Anyone else having any issues gaining altitude or covering a short amount of distance? I am able to get my drone up to about 220-285ft, right near me, and it loses a connection (sometimes at 220, sometimes at 280). If I try to fly further out, I can only about to get about 350 feet away before it loses signal that way too. It doesn't just lose video transmission, it straight up loses connection sometimes, which is terrifying. Luckily I was able to connect before it landed in a random spot.

I do live in the city, and my first flight up to 280 feet i blamed on being near buildings with wifi. However, i have seen videos where people take their drones over the city and not have issues anywhere near where I am. Additionally, I took my drone to a wide open park, next to a river, no wifi around us, and still lost connection. This time, over a river. Which would have sucked.

Just wanted to see if anyone has issues like this, or if its something I am doing wrong. I have my antennas pointed based off the user guide.

YES SAME PROBLEM HERE....GET IT REPLACED ASAP

If your flying straight up, you need to have your antennas lying flat IE parallel to the craft , and out at approx 90 degrees , if you don’t have them at correct angle you may lose signal . Also if you lose signal Rth will kick in .

How do you point you antennas?   

S-e-ven Posted at 11-24 05:37
How do you point you antennas?   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7M9JtfVwQE

The tutorial also makes the point that, even when you position the Antennae on the controller correctly, the drone's Antenna's performance is severely degraded when the drone is directly above you.  That certainly explains the behaviour I noticed with my P3A.

hallmark007 Posted at 11-24 05:31
If your flying straight up, you need to have your antennas lying flat IE parallel to the craft , and out at approx 90 degrees , if you don’t have them at correct angle you may lose signal . Also if you lose signal Rth will kick in .

That is what I thought, but I got a "remote controller signal lost", which then said it would land in place instead of RTH. Luckily I regained connection.

dronego Posted at 11-24 12:11
That is what I thought, but I got a "remote controller signal lost", which then said it would land in place instead of RTH. Luckily I regained connection.

The reason it said it would land, might have been because you were not far enough from homepoint .

marktottymy Posted at 11-24 05:17
YES SAME PROBLEM HERE....GET IT REPLACED ASAP

Did you get your replacement? Is it working better? I am worried that this issue might be prolific. I bought it from the Apple store (only ones with combo in stock) and luckily they have an extended return policy right now, so I might be able to wait it out a bit if its a drone-wide issue, though I have seen instances of people flying their drones [even out of line of sight] with plenty of interference and no issues. Maybe its just the early production run. Hopefully DJI will exchange.

hallmark007 Posted at 11-24 12:16
The reason it said it would land, might have been because you were not far enough from homepoint .

[view_image]

Ah, that could be it. The first time I got the error I was only 17 feet away from the home point. Higher than twenty meters, but I misunderstood what that 20m meant. Very interesting. I think when I flew it 300ft out over the river, and got a disconnect error, I was just panicking thinking about the last time that happened. Good to know! Thank you.

dronego Posted at 11-24 12:11
That is what I thought, but I got a "remote controller signal lost", which then said it would land in place instead of RTH. Luckily I regained connection.

Landing in place means, you have been  2++ft up, but inside max. 20 m radius around your HP, so that is nothing (really) to worry about.
It will just come done somewhere around where you started

Knapweed Posted at 11-24 10:52
The tutorial also makes the point that, even when you position the Antennae on the controller correctly, the drone's Antenna's performance is severely degraded when the drone is directly above you.  That certainly explains the behaviour I noticed with my P3A.

Off course it can always have connection losses in wifi.
But it is to assume that there is the same RC system, like at Spark and Air, is in use
Just without the 2.4 Ghz Band on an FCC Mini.
That should get you up higher, close to max height
(500m on Spark was it in a test, direct over my head)

And depending on the height, also close to the max spec distance, if flying it away from you.

If you can't  do better heights and distances, by changing to a couple of different flightspots, I'd suggest to let DJI check on the bird

S-e-ven Posted at 11-24 19:12
Off course it can always have connection losses in wifi.
But it is to assume that there is the same RC system, like at Spark and Air, is in use
Just without the 2.4 Ghz Band on an FCC Mini.

There are no assumptions being made. That is what the tutorial said, I was merely pointing it out. 1:08 in the video.

The tutorial is talking about the relative positions of the antennae on the controller and drone, i.e. positioning the controller antennae correctly is no guarantee of a good signal if the drone is directly above you as its antenna is 'presumably' vertical, not horizontal.

I have no problem with heights and distances, I was just joining in the conversation.

Knapweed Posted at 11-24 21:44
There are no assumptions being made. That is what the tutorial said, I was merely pointing it out. 1:08 in the video.

The tutorial is talking about the relative positions of the antennae on the controller and drone, i.e. positioning the controller antennae correctly is no guarantee of a good signal if the drone is directly above you as its antenna is 'presumably' vertical, not horizontal.

