Gimpy Posted at 7-24 02:10
You're the one who's ignored what everyone else is trying to tell you about flying over water, about VPS altitude, and the barometer altitude. You also keep making up things you don't really know but insist you do, such as your new (and incorrect) claim that the barometer can only be off by 10 feet. Apparently I've given you much more credit than you really deserve for knowledge of these systems.

Anyway, the OP has accepted responsibility for the crash, which is to his credit. Again, it's unfortunate that this happened, but telling him it wasn't his fault when it really was doesn't help anyone.

As aspected, not going in on arguments and facts.  8.3 secs for autolanding from 1 feet to get wet....
Did you made that calculation yourself ?  well, mayby others will do and understand what i am saying.

I said, sometimes height varies 10 ft, you translate this into "new claim that barometer can only be off by 10 ft"  i did not made that claim and sometimes is not only.  Wonder why you do this....

It is hard to discuss about who has the knowledge here and who 'deserves' credit. Not important at all Gimpy.

cheers
JJB

JJB* Posted at 7-24 02:33
As aspected, not going in on arguments and facts.  8.3 secs for autolanding from 1 feet to get wet....
Did you made that calculation yourself ?  well, mayby others will do and understand what i am saying.

So according to you, he had eight seconds to abort the landing by pushing the left stick forward and didn't, but that's somehow DJI's fault? Even the OP now realizes and admits that it was his fault, but you apparently want to continue arguing that it wasn't.

I'm just one of a handful of people who've tried to explain your mistakes to you, but you're not listening to any of us, and at this point the discussion clearly is all about your own misplaced pride and serves no real purpose.

JJB* Posted at 7-24 01:12
True indeed, low flying over ground with enought reflective material = good VPS height signal
Not always True flying above water.
Baro height not that bad, sometimes it varies 10 feet from start data to end of the flight, this often when craft went up to some height (> 300 feet)

I think maybe none of this matters, we don’t know VPS was incorrect, we don’t know Barometer was correct, we do know that actions from OP although obviously accidental caused the crash, if he had good VLOS then he accidentally pushed the wrong buttons, if he had only screen info he either misread it or it conflicted with what he thought.
Unfortunately dji most likely wont offer warranty for this crash, and hopefully OP will have learned from his mistakes and the information he has received here .

Gimpy Posted at 7-24 02:43
So according to you, he had eight seconds to abort the landing by pushing the left stick forward and didn't, but that's somehow DJI's fault? Even the OP now realizes and admits that it was his fault, but you apparently want to continue arguing that it wasn't.

I'm just one of a handful of people who've tried to explain your mistakes to you, but you're not listening to any of us, and at this point the discussion clearly is all about your own misplaced pride and serves no real purpose.

Well, there were 8 seconds in wich the aircraft did loose height *....so yes OP could have done something.
Loosing his video on the phone, just my guess that Op was busy with his phone, as he was not aware that there was an autolanding in progress.

* loosing height as indicated by barometer, if not acurate, ok but decreasing values in time are accurate, mayby not the absolute values.

So 8 seconds in wich the baro height dropped from 4.9 to -1.3 (regular decreasing) , VPS indicating 0.6, 0.5, 1.0, 2.1, 2.5, ..., finally 0.2.  

Ofcourse the OP made mistakes, i can see that too. But if he only was aware that a unwanted autolanding was initiated he had made mayby the right choice.Just what would anybody (even new flyer) do when they see their drone goind down towards the water? Input in the RC for sure, mayby the wrong input but input.
Last seconds no input at all, just a guess but i think that time OP did not watched his drone but had a 'fight' with his phone.

I normally don`t say anything about pilot errors yes or no. Just this time i gave a reaction on Lucas, and still think that it is not 100% his fault.And yes, not wise mayby to fly low over water with landing protection on. But how should a newcomer to DJI drones know this ??

So beacuse of this 8 second time to land in the water, knowing the landing speed, i am sure his drone wasn`t flying at 1 feet when things went wrong.
Don`t think you can ignore these data facts. Nothing to do with pride etc, just about facts in logs.


BTW
Did some test yesterday evening; no sound or warning when entering forcelanding.
I can only get a landing message in the app after a RTH when drone finish the RTH by landing.Using latest FM and SW on my MA. But mayby its different for other DJI types.

cheers
JJB

JJB* Posted at 7-24 04:17
Well, there were 8 seconds in wich the aircraft did loose height *....so yes OP could have done something.
Loosing his video on the phone, just my guess that Op was busy with his phone, as he was not aware that there was an autolanding in progress.

