Hey all,

Keeping this short and to the point.

My Mavic was moving away from the home point at an average of 18.6 mph without touching anything. How fast would the wind speed need to be to stop it hovering and move it that fast?

Second part - which is why I'm confused. With full forward throttle not touched or engaged to 100%, the speed stayed roughly the same. I even put it full reverse throttle from me and the speed didn't shift. I was as consued during the flight as I am now.

Third part - Healthydrones/Air Data showed in flight wind speed readings of 13.76 mph when I looked to not have control. It rose to 15mph, the 19mph and back down to 17 mph during the first 4 mins of the flight. By 4mins the Mavic was already 3000ft away from the home point without me doing anything.

Then 7mins 30 seconds, an inflight windspeed of 32mph, 39mph at 8m46 and 52mph at 9 mins!

DJI advises no more than 22mph so with the forecast and flight location, it was ok to fly. I was aware of strong winds but by the time I'd hit those crazy speeds, it was alrady long gone. I'm concerned about the first 4 mins of this flight and I'm curious to know how these in flight wind speeds are created on healthy drones and how accurate they are?

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Cheers

Flight record -  

https://app.airdata.com/main?fli ... amp;page_id=GENERAL

Those airdata logs show very little detail, you will get much more detail if you upload your logs to phantomhelp you will find link below just click on link and follow instructions come back here and post your link.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

Sorry, did that as well. I don't see how this site gives more info? As in it does on the flight time but there's pretty basic info in the top bar..?

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/4N2C1GAXZYW105UOLVJG/

MY bad, just saw you can download the CSV.

With full forward throttle not touched or engaged to 100%, the speed stayed roughly the same. I even put it full reverse throttle from me and the speed didn't shift. I was as consued during the flight as I am now.

At what specific point in the flight do you believe this happened? I looked at your log when you posted about it before but don't recall seeing anything like that.

Healthydrones/Air Data showed in flight wind speed readings  . . .and I'm curious to know how these in flight wind speeds are created on healthy drones

Based on the information on their site it looks like they take the estimated wind speed at the time of the flight and extrapolate an estimate of how fast they think the wind speed might have been.

how accurate they are?

Probably not very accurate in most cases, especially since they can't possibly know what the actual wind speed was at a specific point in time at some arbitrary altitude. In all likelihood they only know the average wind speed at a single fixed height above the ground.

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-23 09:14
Sorry, did that as well. I don't see how this site gives more info? As in it does on the flight time but there's pretty basic info in the top bar..?

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/4N2C1GAXZYW105UOLVJG/

PhantomHelp is primarily intended to be used to diagnose problems or answer questions like the ones you have, so it provides the maximum amount of detail possible. AirData, on the other hand, appears to be primarily intended to be used as a place for a pilot to keep their logs that potentially come from various different apps (e.g., Litchi as well as Go), and as such provides more of a least-common-denominator approach to the data presented.

The bottom line is that Hallmark's right: when you're trying to understand why a flight ended badly -- as appears to be the case here -- PhantomHelp is a much better choice.

Thanks both. That's a little clearer about the differences in sites.


With full forward throttle not touched or engaged to 100%, the speed stayed roughly the same. I even put it full reverse throttle from me and the speed didn't shift. I was as consued during the flight as I am now.

At what specific point in the flight do you believe this happened? I looked at your log when you posted about it before but don't recall seeing anything like that.

I was looking at 04.55 onwards for that particular comment. At the time I thought my Mavic was flying away for no reason regardless what I did. I later triggered auto landing as I was seeing what control I had, and then was more confused as this brought the bird to a stop before descending.

I wasn't sure about the windspeed readings on healthy drones as they appear on the map at different points of the flight - I thought maybe the used the pitch/roll data and possibly some other data on propeller rpm to power used for each motor (if that is even possible).

I've seen quite a few youtube vids of Mavics hovering and flying in extremely strong winds, winds I wouldn't knowingly fly in. So curious to know how strong wind would need to be to move it away at that speed.

Thanks again for info so far.

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-23 09:40
Thanks both. That's a little clearer about the differences in sites.

The reason you didn't see a major change in speed at that point was because the Mavic was already using almost full (P-mode) power just to try to remain stationary in the wind; you can see this from the speed with which the battery was draining when there was no stick input (about 1% every 10 seconds). In other words, it wasn't just drifting but actively fighting the wind, but without Sport mode it didn't how enough power to keep from being pushed farther away.

