This is my first time flying this drone and I hit the RTH button in the app & swiped to approve and the Spark took off straight up at a high rate of speed into an oak tree and crashed into an azalea bush!
A few minutes later, after a battery change. I was flying in an open area and got a low battery warning, hit the RTH button on my phone, swiped to approve and it took off straight up, I canceled the RTH and landed the drone manually. I had just set up & updated the firmware. So there's obviously a problem with the firmware.
I'll no longer use that feature until I get new firmware.
Please help!

The Spark is functioning as designed.

RTH is not recommended under trees.

RTH will make the spark reach a default altitude of 100ft (30m) and then return home.
This is to try to clear any other obstacles on the way back.
IE you are flying through the street over one block and you need to RTH.
It will raise up...missing the houses and trees (if shorter than 100ft) and return home.

RTH can be customized to an altitude you desire but I would not go below 100ft.

If you read the manual...ahem...you'd know that on RTH, Spark takes off straight up to a preset altitude (default is 30 metres) before coming home. Your Spark did exactly as it was supposed to do.

Hi, sorry for the troubles that it caused, however, using the RTH button will prompt the aircraft to proceed with the RTH function and it will ascend until it reaches the preferred altitude depending on how much you set it and it will automatically fly back to locate your home point. I would advise setting the altitude of your RTH higher than any object below to prevent incident as well. It's not recommended executing the RTH while there's an obstacle above the aircraft as the spark does not have sensors at the top of it and may lead to an incident. You can check our documentation as well for your reference. Please let us know if you have other questions. Thank you for the support. Please see the link below.

https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/ ... 0Manual%20V1.6-.pdf

You can go into the settings before you take off and set a return to home altitude yourself.

The spark is set to go to a default altitude for RTH unless you change it...

Amazing how many people buy these expensive products, then don't open the manual...

Hddeuce Posted at 2018-8-27 08:18
[view_image]

Thats a lot of explanation here.
Well done mate.
The time we spark community members spent in learning and making spark better, if Dji spent that much time then it will be a much better experience with lots of more features because spark’s hardware is capable of doing a lot of new things but just for the sake of Mavic series they try to avoid doing anything good for their spark model.

Thanks to all who responded, deeply appreciated. Sorry for being a noob & not reading the manual, but the type is so small you need an electron microscope to read it! I finally downloaded the PDF version, quite informative! A little embarassed.