Ok, here are some facts:

• I don't know what the aircraft's actual altitude was, and neither do you.
• The OP decided to fly over water.
• He accidentally initiated an auto-landing while the VPS thought (perhaps incorrectly) that he was very close to the surface.
• He didn't stop the landing.
  

You keep wanting to argue about what the actual altitude was, but neither of us knows and it doesn't matter: what matters is that VPS believed he was close to the surface when he held the left stick back for a full second, so it initiated the landing that he didn't stop.

"And yes, not wise mayby to fly low over water with landing protection on. But how should a newcomer to DJI drones know this ??"

He could have read the manual, and you probably should too. Page 26 pretty clearly states that the sensors can be affected by flying over water and that you should, "Operate the aircraft with great caution" and page 52 says to "Avoid . . . bodies of water".

Gimpy Posted at 7-24 04:37
Ok, here are some facts:

1) easy to calculate, or don`t you trust the down speed in m/s as defaulted in the SW ?
2) true
3) true
4) true

So we agree on many points.  ;-)

manual does say a lot in general, yes, you have to be carefull when flying over water. Easy to understand....but implications?  Where do you read the advice to disable landing protection when flying low over water?  I cannot find it. And its not a logic thing to do, why should i disable that??  (don`t want to use my landing protection as i do not want to land in water at the first place)

So only beacuse of mishaps to be read on this forum we can learn from it.

So many happy landing to all,
cheers
JJB

Gimpy Posted at 7-23 08:33
You're either remembering wrong or your drone had a problem that isn't widespread: turning off landing protection does not cause spontaneous, random landing to occur.

Sorry, maybe I didn't describe correctly my point. Didn't mean to say that spontaneous or random landings started to occur as part of setting landing protection to off.

But with landing protection set to off, when I needed to land my drone, the landing was not as smooth as normally happens with landing protection on.

On the contrary when I tried to land with landing protection set to off, the drone touched the ground abruptly which a gave a feel of uncertainty.  

Sorry, English is not my first language.

jpap Posted at 7-24 05:13
Sorry, maybe I didn't describe correctly my point. Didn't mean to say that spontaneous or random landings started to occur as part of setting landing protection to off.

But with landing protection set to off, when I needed to land my drone, the landing was not as smooth as normally happens with landing protection on.

That's the normal behavior: with landing protection on, the aircraft essentially handles the landing for you and does so smoothly. With it turned off, you have to gently descend yourself by pulling back just a little on the throttle if you want to avoid a hard landing.

Ryan H-c Posted at 7-23 20:18
Hi,

Thank you everyone for the thoughts. Before I go into it, just wanted to share i am hard of hearing, about 75% hearing loss and I use a hearing aid, so i didn't realize there was an audio cue till I read the comments in this thread.

Two kind of disconnections can happen, and sometimes it's difficult to quickly realize what has just happened, given the fact that you as a pilot may be destructed by so many other factors. Even the stress, the moment of disconnection can make you lose focus, time  and that's creates delay in decision making.

A) If the phone(or the app) was disconnected from the controller, the controller maintains connection to the drone and can give commands through the sticks and buttons even though app seems dead.

B) If controller was disconnected from the drone, then both the app and the controller cannot give commands to the drone. Based on your settings, such a disconnection may trigger a RTH or Landing.

From the discussion of the fellow pilots in this thread,  it looks that (A) happened on your case, so you may accidentally gave the command to land while you were holding the remote.  

Sorry for your loss. I hope you can get back to the hobby soon.

Gimpy Posted at 7-24 05:16
That's the normal behavior: with landing protection on, the aircraft essentially handles the landing for you and does so smoothly. With it turned off, you have to gently descend yourself by pulling back just a little on the throttle if you want to avoid a hard landing.

Thanks for confirming.  
I have set landing protection set to on as I don't like hard landings

I do fly a lot above water, but either in high altitudes or if I decide to fly low , I always try to be super careful.