Once you applied full elevator (throttle is what makes it go up and down) the speed at which it was moving away did decline slightly, but the wind was still too strong. It wasn't until you reduced its altitude to well below the top of the cliff from which you launched that it began to make some progress towards you, but only very slowly and it was still much too far away to complete the return trip.

Again, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but this does appear to be a case of pilot error.

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-23 09:14
Sorry, did that as well. I don't see how this site gives more info? As in it does on the flight time but there's pretty basic info in the top bar..?

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/4N2C1GAXZYW105UOLVJG/

It gives much more info than airdata. Information shows that all your stick movements correspond correctly to what was happening with your Mavic , as Droneflying said when you went to RTH your Mavic was not moving forward because of wind. It was then that you needed to rethink a new course although you did at one point try to change to a different flying mode IE sport I presume unfortunately you didn’t have multiple flight mode turned on, you also continued to both raise altitude and fly away from your homepoint until auto landing kicked in because of low battery.
It also looks at one stage during your flight that you were flying straight in to the Sun which caused AC to slow right down this is also a warning to change course.

You will see all information in the cvs file of your phantom Help log it will help you understand what happened. Sorry for your loss don’t know if you have a case with dji but maybe they will offer discount of a new Mavic. Good luck.

Ok thanks for the help all. I was in panic mode as a year before I had a Phantom 4 fall out of the sky due to a battery cell error. I had a the battery overcharge notification come up this flight and thought it was going to fall out of the sky - it wasn't even an error message but the drama I've had trying to sort the P4 over the last year, it brought back painful memories that added to the panic and then I just couldn't make sense of anything.

I put the first crash down to bad luck and took the plunge and trust in buying the Mavic. Because of my awkward no fixed address situation as a travel photographer, my broken P4 is stuck in Myanmar and I can't get it back to send it out. And now this Mavic is gone. 4 hours flight time on the P4 and 2 on this Mavic. Now all I need is my Osmo to randomly combust and I'll have the full set! A discounted Mavic would be nice but I don't appear to be having too much luck with DJI to date. I doubt they'll help me on this.

Pretty gutted by everything to be honest.

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-23 11:17
Ok thanks for the help all. I was in panic mode as a year before I had a Phantom 4 fall out of the sky due to a battery cell error. I had a the battery overcharge notification come up this flight and thought it was going to fall out of the sky - it wasn't even an error message but the drama I've had trying to sort the P4 over the last year, it brought back painful memories that added to the panic and then I just couldn't make sense of anything.

I put the first crash down to bad luck and took the plunge and trust in buying the Mavic. Because of my awkward no fixed address situation as a travel photographer, my broken P4 is stuck in Myanmar and I can't get it back to send it out. And now this Mavic is gone. 4 hours flight time on the P4 and 2 on this Mavic. Now all I need is my Osmo to randomly combust and I'll have the full set! A discounted Mavic would be nice but I don't appear to be having too much luck with DJI to date. I doubt they'll help me on this.

Usually they do help customers who have had honest mistakes or accidents, if you have a case number then try to contact a mod here to escalate your case.

Airdata/healthy drones has criteria for wind speed estimates, that involves either a no control hover or full throttle with no turning or yawing for 5 seconds or more.  Its just that, an estimate based on expected power and RPMs vs actual movement and it can get it wrong, especially if its gusty.

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-23 11:17
Ok thanks for the help all. I was in panic mode as a year before I had a Phantom 4 fall out of the sky due to a battery cell error. I had a the battery overcharge notification come up this flight and thought it was going to fall out of the sky - it wasn't even an error message but the drama I've had trying to sort the P4 over the last year, it brought back painful memories that added to the panic and then I just couldn't make sense of anything.

I put the first crash down to bad luck and took the plunge and trust in buying the Mavic. Because of my awkward no fixed address situation as a travel photographer, my broken P4 is stuck in Myanmar and I can't get it back to send it out. And now this Mavic is gone. 4 hours flight time on the P4 and 2 on this Mavic. Now all I need is my Osmo to randomly combust and I'll have the full set! A discounted Mavic would be nice but I don't appear to be having too much luck with DJI to date. I doubt they'll help me on this.

