Hi all,

I lost my Mavic Air to high winds while I was on vacation in Turkey. It was flying with MAS propellers and had all gain values set to 80 as suggested by MAS.
Full throttle forward and still drifting backwards with the wind at times, even in Sports mode. Not sure if it ultimately titlted too far shut down and crashed or if it safely landed somewhere. Connection lost with 15% battery.

I know one mistake I made was flying too high as winds get worse at altitude, does anything else in these logs stand out to the experts here?

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/JFOHF9W2ERI6EYHTZO5L/
https://app.airdata.com/flight/5d9419bf75191148816fe4e653e8251c/GENERAL

Streamed videos from the controller, I guess they'll be useful to get a sense of the wind:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vin1Rwc9cPBN0s4k2ykPF8AYmLe5P8eq
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cDWqfj3X5NoQJL-vF9EhBSO48gmwbbwV

It certainly looks like wind was your problem, flying downwind should always be a warning that coming home you will have to fly into the wind, you also gave up on sport mode for RTH which didn’t help you then continued to raise the craft while in RTH  so flying higher where the wind will also be stronger, but I suppose if you flew lower you risked loosing signal.

You know you read so many of these cases around here, you are not the only one to make this mistake, and I suppose you can only put it down to experience.

I’m not sure if you have any chance of getting your drone back I’m presuming it landed on low battery, so you will see on the map below last coordinations for your drone. I hope something good happens for you, and I believe you should always sync your flight contact dji support and start a case, you never know what can come from it .

Hi, there  BBK. We do apologize for the incident happened to your DJI Mavic Air. I would recommend you contact our support team to start up a ticket: https://www.dji.com/support. We have the professional team who would do their best to find out the reason for the incident and then the corresponding resolution would be provided. Please note that DJI will not perform data analysis for cases occurring after the expiry of the warranty period; otherwise, valid charges will apply. Thank you for your understanding. Best Regards!

I forgot to mention anything about the props, not to sure if they were the problem, all I can tell you having tested them fairly extensively I found that they were pretty substandard for MavAir.

hallmark007 Posted at 5-15 16:00
I forgot to mention anything about the props, not to sure if they were the problem, all I can tell you having tested them fairly extensively I found that they were pretty substandard for MavAir.

Not sure either but I'm going back to OEM props for the time being, motor current errors didn't go away with MAS suggested gain settings anyway which is a bit of concern.

Another lesson learned was putting my phone number and email address on the drone, I doubt if anyone can use the FAA registration to return it to me if they find it!

Ouch!  Sorry you lost your MA.  I did a video on the MAS Props a while back and that was my main concern.  I was seeing a lot of DRIFT with those props (even in lower winds).  Reducing the GAIN values (as recommended by MAS) certainly reduces the noise level but it also reduces the performance of your Mavic Air.  I would NOT recommend these props in any type of high-wind conditions...they just don't perform as well as the DJI Stock Props.  Something to be aware of....especially when reducing your GAIN settings from 100% to 80%.  Again, sorry your lost your MA.  


FYI:  For anyone else interested in (or using) these props...

RGMGFitness Posted at 5-16 10:15
Ouch!  Sorry you lost your MA.  I did a video on the MAS Props a while back and that was my main concern.  I was seeing a lot of DRIFT with those props (even in lower winds).  Reducing the GAIN values (as recommended by MAS) certainly reduces the noise level but it also reduces the performance of your Mavic Air.  I would NOT recommend these props in any type of high-wind conditions...they just don't perform as well as the DJI Stock Props.  Something to be aware of....especially when reducing your GAIN settings from 100% to 80%.  Again, sorry your lost your MA.  

Good review! Do we know the exact definition/effect of these gain settings? Are these multipliers applied to controller inputs,? In that case my full throttle forward to return home was effectively made 80% forward and I wonder if that extra 20% would have been enough to save the drone.

BBK Posted at 5-16 12:51
Good review! Do we know the exact definition/effect of these gain settings? Are these multipliers applied to controller inputs,? In that case my full throttle forward to return home was effectively made 80% forward and I wonder if that extra 20% would have been enough to save the drone.

I don't know for sure...but I'm thinking that extra 20% makes a big difference in windy conditions.  

Don't blamed the MAS. I had flow higher than you and further in an area full of interference without issue and RTH safety.  Sorry for your lost. If you modded your RC, you couldn't have lost your drone.

hallmark007 Posted at 5-15 16:00
I forgot to mention anything about the props, not to sure if they were the problem, all I can tell you having tested them fairly extensively I found that they were pretty substandard for MavAir.

I bought them. Not too sure if I want to use them though....

小仙女的星巴克 Posted at 5-19 16:00
Don't blamed the MAS. I had flow higher than you and further in an area full of interference without issue and RTH safety.  Sorry for your lost. If you modded your RC, you couldn't have lost your drone.

What were the conditions where you flew? I've flown many times and up to 2 Kms out on MAS propellers without any issues either, until this happened in wind and it sounds like the MAS suggested 80% controller gain settings could have been a factor in full throttle forward not helping in getting back home in Sport mode.

