Dear drone friends...

unfortunately my mavic pro autolanded in water and was not recoverable. Even more unfortunately, I did read some posts of operating over water incl. recommendations to switch off the auto-systems and fly pure manually only afterwards...

Finally this was the only "black spot" during my recent holidays of which I enjoyed every day... as I cannot change the past, I am looking forward probably in buying a new one (mavic 2?) next year...

at least the mavic pro submitted a video from its last flight :-))

Sad story...
Hope you can get airborne again

PS, I subscribed to your channel to give you some support.
(trainsandtrucks is mine)

Thanks for sharing your drones last moments - so sorry to see.

Sorry to read that - hope you are back in the air soon.

Hello and good day Kolvi_1. I am sorry to know what happened to your DJI Mavic Pro. Did you contact DJI support with regards to this matter? Thank you for sharing this wonderful video with us today from your DJI Mavic Pro. In addition thank you for choosing the DJI Mavic 2 Pro as your future drone for next year.

Ugh.  Gut wrenching.  It looks like it was going to be a nice video right before it turned into a nightmare.  

Sorry to read this, but it don't look like "auto landing" to me... more like flying too low without OA or enough GPS sats (even though it's not worth much above water) or maybe some wrong stick movements. Hope for more luck to you with your next drone.

Lots of Mavics have flown over water ??? someone advise is this correct ? Does say turn of VPS..

https://store.dji.com/guides/how-to-fly-safely-over-water/

FlyDK Posted at 11-27 10:42
Sorry to read this, but it don't look like "auto landing" to me... more like flying too low without OA or enough GPS sats (even though it's not worth much above water) or maybe some wrong stick movements. Hope for more luck to you with your next drone.

It showed autoland on the remote and I tried to pull up and move right to the land

DJI Stephen Posted at 11-27 08:07
Hello and good day Kolvi_1. I am sorry to know what happened to your DJI Mavic Pro. Did you contact DJI support with regards to this matter? Thank you for sharing this wonderful video with us today from your DJI Mavic Pro. In addition thank you for choosing the DJI Mavic 2 Pro as your future drone for next year.

I did not contact support as the drone is lost or are there some malfunctioning data around to be recoverable? Where and how to read out?

DJI Stephen Posted at 11-27 08:07
Hello and good day Kolvi_1. I am sorry to know what happened to your DJI Mavic Pro. Did you contact DJI support with regards to this matter? Thank you for sharing this wonderful video with us today from your DJI Mavic Pro. In addition thank you for choosing the DJI Mavic 2 Pro as your future drone for next year.

I did not contact support as the drone is lost or are there some malfunctioning data around to be recoverable? Where and how to read out?

Sorry for your loss... Hoping you'll fly again soon

Kolvi_1 Posted at 11-27 22:15
I did not contact support as the drone is lost or are there some malfunctioning data around to be recoverable? Where and how to read out?

Good day Kolvi_1. You may contact DJI support at https://www.dji.com/support. If you have any other concerns please feel free to post it here at DJI Forum. We are here to help you.

DJI Stephen Posted at 11-28 07:06
Good day Kolvi_1. You may contact DJI support at https://www.dji.com/support. If you have any other concerns please feel free to post it here at DJI Forum. We are here to help you.

[view_image]

Yes, many thanks, meanwhile I am in contact to the support team and they will Analyse the data.

Heart breaking moment

Kolvi_1 Posted at 11-28 07:18
Yes, many thanks, meanwhile I am in contact to the support team and they will Analyse the data.

Alright, please keep us posted if you need further help. Thanks for your support.

Rip drone

That sucks. Hope you're back flying soon.

Appears you were just flying too low.  Once you get below a meter or so above the ground, it will try to land.  In this case, it did land.  If you had forced the stick full up, it would have gone up and saved it.  You touched the water once and it came up.  It would have gone up from there if you had hit the stick right away and held it up.  Learning experience.  Play with scenarios like that when you replace it so you know what you can and can't do.

Yes i was low, but the a/c did not hit water during straight flight....but suddenly stopped and landed, before landing I fully commanded upward...