It’s good to know the distance issue isn’t prolific. I do assume that with the amount of drones they make, there are always going to be a few that just don’t work as they should. Thinking of just returning it to the store I got it and trying again!

dronego Posted at 11-25 10:01
It’s good to know the distance issue isn’t prolific. I do assume that with the amount of drones they make, there are always going to be a few that just don’t work as they should. Thinking of just returning it to the store I got it and trying again!

Just a thought, and please don't think I'm just pointing out the obvious, I make 'obvious' mistakes all the time, but have you double-checked the 'Safety' tab in settings to make sure your Mini isn't restricted to height and distance?

Knapweed Posted at 11-25 11:27
Just a thought, and please don't think I'm just pointing out the obvious, I make 'obvious' mistakes all the time, but have you double-checked the 'Safety' tab in settings to make sure your Mini isn't restricted to height and distance?

Hey sometimes people need the obvious things pointed out! No worries. I did check that though. I am leaning towards a drone issue. We will see with the new one.

dronego Posted at 11-25 18:35
Hey sometimes people need the obvious things pointed out! No worries. I did check that though. I am leaning towards a drone issue. We will see with the new one.

Good luck!

Hi, I'm from Malaysia. Me and some Malaysian Owners are experiencing this issue as well. I lost signal at just 80 m vertically above my head.

fans6827b2f5 Posted at 1-4 19:30
Hi, I'm from Malaysia. Me and some Malaysian Owners are experiencing this issue as well. I lost signal at just 80 m vertically above my head.

That's completely normal.
When you fly straight up it is impossible to maintain a good signal.
Straight above you is always the worst possible antenna geometry.

i think the problem is the antenna position or direction  on the aircraft... i have no issue like this on the spark, although spark has a simpler internal antenna (just like a sticker) but it can receive well any signal form vertical or horizontal...
maybe, just maybe... is we can change the stock antenna with another wifi antenna like spark have, it will be better...  

while mini mavic antennas are like this

it has smaller surface than spark...

Hi all, i have a little test on my mavic mini... simple mod so u all can test it... maybe work for u too...

I removed the antenna from its place and placed it on the arm horizontally...
with that configuration i have two signal poles (horizontal and vertical)...
so the remote antenna should also have two poles, so I just lift one antenna up and the other stays in place....
and the results can be seen below ...

this my last test... reach more than 312m and the signal still strong...

mwilmar Posted at 2-13 20:27
[view_image]
this my last test... reach more than 312m and the signal still strong...

You are a brave man for doing surgery on your mini haha. In my suburb, I got 350m in height til the signal cut off and RTH got triggered. That was with the antenna flat faces pointing up. No mod required.

mwilmar Posted at 2-13 18:30
Hi all, i have a little test on my mavic mini... simple mod so u all can test it... maybe work for u too...
[view_image]
I removed the antenna from its place and placed it on the arm horizontally...

It appears that your first photo is in an area with very tall buildings. The second photo does not show those. Any possibility that could be a major factor in the limited range? . In any case, good job with your investigation.

Same here . Mine is worse. only 150meter, then rc disconnect.

GaryDoug Posted at 2-13 21:03
It appears that your first photo is in an area with very tall buildings. The second photo does not show those. Any possibility that could be a major factor in the limited range? . In any case, good job with your investigation.

i have test on both area... and have the same result but i didn't capture it

mwilmar Posted at 2-14 06:05
i have test on both area... and have the same result but i didn't capture it

maybe next flight i will take the screen shoot... but I'm not encourage u all to do the same mod... just as a reference

I've seen some report suggesting different antennas have different purposes, one should be dedicated to the video feedback, but also in the CE model one might be doing the 2.4 GHz freq. and the other 5.8 GHz.

It's a good idea but a lucky bet without more in-depth testing.

I just had mine up at around 250ft and it lost signal. I DID have it directly above me so maybe that was the problem.

Then again, for my purposes, that's plenty high.

Cheers!
=C=

m80116 Posted at 2-14 10:23
I've seen some report suggesting different antennas have different purposes, one should be dedicated to the video feedback, but also in the CE model one might be doing the 2.4 GHz freq. and the other 5.8 GHz.

It's a good idea but a lucky bet without more in-depth testing.

i think it just a simple diversity antenna with one wifi ch comm, all control and video feed in it... it more make sense for this kind of communication rather than one ch for video and other ch for control...

maybe this article can explain more than me...
https://medium.com/@istumbler/this-one-weird-trick-to-improve-your-wi-fi-reception-10137f4c3a89

again, it all depend with what we need... fly more  far ahead or not too far but cover all angle...
for me, i need fly more than 150m so i pick this mod... for else maybe need fly far far away so they need no mod for it...

OK... this is why...
Mine is CE version, model MT1SD25 with only <19 dBm on 2,4GHz or about 80mW transmit power...
while FCC version, model MT1SS5 have <30 dBm on 5.8 GHz or about 1000mW transmit power...
It's a different model, with different power booster... not event FCC hack can do more than 80mW for CE model...