Can you please elaborate a bit more on 'modding the RC', no entirely sure what you mean by that?

BBK Posted at 5-20 09:39
What were the conditions where you flew? I've flown many times and up to 2 Kms out on MAS propellers without any issues either, until this happened in wind and it sounds like the MAS suggested 80% controller gain settings could have been a factor in full throttle forward not helping in getting back home in Sport mode.

Can you please elaborate a bit more on 'modding the RC', no entirely sure what you mean by that?

Too bad the MA is a WiFi drone...so it will have a lot of WiFi interference and the connection get disconnect very frequently. So modding the Remote Controller Antennas help to recover the disconnection better and faster. Go Google 4hawks raptor or ALIENTECH Duo Antenna 2.4G & 5.8G Signal Booster Range Extender for Mavic Air.
Yes the wind play the major role on your lost, but when you lost connection the MA might be heading to a different direction and eventually crash or hover at a spot till the battery died. So with a good connection between RC and Drone help the recovery.

小仙女的星巴克 Posted at 5-20 12:49
Too bad the MA is a WiFi drone...so it will have a lot of WiFi interference and the connection get disconnect very frequently. So modding the Remote Controller Antennas help to recover the disconnection better and faster. Go Google 4hawks raptor or ALIENTECH Duo Antenna 2.4G & 5.8G Signal Booster Range Extender for Mavic Air.
Yes the wind play the major role on your lost, but when you lost connection the MA might be heading to a different direction and eventually crash or hover at a spot till the battery died. So with a good connection between RC and Drone help the recovery.

I see I see. Yes, not losing the signal would have been helpful for sure in knowing where it landed (and if it did at all). It should commence RTH within seconds after losing connection and as you can see in the log RTH didn't have much luck getting it closer to home when signal wasn't lost.

I should have also been mindful of FCC mode vs. CE mode when flying outside U.S. due to reduced transmission power in CE mode.

Hi, Sorry you lost your drone.  Did you have high surface winds at the time? just curious. I know from experience that you don't have to have very much altitude to get a good increase in wind velocity and it's easy  to forget about that with drones. An 18 kt wind aloft just above the surface is not all that uncommon. Your experience will make me more careful if that's any consolation.

A.V.hiflyer Posted at 5-20 15:51
Hi, Sorry you lost your drone.  Did you have high surface winds at the time? just curious. I know from experience that you don't have to have very much altitude to get a good increase in wind velocity and it's easy  to forget about that with drones. An 18 kt wind aloft just above the surface is not all that uncommon. Your experience will make me more careful if that's any consolation.

Surface winds were surely stronger than all my previous flights, weather data showed something around 10mph from memory but I guess it can vary a lot and quickly. It started drifting away pretty much as soon as it got above surrounding buildings. Please check the second post in this thread, I've posted videos and they can give you an idea.

I use the MAS props exclusively now (about 20 flights) and while I haven't flown them in high wind, I fly often in moderate wind (probably 5-10mph).  I've never had any problem with them in wind.  The MAS props seem much more efficient (I get about 20% more distance on a battery) and are less noisy.  I haven't changed the gain settings from stock.  I've found that I only get the current errors if I have both sticks fully forward in sport mode.  If I back off on either stick, I get no more errors.

The attached videos show that the wind is very strong! There are plenty of wind turbines nearby. It's a windy place. Why did you fly in such a strong wind? An error message arrived in the 20th second, you should have land immediately! There was a steady fault, it should have been landed where he could go. This is an amateur pilot fault.

Jakab Gipsz Posted at 5-22 09:45
The attached videos show that the wind is very strong! There are plenty of wind turbines nearby. It's a windy place. Why did you fly in such a strong wind? An error message arrived in the 20th second, you should have land immediately! There was a steady fault, it should have been landed where he could go. This is an amateur pilot fault.

I agree, shouldn't have flown in the strong wind and turbines were good indicators of how windy that place could be! There was an error in judgement there as wind never caused an actual control problem in any of my previous flights despite strong wind warnings.

As for coming back to land, I was attempting that from the very beginning and after the first drift at around 60 feet altitude. I pretty much had no control except for brief periods, not sure if I stood a chance if I did something differently. Lower altitude or landing in a safe place away from home position could have helped but as someone else pointed out earlier here and you can see in the logs, lowering the altitude wasn't very helpful with signal strength.

Jakab Gipsz Posted at 5-22 09:45
The attached videos show that the wind is very strong! There are plenty of wind turbines nearby. It's a windy place. Why did you fly in such a strong wind? An error message arrived in the 20th second, you should have land immediately! There was a steady fault, it should have been landed where he could go. This is an amateur pilot fault.

Just found a reference to this on National Weather Service's website, it's a scale to estimate wind speed based on observation:

https://www.weather.gov/ilx/swopwindscale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale#Modern_scale

Going by this I say it probably was somewhere between 'strong breeze' and lower end of 'high wind/near gale'...