I am sorry to hear about your loss. Had you contacted our support and start the data analysis? Please send an email to support.nl@dji.com, we will help to handle it.

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-23 19:18
I am sorry to hear about your loss. Had you contacted our support and start the data analysis? Please send an email to , we will help to handle it.

I've been in contact with the Hong Kong support centre but it's been so frustrating to get information from them. Just repeated vague answers. I've actually got everything I needed to know now and it makes sense to what actually happened. I'll send an email to that one instead to see if I can find a resolution. Thanks

Seems to me it was over land when it landed, would not be easy to find though...

Yngveny Posted at 2017-10-23 23:22
Seems to me it was over land when it landed, would not be easy to find though...

I walked down another hour or so to find it but this is some truly remote landscape. There's zero chance of getting that back safely and plus, I'm the other side of the world now

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-23 21:56
I've been in contact with the Hong Kong support centre but it's been so frustrating to get information from them. Just repeated vague answers. I've actually got everything I needed to know now and it makes sense to what actually happened. I'll send an email to that one instead to see if I can find a resolution. Thanks

Sorry for the difficulties you've been experiencing. Would you mind telling me the ticket number so I can learn more details about your case?

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-24 00:10
Sorry for the difficulties you've been experiencing. Would you mind telling me the ticket number so I can learn more details about your case?

Your request (802444) - is that what you need? Thanks so much for taking a look

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-23 23:43
I walked down another hour or so to find it but this is some truly remote landscape. There's zero chance of getting that back safely and plus, I'm the other side of the world now

There's zero chance of getting that back safely and plus, I'm the other side of the world now

I agree; here's a better view of its last reported position.

If the wind speed on the ground was 23 mph, 300 feet up in the air it could have been anywhere between 23 mph and 75 mph. If the mavic had atti mode pilots could tell upper level wind speed and direction by entering atti mode and then observing drift mph and direction. The wind warning is useless because it’s too sensitive. I’ve been up in some crazy winds and never had this happen?

So where I took off from was sheltered by trees. I'd seen wind forecasts ranging from 15-23mph so new there was strong wind before. The day before I ran a short test in 30mph ground wind with me keeping the Mavic at 20ft. It bumped around a bit but help it's position very well. I also researched extensively about the extreme winds the Mavic could handle. My aim was to put the Mavic up, take two short clips in two directions. I had full control without any issues and it's when I stopped the second movement and saw the battery notification that things just went wrong (it wasn't an error but freaked me out because of the p$ incident).

I'm still not entirely sure about a lot on this flight. Even when reviewing it, it seems like nothing I did really did much. When you look at just over 4 mins of this flight, I was trying loads of different things and watching the horizontal speed but nothing seemed to change how fast it was moving away. At 5m26 I was facing home and using full forward throttle but it's moving away at 36 km/h and then a few seconds later I put it in reverse and the speed didn't change... I was convinced it was some sort of compass error and it had picked a point and was trying to fly towards it. My thinking was that if it was wind, full forward throttle would have reduced the horizontal speed but it would still be moving away or moving back towards home very slowly and that letting go of all controls would speed it back up again. That's what it seemed to be doing in the first 4 mins when I tried to RTH. The speed went from 25kph to 6kph. But then when I did it by myself, it wouldn't drop below 20kph. Nothing in any direction was doing anything. Then I hit landing (5m54) to see what that would do and it dropped the speed instantly before it started descending...? Which confused me even more. If you also look at 9m05. I wasn't touching anything and it was drifting away at around 5kph. Then full throttle engaged it still was drifting away at 5kph...?

This might be case of me not understanding wind!?

Does sound like a gusty, swirling wind which can happen around mountains and valleys.  Also wind speed and direction can change substantially with altitude.

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-24 04:01
So where I took off from was sheltered by trees. I'd seen wind forecasts ranging from 15-23mph so new there was strong wind before. The day before I ran a short test in 30mph ground wind with me keeping the Mavic at 20ft. It bumped around a bit but help it's position very well. I also researched extensively about the extreme winds the Mavic could handle. My aim was to put the Mavic up, take two short clips in two directions. I had full control without any issues and it's when I stopped the second movement and saw the battery notification that things just went wrong (it wasn't an error but freaked me out because of the p$ incident).

