Hello Guys, greetings from Brazil!
First of all, If this is not the right place to post, my appologies. This is/was my first DJI, I have flown 17h and 223km with it and never felt so powerless as this time.

I have taken the time to read 2 complete threads about losing drones in windy conditions before posting here and tried to learn as much as possible on what to do in future situations. After reading the good stories from fellow @TechVoyager and @djiuser_L993ni8 with happy ends (https://forum.dji.com/thread-170653-1-1.html and https://forum.dji.com/thread-122315-1-1.html), I've decided to post mine and ask for help. There are 2 things I'd like to achieve here: find the drone if possible and understand the cause of the accident, to determine if there was any issue on my aircraft.

I have done some investigation myself (with AirData and phantomhelp), my girlfriend and I have tried to reach the point where the Mavic Air was last recorded but couldn't find it after 4 trials, even with the help from a firefighter with 15 years of experience in rappelling / climbing. The place is not easy to reach at all so I don't think anyone found it before we were there. I was in vacation, it was Monday and the mountain/rock was not crowded as in the weekends, almost no people there. I know it must be out there, but would love to have the experts insight on where it should have landed considering battery level (9%), height (approximately 15m from the rock), direction and wind speed.

• My flight was very short, roughly 10min was the time from takeoff with 95% up to 9% battery and by the time I realized I had to come back (high wind alarm was set) I was "only" 500m away, with +60% of battery.
• I was flying from 1360m of altitude, had reached +75m (1435m) with no issue or high wind alarm (so far) and tried to lower it down up to -45.5m (1315m) to try and bring it back to home point, without success. The rock itself covered the signal when the drone was about to land. Do you guys have tried to land on a steep rock (45º?) to see if it sticks to it? I fear it may have slipped downwards.
• The wind @ 1456m (+100m from landing point) should be high but acceptable at 29km/h according to: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/08/12/0900Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/overlay=temp/equirectangular=-46.531,-23.172,3000/loc=-46.531,-23.172
• The attitude of the drone seems to be too low for a high wind situation. The warning "Attitude is too large. Forward/Backward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning" has only been given at 02m23s, 02m39s and 06m21s, although I understand this would not be triggered while in Sports mode.
• I have tried to use the GPS mode, Sport mode, RTH mode (with and without 100% input on right stick) and back to Sport mode again until battery was almost drained.
• What worries me the most is that after checking at Airdata, I have observed 1,538 times the message "Warning: Not Enough Force/ESC Error". Is this normal?
  

I have been 20m next to the aircraft last known position in less than 20min after the "crash" and wind was ok. It was nowhere near as high as 50km/h - there are test videos in youtube showing much higher winds and the MA was fighting but looking "ok", not drifting like mine. I have more information to share if needed but would like to hear from you guys first. Please advise if my logs are working as they should. Thank you in advance!

Please check Log here:
https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/7XPY3QXJ29IN2GHAN562
https://app.airdata.com/share/fcCLqg

You only had 10% battery left and the AC reported - Critically low power. Aircraft is landing.; The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now.

Hiya,

Sorry for your MA loss.

I had a look at your flightlog, i will give my thoughts about what i think did happen.

at 6m15s you did turn you MA almost towards HP (heading home 050, drone hdg 23).
Distance out 638 meters, P-GPS mode, full stick forward. Pitch angle down about 22 degrees.
Distance did not decrease but did increase. Lots of head-wind there.
at 6m24.8s - distance out 644 meters; you switch to Sport. (good decision) 100% stick fwd. Bit more pitch down angles.
at 7m21.2s  -distance out 572 meters; so in Sport mode your MA did just wins against the wind.

You pressed the RTH button on the RC (45%batt level) . In RTH max pitch angles are less in Sport mode.
at 7m21.2s - 572 meters, at 8m18.2 - 636 meters, next periods in time where distance decreased and remains the same at 570meter
Lowering flying heigt too, distance out geting closer to HP

At 9m40.6s you switched back to SPORT, at 511 meters away drom HP. Batt level now 19 %
At 10m30s distance out 427 meters.

Autolanding started at that point. At 10% batt level with this warning " The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now. "
As 10% is the critical batt value, an autolanding started. So the warning is bit weird to read at this point (well, i think its weird)

It is always easy to give comments but if i may ; you lost some distance and time (batt level) in the RTH.
I do not know if your drone had made home, canceling RTH direct seeing distance to home did increase and not decrease.