JJB* Posted at 7-24 04:46
1) easy to calculate, or don`t you trust the down speed in m/s as defaulted in the SW ?
2) true
3) true

I think the problem with 1 is very simple, you are self accepting that VPS was wrong and Barometer was exactly right , so if you can say this without fear or favour and 100% prove it then yes it’s easy to work out, but I’m afraid it doesn’t look like you can, will you try measuring to the water or will you measure to the minus figure or will you guesstimate.
You can’t say VPS was wrong and barometer was correct just because craft was flying over water, anyone of us can show logs that show barometer low to the ground is wrong more times than not. So accepting we cannot say for sure correct altitude is not really much of a big deal, I’m not sure your need to continue to be so vehemently sure of this .

hallmark007 Posted at 7-24 05:41
I think the problem with 1 is very simple, you are self accepting that VPS was wrong and Barometer was exactly right , so if you can say this without fear or favour and 100% prove it then yes it’s easy to work out, but I’m afraid it doesn’t look like you can, will you try measuring to the water or will you measure to the minus figure or will you guesstimate.
You can’t say VPS was wrong and barometer was correct just because craft was flying over water, anyone of us can show logs that show barometer low to the ground is wrong more times than not. So accepting we cannot say for sure correct altitude is not really much of a big deal, I’m not sure your need to continue to be so vehemently sure of this .

Reverse engineering it is.

VPS indciation is fluctuating, so not correct values. If you look at the values, you will see this too.
Last record shows Baro height minus 1.3 meter, do we agree that at this height the drone became wet ?
Autolanding started at 4.9 meter. 4.9 to minus 1.3 in a fluent line. so i accept this normal behaviour in autolanding.

If you look at the whole flight the baro height indication looks normal, up and down according to the stick input.
So my conclusion is that the drone was flying at approx 6.2 meter, and not at 1 feet. (that`s why i reacted to this)

As the baro height is zeroed at takeoff and this flight was only at low altitude i expect not to see much deviation in the measured values. I do think my height value is pretty accurate 'guessed', taken into account the 8 seconds of autolanding as well.

Love to see logs where barometer height is more off than correct, i have seen about 700 logs and in general i can see good indication of baro height.
For sure for my own logs, beacuse i know exactly how i am flying my drones.

Big deal, yes it is, That how this discussion all started.

Do we ask from newbies to know that flying above water, with landing protection on, at relative safe height, to know that autolanding is possible when lowering the craft if VPS height is measuring the wrong values, this even with possible with forward speed ? Plus Autolanding without audio or warning, so while watching your drone you are not aware of this autolanding??

If people say yes to this question.....curious to know how they have gotten this knowledge.

cheers
JJB

JJB* Posted at 7-24 07:18
Reverse engineering it is.

VPS indciation is fluctuating, so not correct values. If you look at the values, you will see this too.

Again your insisting that barometer was 100% correct, if you hold that position then you must show how you 100% know this otherwise it’s just speculation , you say things in your post like you” expect “this is far from 100% and I believe your getting bogged down on this, it in no way helps OP, but what you do know can help OP and that’s what others are trying to say.
If you expect anything it becomes speculative on your part and this is what gimpy was trying to say nothing else just that, you are well entitled to what you think but it doesn’t make it right, we all should accept that .

JJB* Posted at 7-24 07:18
Reverse engineering it is.

VPS indciation is fluctuating, so not correct values. If you look at the values, you will see this too.

Regarding newbies we were all newbies as I was myself and I had to learn, that part of your argument makes little sense as most here agree, we are all adults and all should accept responsibility, ignorance is not an excuse and we certainly shouldn’t do it for others who I’m certain can take care o& themselves, feel sorry for them yes advise yes but don’t try to avert thei4 responsibility.

hallmark007 Posted at 7-24 07:31
Regarding newbies we were all newbies as I was myself and I had to learn, that part of your argument makes little sense as most here agree, we are all adults and all should accept responsibility, ignorance is not an excuse and we certainly shouldn’t do it for others who I’m certain can take care o& themselves, feel sorry for them yes advise yes but don’t try to avert thei4 responsibility.

Very well said. I'd much prefer to tell the OP -- who seems like a nice guy and hasn't made any mistakes that I haven't made or could have made -- that he deserves a free replacement, and I'm sure you feel the same way. But that would only get his hopes up to have them dashed when DJI points out his mistakes, and claiming it wasn't pilot error when it really was can only make it more difficult for those people who really AREN'T to blame when they experience a crash.

Ryan H-c Posted at 7-23 20:18
Hi,

Thank you everyone for the thoughts. Before I go into it, just wanted to share i am hard of hearing, about 75% hearing loss and I use a hearing aid, so i didn't realize there was an audio cue till I read the comments in this thread.

If you are flying close enough and the transmitter loses signal it will land where it is instead of back to the home point.  Either fly far enough it will RTH or fly close but ensure you do not lose signal.