OneDoesNotSimply
 Second Officer
Flight distance : 662644 ft
United States
Offline
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Hey guys, after months of trying, I was able to finally crash my drone. It wasn't easy, and I had to switch to Litchi to do it, but I got there in the end! The tallest poplar tree on the high ridge should take some credit too.
Now, the problem is that I have insurance and so need to find the poor, broken carcass of my dearly departed drone in order for me to replace it with another v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶ aircraft.
This is where the tramping around in dense forest getting spider webs (and spiders) in my face comes in. See, I knew things had gone awry and the Litchi Find my Aircraft function showed the last known location. Note, I lost signal when the bird went down into the dark, dank depths of the forest floor.
OK, that sucks, it is in some damn forest. Ah well, at least I have a chance as I know the last location.
So, I head in that direction and after half an hour get close enough that I start getting a signal again, cool! Actually, not cool because the drone is upside down on the forest floor somewhere (a quick switch to auto exposure helped determine this) and only has 5 satellites. These satellites tell the drone it is about 15 miles from where it really is and my last known location is now shown in the app as 15 miles away so now I have no idea how to find the damn thing anymore!
Well, the very thing that doomed me, saved me. I loaded up the waypoint mission (soon to be deleted forever!!!) I was on and started following the line I knew the drone took. All the time trying to look around me, avoid spiders and fallen tree trunks and small streams as well as looking at the screen to ensure I was still on the right line. When I planned this waypoint mission I would not have planned it over steep slopes in a damn forest had I known I would be walking rather than flying it!
After 30 minutes of this I got signal again and tried DJI's drone finder hoping to beep the ESC's. Problem is, DJI's app did not show the drone at all (due to poor GPS) and you need to click the drone icon in order to get the options to beep the motors and flash the LEDs. Litchi does not offer this option to begin with.
Anyway, I got the bright idea to use signal strength now I had a connection again to see if I could at least tell if I was getting closer or further away. At one point following the waypoint path I got full bars for the signal in the Litchi app for video and control. I saw on the video I was close to a small patch of sunlight, so started searching for those in the nearby area and eventally found my poor Mavic Air! Just in time too as the battery was down really low and I wouldn't be able to use signal strength as a guide.
The poor Mavic Air has the usual falling off, broken rear arm that everyone gets when they crash these things and strong fresh leafy-juice smell. The battery, gimbal and everything seems good which is nice. Maybe if DJI strengthens those rear arm joints we'd have a pretty crash-proof drone.
So, the moral of this story is to not rely on the find my drone GPS, or at least take a screenshot before you go searching. Now, I could have gone home and loaded up the flight log and figured out where the last good/real GPS location was and then gone back. In hindsight that is what I should have done, well that and not setting two Litchi waypoints on either side of a hill. Hey, I was only off by about 3 feet according to the video footage!
So, now I am thinking about getting a Tile Sport bluetooth tracker which has up to a 200 m range, that might save me in future when I am close, but don't know it. I always thought I could rely on the ESC beep using DJI Go, but now I know better. One concern is that the Tile uses bluetooth which could interfere with the radio comms to the drone.
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First Officer
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