Hope you can find your MA near the last position [ -23.17162800, -46.53096700 ]

PS the Warning "NotEnoughPower" is seen in more logs, as your MA tried to fight the wind with 100% fwd , it needs all the power to do this.
I have no idea why its in the file as your batt levels looks OKE as in many other files, cell deviation normal etc. mayby other knows the exact meaning of this 'error'.
The only thing i can see is that this error started after of of the cell went dropped 3.7 volts.



Cheers
JJB

Sorry to read that - always plan to return and land with around 20% battery remaining

Hello and good day Scuderia Rimoli. I am sorry to know what happened to your DJI Mavic Air. Since this unfortunate incident happened on said drone. I would recommend you contact our DJI support team to start up a case for the said drone at https://www.dji.com/support?site=brandsite&from=nav . We have the professional team who would do their best to find out the reason of the incident and then the corresponding resolution would be provided. We hope to hear from you as soon as possible for further assistance. Again I am sorry for what happened and thank you for your support.

When Mavic Air is in Rth mode is is pretty slow so wind can effect, its pitch is pretty slight compared to pitch when flying sport mode, however as soon as you push on elevator in Rth OA will turn off and pitch will increase and speed will increase greatly.
But when we look at your log we see negative progress going forward, but I think the ESC warning may have had something to do with this, whether there was some damage to your motors or not is impossible to know, but it looks like motors were not receiving enough power so having the effect of very slow speed.
What could cause this is anybody’s guess, maybe when dji see log they might be able to tell you why this warning kept appearing.
Your craft did land, it may or may not have slipped it’s pretty small and not so heavy so just maybe hung on. Below is where it should be, how you try rescue it is up to you. So good luck with that.
Sync your log try contact a moderator here to see if they can get engineer to look at it, they may throw more light on what happened.

"Do you guys have tried to land on a steep rock (45º?) to see if it sticks to it? I fear it may have slipped downwards."


anything over about 30 and the MA slides, when the MA lands it's a very soft landing and as such there's really no weight on the landing gear as it lands so it just starts to slide of the surface

Thanks to everyone, I appreciate the initial comments. I'd like to respond to a few of them.

#7 anything over about 30 and the MA slides, when the MA lands it's a very soft landing and as such there's really no weight on the landing gear as it lands so it just starts to slide of the surface

That's my worst concern. Because if it had landed below the last GPS location or at least in a 30m radius, I or the firefighter who helped me would have found it. And yes, I have paid him after trying to find it and have offered an additional reward if he finds it later, since he lives closer to this place. He's been there at least 2 more times and did not find it. Does anyone would guess (as you usually do) where the aircraft would have landed based on 9% battery, no inputs due to lost connection and wind speed/direction?

#2 You only had 10% battery left and the AC reported - Critically low power. Aircraft is landing.; The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now.

#4 Sorry to read that - always plan to return and land with around 20% battery remaining

Yes, for sure. If you take a look on my log you will see I had more than 60% of battery at 6 minutes or so, when I decided to turn to the Home Point direction and was literally fighting against the wind for 5 minutes or more! I have tried almost everything and was not flying careless. The "remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now." warning came a lot later at 09m07s, when I was with only 25% battery left and had no choice other than to cancel this since I didn't want to climb from -17m all the way up to +20m again. So it was not a matter of lack of planing, I was surprised by a sudden change on the flight conditions (because I was flying fine at P-GPS with speeds up to 30km/h) and to be honest I never felt my MA so weak and slow as when the ESC errors started.

JJB* Posted at 8-27 02:05
Hiya,

Sorry for your MA loss.

Hello JJB*!
Thank you for your deep analysis, although I am not able yet to read/understand everything from your data, I'm trying to learn as much as possible to become a better pilot.

Distance out 638 meters, P-GPS mode, full stick forward. Pitch angle down about 22 degrees.

Do you believe a pitch angle of 22 degrees to be normal or enough in this situation of negative speed? Should it achieve up to 25 (max in P-GPS) since it was supposed to be full speed against the head wind? I'd like to check if my atttitude angle was too low for this situation or if the ESC error was causing this low speed movement with a lot of drag.

at 6m24.8s - distance out 644 meters; you switch to Sport. (good decision) 100% stick fwd. Bit more pitch down angles.

I'm sorry for not being able to read the chart, what was the pitch angle now in Sport mode? What has been the max pitch angle during the whole flight? I'm not sure if my drone was indeed fighting with all strength against the wind, can you compare my attitude angle with the maximum angle in P-GPS (25º) or Sport mode (35º)?

at 7m21.2s  -distance out 572 meters; so in Sport mode your MA did just wins against the wind.