Can you upload your flightlog? http://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/upload/
we can take a look what happen there.

Yeah flight log from the mobile device would be great. Curious how it decided to auto land in water the way it did? Was the battery super duper low? wth?!?!

looks to me like as he was flying forward it was real close to the surface.. when he stopped, let go of the sticks, whatever, it went into braking, which tilted back and rear props struck water, then lost rest of the altitude (inches) it had above water...

fly bold, die hard

Agree with MavSpa_user - it's difficult to say what happened before seeing the logs from the app.
Were you in Sports mode, perchance? When accelerating in sports mode, you will lose quite a lot of altitude.
Another question - did you have any sort of landing gear extenders attached to Mavic? (I experienced once unwarranted autolanding with those on, after that stopping to use them)

As you can see from my avatar, I fly predominantly over water, though keeping above 5-10 meters above the surface. Never had the need to turn off the sensors, except when flying towards the Sun.

Kolvi_1 Posted at 11-27 22:13
It showed autoland on the remote and I tried to pull up and move right to the land

Not sure you would have had enough time, you were pretty close to the water, switching from sport to p or visa versa will always cancel auto land much quicker, but you won’t have had the time, I would have thought it worthwhile getting a diver to go down to retrieve it, but I think you said you were on vacation so maybe no so easy.

To bad you lost your drone ,  hope you will fly quickly again. At least you can say you have filmed underwater with a mavic

Thanks all to your comments, would have better looked up here more often before... flightlog will follow next week ... actually i am getting more and more unsure by the comments, however I did definitely NOT use a sport mode and so far I do not remember stopping the mavic by hand over water...

Kolvi_1 Posted at 12-6 07:31
Thanks all to your comments, would have better looked up here more often before... flightlog will follow next week ... actually i am getting more and more unsure by the comments, however I did definitely NOT use a sport mode and so far I do not remember stopping the mavic by hand over water...

if you didn't stop then you might have gotten a (false) forward collision sensor warning from glare .. you can see the video tilt and jerk as it came to a stop.. and without logs.. looks like the rear props hit...  at 10 seconds or so you see rapid deceleration followed by a slight sink..again VPS doesnt work well above water... it looses a couple inches of altitude during the braking perhaps as well...

if you were flying by 'screen' instead of looking at the aircraft inches over the water this kind of stuff happens.. and as you said.. turning off sensors you dont need is always a good idea, I turn off collision sensors on every flight once I get above my RTH altitude so that I dont get false stops from the collision sensors

and the manual clearly states water as a surface the sensors don't work reliably over.. so its pretty much up to pilot skill and decision/risk management

if you play the flight back in the flight log it will show you any warning banners that come up, although I don't know if it shows collision avoidance stops as a warning banner just the radar bars in camera view.. ?  

from the mavic pro manual


The performance of the Forward and Downward Vision Systems are affected by the surface being  own over. Ultrasonic sensors may not be able to accurately measure distances when operating above sound-absorbing materials and the camera may not function correctly in suboptimal environments. The aircraft will switch from P-mode to Atti mode automatically if neither GPS nor Forward and Downward Vision Systems are available. Operate the aircraft with great caution in the following situations:
Flying over monochrome surfaces (e.g. pure black, pure white, pure red, pure green). Flying over a highly re ective surfaces.
Flying at high speeds of over 22mph (36kph) at 2 meters or over 11mph (18kph) 1 meter.
Flying over water or transparent surfaces.
Flying over moving surfaces or objects.
Flying over inclined surfaces that will de ect sound waves away from the aircraft. Flying over small and  ne objects (e.g. tree branches and power lines).
Flying in an area where the lighting changes frequently or drastically.
Flying over extremely dark (lux < 10) or bright (lux > 100,000) surfaces.
Flying over surfaces that can absorb sound waves (e.g. thick carpet).
Flying over surfaces without clear patterns or texture.
Flying over surfaces with identical repeating patterns or textures (e.g. tiling).

MavSpa_user Posted at 12-6 02:58
Can you upload your flightlog? http://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/upload/
we can take a look what happen there.

Meanwhile I uploaded the log...

