

well, stopped at signal loss would be Tower 2
Only in the most unlikely case it would hit into tower 3
all the other variants would be tower one, but this area is super visible and I was initially searching there after the incident before I did this trajectory thing later that day....

kkimac Posted at 2016-12-1 18:27
well, stopped at signal loss would be Tower 2
Only in the most unlikely case it would hit into tow ...

for the few smarta.... around: the counting of the towers was done from bottom to top. The real name of the towers is. T3 is at the bottom one, T2 in the middle and T1 the one furthest away from the sea (bottom)

This is what the support team says
"As soon as the signal loss happens it will stop first for a couple of seconds then go to RTH"

I think in a built up area like that it is quite possible for gps to go a bit screwy.  If the signal loss happened because of interference and then the gps went funny on the Mavic afterwards, the only way to tell if the RTH worked would be to retrieve the Mavic (which would most likely be at the bottom of one of those buildings).

Kevin16 Posted at 2016-12-1 19:47
I think in a built up area like that it is quite possible for gps to go a bit screwy.  If the signal ...

i wished, you were right and I could find the drone, regardless of what happened....if I had the drone, I could get a new one at the care refresh price....if not, DJI is currently not willing to make any compromise....considering the reputation DJI is having and the size of the company, as well as the goodwill I would expect in this situation, I would truly hope to see them come up with much more than just saying - pilot error....eat this and d..

kkimac Posted at 2016-12-1 04:37
i wished, you were right and I could find the drone, regardless of what happened....if I had the d ...

Sorry, but from what I've seen on your situation, it really is your error, not a problem with the Mavic.  You should have been aware of the many tall buildings that will block your direct line of sight from the Mavic when it went around the bend. Since these buildings looked likely to be above your set max height which I assume is 120M/400ft, there is no way the Mavic could have made it back to you on RTH..

If you had Obstacle Avoidance on, then the Mavic would probably have sensed the building and tried climbing up to it's maximum allowed height setting, but once it reached that max height, it would have simply hovered until it was low on power, then landed...  For all you know, the Mavic ended up on some podium roof on one of these buildings...

MavicUser Posted at 2016-12-1 21:58
Sorry, but from what I've seen on your situation, it really is your error, not a problem with the M ...

nothing to argue if I could be sure the failsafe RTH was really initiated. If so, what you describe is holding true and all that would make this a happy ending would be if I could find the mavic where it would supposed to be at.....well, it is not there, so either I am blind, or something else happened.

I bought the DJI care refresh to protect myself from doing a stupid mistake like the one I describe but fact is, no physical drone, no dji care refresh opportunity.....so now I am stuck with a loss of 1000 dollars and all I am hoping for is some goodwill from DJI to make me an offer of a Mavic without the controller and considering that I should normally be eligible for a replacement if I found the (potentially crashed) drone.

Things could get extremely crazy if, for whatever reason I could still find the bird. In the meantime it has rained and one of the other fantastic exclusions of the care refresh is stating that water damaged drones are also not eligible for replacement. I wonder how this case would then be treated......so whatever may be the case, all I am saying is that it is very likely that what you describe is what happened. But it cannot be proven 100%. Since I cannot find my drone, I am not eligible for a replacement via the care refresh which makes me request another economical reasonable solution....

not too hard to understand....we all have to pay for our mistakes....it is not fun to admit this but I still feel that DJI should move considering all circumstances that should be taken into consideration.

e.g. care refresh, drone cannot be found even though it should be there, at the time of connection loss, the drone could not be reconnected even though it could be seen when running down the harbor, which makes me believe the RTH was never initiated....by the time I ran in the other direction to get closer, the drone was gone....so you see, it is not that simple....yes, a pilot error, but to what degree do I deserve full financial punishment?

kkimac Posted at 2016-12-1 05:30
nothing to argue if I could be sure the failsafe RTH was really initiated. If so, what you describ ...

Just because you didn't find it doesn't mean that Failsafe RTH didn't initiate... The only way that Failsafe RTH wouldn't initiate is if the Mavic lost GPS.. From what you wrote, it had GPS connection, so it would be relatively safe to assume that Failsafe RTH did work... It's just that the Mavic would have made a straight line from where it lost connection to the home point, and you didn't account for all the tall buildings in the way.  

From your description of the distance at 602m, I really doubt that you could actually see what the Mavic was doing, since it would best be described simply as a dot in the sky.  From your map showing the direction of movement, it also looked like you would have lost sight of the Mavic the instant it went behind the buildings.  There is just no way you could have seen the Mavic running down the harbour, because if you could have seen it, then you wouldn't have lost control of it since it would still have been in direct line of sight...

DJI isn't in the business of giving away $1000 drones just because you made a mistake... You really should have taken better precautions, like making sure tall buildings don't come between you and the Mavic, and maybe investing in a locator system that would at least allow you to track the Mavic in circumstances such as this...

MavicUser Posted at 2016-12-1 23:08
Just because you didn't find it doesn't mean that Failsafe RTH didn't initiate... The only way tha ...

"MavicUser" you got a lot of valid points but I would like to correct a few of your comments that you have concluded incorrectly. Moreover I would like to reiterate that I am NOT claiming NOT having done a pilot error. All I am trying to achieve is to have DJI acknowledge the fact, that there is no 100% guarantee that the failsafe RTH was correctly initiated. Even if all odds are against me, I would at least like to make DJI understand that the reason why I signed up for the DJI care refresh package was to protect myself from wasting a lot of money by committing  pilot errors or like in my case simply misjudging the situation prior to take-off (setting RTH height).

So these are the two main points:

1. If the failsafe RTH was correctly initiated, why am I not able to find my drone in the area of the indicated trajectory back to the home point? This would allow me to claim a replacement via the DJI care refresh package I have signed up for.
2. Why can I be 100% sure that the failsafe RTH was correctly initiated, when the last sighting of the Mavic (approx. 2 minutes after the signal loss) was achieved by running down the harbor BUT WAS FAILING to re-connect?

Please allow me to comment some of your statements:

- at a distance of 602 meters the mavic is indeed just a little black dot in the sky. I was however accompanied by my buddy who was so excited to see me fly the mavic that day (first week-end after the delivery on the 21st  of November) that he brought some binoculars.

- you are right, shortly (NOT directly after, my friend had lost sight of the mavic due to the tall buildings blocking it) after having lost sight, the signal broke off (in fact I had two warnings (after the first warning I could  briefly get rid of the warning by moving my position more to the left when looking at the picture), after the second warning the connection was completely gone) and I tried to re-establish the connection by running down the harbor as indicated in the picture. At that time I was screaming to my friend "can you see it....he was confirming and I screamed back..."why the hell does it not re-connect" - At that time I was guessing to have about 5 to 6 minutes left of battery. So I started running in the other direction losing sight again. (second mistake, my friend ran with me, instead of staying where he could see the mavic - well, even if he had stayed, how would we have been able to communicate over the distance....). At the time, I had arrived at the corner of this street jumping a fence and almost killing myself, the mavic was gone and reconnection was still not possible. I assume at this time, the battery must have been dead already and the mavic must have either landed somewhere or simply have dropped into the water.

- locator system: well, afterwards we all have these good ideas and yes, DJI is a business, so I guess what I am actually after is some goodwill from DJI, allowing me to have a chance to buy another Mavic without killing my financials entirely..., simply due to the fact that I signed up for the care refresh package and the fact that the proper RTH functioning cannot be 100% guaranteeed...

Dji has so many bugs that it doesn't let me post here as if I don't exist

So what is the end result? DJI honored the DJI care refresh and give you a new one?