Although it progressed in Sport, which was positive to my eyes, I was very concerned with battery consumption since I was now at 45% and still 572m away from me. Also I had noticed it was moving sideways and backwards, not in the desired straight line. Although I'm an Engineer, it's impossible to do any kind of calculation during this stressfull moment, you know. I believe I was already judging the flown distance as not enough at this slow rate. Your comment made me think and roughly estimated it took 10% in Sport to move 71m in my direction, which would eventually reach up to 290m from me with 5% left and the autolanding already engaged. Not a happy ending either.

Time / mode / battery / distance to HP
06m28s Sport 55% 644.7m
07m23s Sport 45% 573.6m (+1min -10% -71m)
10m23s Sport 15% 360.3m (+3min -30% -213m)
11m23s Sport 05% 289.2m (+1min -10% -71m)

Anyway, maybe that's why I pressed RTH to try and so something different or to wait for the wind to go down. But after getting to the last point using Find my Drone I was so mad because if the MA had landed a few 20 or 30m closer to me, it would have been much easier to retrive the aircraft and the rock angle was not that high. Something I would not have imagined because I thought it was impossible to reach that point in the steep rock. But the fact is it was not that hard to get as much as 20-30m close to the crash site. Further than that was really difficult to go by myself, although I've tried with a rope and some hope.

PS the Warning "NotEnoughPower" is seen in more logs, as your MA tried to fight the wind with 100% fwd , it needs all the power to do this. I have no idea why its in the file as your batt levels looks OKE as in many other files, cell deviation normal etc. mayby other knows the exact meaning of this 'error'.

Is it possible to know how many of my ESCs were in error? I have searched a lot for these keywords and have seen some people reporting 50 or 100 times this repeated error, maybe 200. But 1,500 times has scared me a lot when I finally uploaded the log to Airdata. I'll wait for someone knowledgable to comment on that.



Thank you very much, guys.

DJI Stephen Posted at 8-27 08:42
Hello and good day Scuderia Rimoli. I am sorry to know what happened to your DJI Mavic Air. Since this unfortunate incident happened on said drone. I would recommend you contact our DJI support team to start up a case for the said drone at https://www.dji.com/support?site=brandsite&from=nav . We have the professional team who would do their best to find out the reason of the incident and then the corresponding resolution would be provided. We hope to hear from you as soon as possible for further assistance. Again I am sorry for what happened and thank you for your support.

Hello @DJI Stephen, thank you for your tips!

Actually I have already opened my case, do you want me to send a PM with the case#? We have already exchanged a couple of e-mails and lastly I have sent a long message with all the evidences I could gather from my side and really would like to have an engineer to look at it. I am terribly sad with this lost and would appreciate very much if anyone can help me somehow.

#6 But when we look at your log we see negative progress going forward, but I think the ESC warning may have had something to do with this, whether there was some damage to your motors or not is impossible to know, but it looks like motors were not receiving enough power so having the effect of very slow speed.

@hallmark007, I'd love to know if this is the case here. Is there any other expert you would suggest to join this discussion?

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-27 19:43
Hello JJB*!
Thank you for your deep analysis, although I am not able yet to read/understand everything from your data, I'm trying to learn as much as possible to become a better pilot.

Hi Scuderia,

your first bold question.

In theory 25 degrees pitch down the maximum in P-GPS.
Your average pitch down this part of the flight approx was 22 new 24 *.
My guess is that wind speed variations will have this effect on the pitch down value.
It will never be (my opinion) a rock steady 25 degrees pitch down, well mayby in a wind tunnel with fixed speed and wind direction.

Edit * did a MSexcel average calculation of 100% pitch down period ; 24 degrees average.

Your second bold question
Pitch angle down never reached the 35 degrees, but little more down than in P-GPS but not much.
Why i did not reached 35 ?  mayby because of the NotEnoughPower errors. (seems logical, more pitch down = more trust = more power needed = not 'available')

Your third bold question
True, in SPORT mode with that groundspeed and battery level/usage of power, HP thus Drone was too far away.

More detailed info about ESCs to be find in DAT file, but as there are only (afaik) values in there, sometimes hard for the correct intepretation. Guess the aft motors needs more power that the front ones.