Where's the link?

ghostrdr Posted at 12-9 10:15
Where's the link?

ah, didn't know how it works... uploaded again and copied the link... hope it works

http://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/8WKV4QSG38EL3FD7O51Z/

Sad, hope you are back in the air soon, good luck.

After receiving initial feedback from DJI (saying I flew it into the water) I asked again to look into the data and Video

their answer was more in general: „The drone was flying to close above water. The barameter has been influenced. So the hight of the drone was regulated wrong, it samed that the drone was trying to land on the water.
We do not suggest to fly the drone above water. Because vision system, the ultrasonics and barameter could be inteferenced. So that these functions not reliable any more to position the drone.“

This corresponds with all information here in the forum and it my own fault to fly that low and trust on my visual piloting...
Questionable if this would have happened when switching off sensors and auto-function...?

Kolvi_1 Posted at 12-10 01:47
After receiving initial feedback from DJI (saying I flew it into the water) I asked again to look into the data and Video

their answer was more in general: „The drone was flying to close above water. The barameter has been influenced. So the hight of the drone was regulated wrong, it samed that the drone was trying to land on the water.

Hi Kolvi,

Had a look at your flight, bad luck and imo pilot 'error'...

Bad luck because when flying that low above water your drone saw an obstacle (guess the trees coming to close) , so it stopped its forward speed by braking. Drone Pitched-up to 57 degrees, forward speed to zero.

At that time it was flyying VPS height 0.2 meter and you applied full down! (+left yaw)
That was the trigger for the DJI software to start a forced (no autolanding) landing; thus initiated by you.

Sorry for your loss.

cheers
JJB

Thanks for your great input JJB

JJBspark Posted at 12-10 02:18
Hi Kolvi,

Had a look at your flight, bad luck and imo pilot 'error'...

Many thanks for you analysis - I will not dispute to facts (and of course own piloting errors), however this is against my impression and indications I got.

I fully agree to the drone stopping as approaching the trees and reflections on the the water, by than I saw on the controller the message "safety landing" or Sicherheitslandung or similar wording - creating some surprise in my brain ("oh no, F*** - it cannot just land now on the water") and I immediately  tried to push the lever upward while I saw my drone turning to the left and lowering + ditching...

Can it be that the commands, you did read out are the commands by the drone? Is there any "up" command readable?
and finally, is there any delay to transmit the data to the controller and dji app possibly having not the complete picture?

In any case, many thanks again to further clarify

Kolvi_1 Posted at 12-10 05:10
Many thanks for you analysis - I will not dispute to facts (and of course own piloting errors), however this is against my impression and indications I got.

I fully agree to the drone stopping as approaching the trees and reflections on the the water, by than I saw on the controller the message "safety landing" or Sicherheitslandung or similar wording - creating some surprise in my brain ("oh no, F*** - it cannot just land now on the water") and I immediately  tried to push the lever upward while I saw my drone turning to the left and lowering + ditching...

Hi Kolvi,

You may dispute, but i see only the data readout form your flightlog, see this chart again for the last part of the flightlog.

I don`t know what you saw on your mobile device, its not always the same as in the flightlog.
Guess it said "Landing". In the log no Up stick is recorded, only 100% down.
At the end 3,5 seconds of data writing is missing,  mayby in that part the Up stick took place.You saw the craft lowering and turning left, yawing left en down is logged in the log.

As long as there is a down link connection Drone > RC > Mobile Device, every 0.1 of a second is logged.
The normal delay in signal back to the RC > Device is there, normally with a good connection delay time in milli-seconds.
I always fly with a screen recorder active, very usefull to see the flight back (what did i miss looking in the sky instead of the screen) and usefull in situations like yours.

There is a difference between an autolanding and a forced landing; autolanding follows a RTH procedure or swipe to the right in the app, forced landing is when craft hovers low and user apply manual down stick. After short time drone starts to land, no need to have the stick 100% down, at no input craft will finish the forced landing.

PS i am not sure if you can cancel a Forced Landing by a Up stick command, once the software understands that the user want to have a Forced landing the drone starts one....i will check this out on my drones, nice to know!

cheers
JJB