I'm still not entirely sure about a lot on this flight. Even when reviewing it, it seems like nothing I did really did much. When you look at just over 4 mins of this flight, I was trying loads of different things and watching the horizontal speed but nothing seemed to change how fast it was moving away. At 5m26 I was facing home and using full forward throttle but it's moving away at 36 km/h and then a few seconds later I put it in reverse and the speed didn't change... I was convinced it was some sort of compass error and it had picked a point and was trying to fly towards it. My thinking was that if it was wind, full forward throttle would have reduced the horizontal speed but it would still be moving away or moving back towards home very slowly and that letting go of all controls would speed it back up again. That's what it seemed to be doing in the first 4 mins when I tried to RTH. The speed went from 25kph to 6kph. But then when I did it by myself, it wouldn't drop below 20kph. Nothing in any direction was doing anything. Then I hit landing (5m54) to see what that would do and it dropped the speed instantly before it started descending...? Which confused me even more. If you also look at 9m05. I wasn't touching anything and it was drifting away at around 5kph. Then full throttle engaged it still was drifting away at 5kph...?

I am sorry for the late reply. According to the case log, the result had drawn. It is mainly because of the wind that coz this accident, this is not a warranty case and our colleague had also sent you the analysis report. May I know is there any other thing we can help?

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-26 18:04
I am sorry for the late reply. According to the case log, the result had drawn. It is mainly because of the wind that coz this accident, this is not a warranty case and our colleague had also sent you the analysis report. May I know is there any other thing we can help?

I'm speaking to someone now. All I've been told is that wind caused the crash. Which is fine.. but I've asked a series of questions that have been ignored again. Is 'strong wind' 15mph or 100mph? There's a few other questions I've asked as well because to learn from your mistakes, you have to have some new knowledge available. As of right now, if I ever used DJI again I should never fly in any wind at all?

It's so frustrating trying to speak with DJI as everyone is given me 1 or 2 sentences in an almost scripted/robotic response. I lost my Phantom 4 and you've acknowledged it was your fault and I'm still out of pocket. You would have thought as a company you'd be pretty apologetic about that and somewhat understanding about this Mavic crash. It comes across that DJI really just doesn't care one bit about there customers and do not even have the decency to provide any details that I've requested.

Phantomtravels1 Posted at 2017-10-27 02:34
I'm speaking to someone now. All I've been told is that wind caused the crash. Which is fine.. but I've asked a series of questions that have been ignored again. Is 'strong wind' 15mph or 100mph? There's a few other questions I've asked as well because to learn from your mistakes, you have to have some new knowledge available. As of right now, if I ever used DJI again I should never fly in any wind at all?

It's so frustrating trying to speak with DJI as everyone is given me 1 or 2 sentences in an almost scripted/robotic response. I lost my Phantom 4 and you've acknowledged it was your fault and I'm still out of pocket. You would have thought as a company you'd be pretty apologetic about that and somewhat understanding about this Mavic crash. It comes across that DJI really just doesn't care one bit about there customers and do not even have the decency to provide any details that I've requested.

When the Mavic Pro detects that the current wind speed is higher than 6 m/s, a warning stating that the wind speed is too high, when the speed is higher than 9m/s, the strong wind warning will pop up again, we don't suggest flying the drone when the speed exceeds 10m/s. Please note that the wind speed mentioned above is not the wind speed on the ground, but the one in the air.
For your case, according to your flight record, the drone attitude tilted 18 degrees when there was no command, and high wind warning popped up and reminded you the current environment. So we are so sorry for your lost, please pay attention to the flight environment, learn from the fault and move on.

The warning came up and it was too late to do anything. I asked for more detail so I could learn from it as nobody at DJi has explained anything other than it was lost to strong wind. That is vague. And why I asked here. You’ve come back with such a rude response by telling me to learn from it and ‘move on’. Let me remind you I did move on from the phantom 4 crash which was admitted by dji to be product failure. I moved on and bought a brand new Mavic. DJi haven’t helped me resolve the phantom incident after 1 year of emails. So excuse me but how dare you be so rude to speak to one of your customers in such a unprofessional way. Further proof that DJI does not care about their customers once you’ve got their money. How DJi can survive as a company with such a notoriously bad customer service team. I’m so sorry for requesting further information to try and help me understand exactly why happened. I should have just accepted my second drone loss and shut up. I won’t take up any more of your valuable time.