I have see many files (including my drones) with few or more NotEnoughPower errors, next flights all OKE, no damage to engines ect. My idea that this msg is only seen when drone is flying with maximum power requested, temperature and condtion of battery is important too, as the batt must deliver high amps.
Bear in mind that this error "NotEnoughPower" is not shown in the app, so in my logic that means that DJI does not think its so important to inform the user about this.

Calculating and extrapolation the last data of the autolanding : touch down spot = orange marking (ofcourse approx!)

And your remark about making decisions during this flight, is so true!! When the unexpected pops up and stress enters our brains, thinking capacity will reduce by high numbers.Only training and repeating situations will improve the capability to think 'normally'.

PS | Green = P-GPS | Purple = GoHome | ORANGE = Sport | Numbers = * 10 = batt level |

cheers
JJB

Man, so sorry to hear about this.  I get really wary of my Mavic Air when the winds pick up.

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-27 20:02
Hello @DJI Stephen, thank you for your tips!

Actually I have already opened my case, do you want me to send a PM with the case#? We have already exchanged a couple of e-mails and lastly I have sent a long message with all the evidences I could gather from my side and really would like to have an engineer to look at it. I am terribly sad with this lost and would appreciate very much if anyone can help me somehow.

I think if you can get msinger to look at your log, he will and is much better equipped to give you missing answers, he sometimes frequent’s this forum, but you will find I’d easier to track him down on Mavic pilots forum .

He doesn’t just apply a cut and paste from phantom help, which is all your really getting here, the rest is just surmising, his review will be much more based on nohow and facts.

There is also Bud Walker who has huge experience reading logs, you will also find him on Mavic pilots .

And of course dji who will only confer with you in private .

I wish you luck .

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-27 19:43
Hello JJB*!
Thank you for your deep analysis, although I am not able yet to read/understand everything from your data, I'm trying to learn as much as possible to become a better pilot.

Hi Scuderia,

More data in a DAT file (on your mobile device) in the submap under Flightrecord called MCDatFlightrecords. (on android)
Look for FLY077.DAT, if you like post a link on here for that file.

cheers
JJB

JJB* Posted at 8-28 07:22
Hi Scuderia,

More data in a DAT file (on your mobile device) in the submap under Flightrecord called MCDatFlightrecords. (on android)

Hi JJB, please see the 5Mb file here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-NWYsVuIZXrlf_gO5uzVbzRXi8c0TBZj/view?usp=drivesdk

Thank you for the help so far.

Hey there! Sorry for your loss. I am here to read others opinions and facts about mavic Air. I also have one and I am very happy with it.

I would guess, by reading what you said, that the drone had some problems. Esc error means that the drone had some problem. I would advise to ask DJI for support. If you are in warranty they may help with another drone, even if you lost yours.

I would not imagine any kind of wind that would make a mavic air not coming back! She stayed there, drifting verry little, for a long time.

If there was a landing of 45 degree steep rock, it definitely slides down. The propellers hit the rock for sure and the drone starts tumbling down.

twilight Posted at 8-28 13:32
Hey there! Sorry for your loss. I am here to read others opinions and facts about mavic Air. I also have one and I am very happy with it.

I would guess, by reading what you said, that the drone had some problems. Esc error means that the drone had some problem. I would advise to ask DJI for support. If you are in warranty they may help with another drone, even if you lost yours.

Hello There.

DJI support is not willing to cover this loss under warranty or give me another aircraft for free. They don't trust in Airdata UAV website or see this warning as an error or aircraft problem. They don't trust on the earth.nullschool.net website or the calculated wind speed of 29km/h. The lack of warning and lack of attitude from the aircraft does not seem to be a problem to DJI support. I am speechless and totally lost. My drone is still missing.

Have you sent them the logs? They should calculate themselves the wind speed. ESC error means nothing to them? Brr, sorry man! Hope you could still find the drone and may be able to prove that you did nothing wrong. Maybe try to escalate the case to a superior. There are many people working at DJI. Some understand stuff, others don't!

Do you have video cache activated? Were you filming? That is, in my opinion, another big error from DJI: if you have video cache activated, it is not "cached" only if you record the scene. If you are walking around making pictures, nothing gets saved in the cached video folder

I have dji care bought for my MA, but in your case, this would not help at all, because you actually need to bring back to them the "bad" drone.

I have seen, nevertheless, on this forum, a person who had his drone changed by dji for free, in warranty, because it was a malfunction of the drone. He's drone went in a river, and never had found her again. He had the video cache. He also sent the logs. I guess it was in America, maybe this was better for him.

LE: i watched again your stick movement and the position of the drone. In my opinion, that drone should be replaced in warranty. It was having a bad day, and you have been unfortunate that this happened exactly there... I wonder if you pushed it in a lateral direction, what would have happened. Or even "with the wind" in the opossite direction of "home".

BTW: i have never seen in my mavic air the error "not enough force". Never.

I only saw "max motor speed reached". What's curious is that airdata does not reveal anything in the logs about it. I just did a test and had 4 "max motor speed" warnings on the dji app. I don't know why this is not logged.

Later Edit: I have downloaded latest version of FRAP. Indeed, there are errors of "not enough force". Perhaps this translates in "max motor reached" on the dji app (iphone). Still, no "esc error" as it seems to be the problem here

twilight Posted at 8-30 01:21
Have you sent them the logs? They should calculate themselves the wind speed. ESC error means nothing to them? Brr, sorry man! Hope you could still find the drone and may be able to prove that you did nothing wrong. Maybe try to escalate the case to a superior. There are many people working at DJI. Some understand stuff, others don't!

Do you have video cache activated? Were you filming? That is, in my opinion, another big error from DJI: if you have video cache activated, it is not "cached" only if you record the scene. If you are walking around making pictures, nothing gets saved in the cached video folder

I've seen many cases where a drone was replaced under warranty, but it's highly unlikely this will be one of them, because as DJI has already figured out, the loss was due to pilot error.

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-28 08:53
Hi JJB, please see the 5Mb file here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-NWYsVuIZXrlf_gO5uzVbzRXi8c0TBZj/view?usp=drivesdk

Had a look, all looks normal, no errors for "NotEnoughPower".
Will email you the file.

cheers
JJB

twilight Posted at 8-30 01:21
Have you sent them the logs? They should calculate themselves the wind speed. ESC error means nothing to them? Brr, sorry man! Hope you could still find the drone and may be able to prove that you did nothing wrong. Maybe try to escalate the case to a superior. There are many people working at DJI. Some understand stuff, others don't!

Do you have video cache activated? Were you filming? That is, in my opinion, another big error from DJI: if you have video cache activated, it is not "cached" only if you record the scene. If you are walking around making pictures, nothing gets saved in the cached video folder

Tip, always fly with a screen recorder active. If your device can handle that, i use DU recorder for Android.

Good fun to see what was showing on the app while your eyes did watch your craft.
I was surprised how much i missed sometimes (in the beginning of drone flying)

cheers
JJB

Sorry your drone went down and I hope you're able to find it.

In a case like this, I wonder if it would have made sense to try to roll to the left or right and see if you could get out of the wind?  It looks like you mostly just tried to push ahead in a straight line toward HP but perhaps you were in a strong riptide of wind.  If you're swimming and you're caught in a riptide that's taking you away from the shore, they always tell you to swim to the side, not try to fight it.  Once you're out of the current, you can swim ashore.  Perhaps a similar approach would have worked here.

I know - hindsight...

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-28 08:53
Hi JJB, please see the 5Mb file here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-NWYsVuIZXrlf_gO5uzVbzRXi8c0TBZj/view?usp=drivesdk

I looked some at FLY077.DAT. It has about 12 secs more data after the .txt quit recording. It appears that you were applying full elevator for some of those extra 12 secs and the MA moved a bit from the last recorded position in the .txt. The last recorded position in the .DAT was Lat:-23.171631°, Long:-46.530931°. That's 4 meters past the last .txt position at a bearing of 100°. The MA still was above the ultrasonic detection height but there were no control inputs so there is a good chance that's where it landed. It was still descending at that point.

I'd show you the Google Earth image but it's so dark there isn't much to see.

Hi, On behalf of DJI I extend my sincere apologies for the issues that you have experienced with us. We already forwarded this issue to the Designated Team for them to respond to your issue via email or phone as soon as possible. Rest assured that this will be sorted out sooner and with ease. Appreciate your support and understanding.

DJI Diana Posted at 8-31 09:18
Hi, On behalf of DJI I extend my sincere apologies for the issues that you have experienced with us. We already forwarded this issue to the Designated Team for them to respond to your issue via email or phone as soon as possible. Rest assured that this will be sorted out sooner and with ease. Appreciate your support and understanding.

Hello Dear Diana, thank you for taking your time to repond. I am curious to know what exactly is your relationship with DJI and if you have direct contact with the person that is dealing with my open case. I have to be honest that the last messages from DJI were not very promising but your message makes me think I still have a chance. Can you please clarify if you agree that something was wrong with my aircraft? Please share as much information as possible and I am willing to share any information you might need through PM also, thank you in advance!

Gimpy Posted at 8-30 04:28
I've seen many cases where a drone was replaced under warranty, but it's highly unlikely this will be one of them, because as DJI has already figured out, the loss was due to pilot error.

With all due respect for your opinion, would you please and kindly clarify why you believe this loss was due to pilot error and what error was that? I'm not worried with my pride here, just trying to recover my aircraft which makes me really sad. I am thinking about this each and everyday and trying to think on what I could do differently. There are a couple of things like using a GPS locator for sure.

Can you give this site to satellite view its terrain & baselined meteorological conditions seasonal wise?

Can you refer this location for satellite view of its terrain & baselined meteorological conditions seasonal wise?

cutis Posted at 8-31 12:55
Can you refer this location for satellite view of its terrain & baselined meteorological conditions seasonal wise?

I am sorry, I don't understand your question.

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-31 10:04
Hello Dear Diana, thank you for taking your time to repond. I am curious to know what exactly is your relationship with DJI and if you have direct contact with the person that is dealing with my open case. I have to be honest that the last messages from DJI were not very promising but your message makes me think I still have a chance. Can you please clarify if you agree that something was wrong with my aircraft? Please share as much information as possible and I am willing to share any information you might need through PM also, thank you in advance!

Hi, we sent you a PM. Please check later. Thank you.

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-31 13:33
I am sorry, I don't understand your question.

Check the web weather pattern this location.
It will evidence seasonal trending for the incident timestamp.
It is normal to be aware of the trending seasonal conditions esp if adverse.
20/20 hindsight

Let us know the info, i guess nothing is secret!

twilight Posted at 9-1 12:50
Let us know the info, i guess nothing is secret!

Nothing has happened or changed yet. DJI Diana has informed this case has been forwarded to the management to further check, and that they would review it and contact me during working time, in 24-48 hours from Monday (Sep 2nd). I'm patiently waiting for a call.

Scuderia Rimoli Posted at 8-31 10:14
With all due respect for your opinion, would you please and kindly clarify why you believe this loss was due to pilot error and what error was that? I'm not worried with my pride here, just trying to recover my aircraft which makes me really sad. I am thinking about this each and everyday and trying to think on what I could do differently. There are a couple of things like using a GPS locator for sure.

Because I don't see any evidence of a malfunction that would have affected the outcome but I do see a number of mistakes you made that did contribute to what happened. I believe those mistakes were already pointed out previously, but I can elaborate on them if you'd really like. In the meantime, please understand that I take no pleasure in what happened to you. I'm genuinely sorry that you lost your drone, but I think it's counterproductive to suggest that this was anything other than pilot error and will be surprised if DJI decides otherwise.

Any news? Have you found your drone? Have you managed something with dji?

twilight Posted at 9-21 02:54
Any news? Have you found your drone? Have you managed something with dji?

Presumably not. We continued the conversation via Personal Message (his choice), and he still refuses to believe that high winds were present. I doubt he'd care any longer if he had gotten a free replacement from DJI.

Hello twilight, my apologies but I have been working a lot lately. No big news, apart from:

1) DJI is refusing to receive any further evidence from my side showing that the wind might have been below the max spec of the drone. There was wind, no doubt about that, but I have real reasons to believe its speed was nowhere near this crazy wind like seen below:

(gusts of 35mph / 56km/h)
(30mph / 50km/h)
(gusts up to 30mph / 50km/h)

Just for comparison, I would never fly in such conditions but even though the wind is above permitted the drone was not drifting that much in these videos.

2) DJI has not presented any evidence showing that the wind was higher than specified. Still, they refuse to cover my loss under guarantee. Of course they say the wind was "strong" and "high" (which does not mean anything if you are allowed to fly up to certain wind speed) but they have clearly stated that it is not possible to calculate the wind speed by the log data alone. The attitude angle has been below the maximum tilt angle according to specs, so that's one thing that concerns me (could indicate lack of power or inability to fight the wind) but they don't say anything about that.

No, the drone was not found even though a number of searches have been taken, the site is really difficult to access also.

Gimpy, you presume a lot, but the fact is you were not at the crash site. I'm allowed to say the wind was not that high and I'm not ashamed to believe in that. You cannot say I wouldn't take care of the aircraft because you don't know me. This is just what you think and I'm open to receive evidence from any side if there are any.