I posted a few weeks ago about the fact that my Mini starts in Manual Transmission mode if not reset every time.

So the story goes as this:

I bought a 2nd Mini as a gift to my best friend, wrapped it and here we are in his 3d flight, pre flight check done, compass calibration done, etc.
We noticed that the Transmission mode was retaining the previous setup in Manual mode (5.8Ghz) and because we are flying in a hill just outside the city, we decided to switch back to Auto and let the Mini pick a suitable channel. It chose a channel in the 2.4Ghz frequency with very low interference (this fact is very important for later).



So far so good. However, 300+ meters away, we get a weak signal and a brief loss of transmission. Winds are quite strong (shouldn’t be flying but he was very excited with his new toy) so after getting a few warnings at 50m high we decided that enough is enough and we called it a day while the battery was plenty and tried to return back while in Sport Mode. We lowered the drone even more to fight the gusts and while everything was seemingly ok, we suddenly experienced a total loss of GPS signal (note that we had a lock on 14-16 satellites previously). No map, no screen, RTH obviously not functioning properly, remote beeping like crazy and repeating a message “landing, landing”...

As you can imagine, we freaked out as in all these years, I never had a fly away other than the typical RC connection issues with the Spark and Mini within the city center. We packed up swiftly while I kept pushing up intermittently to avoid landing on the highway or a roof as I positively had guessed that with the high winds and without a GPS lock, the Mini will drift away towards the outskirts of the city... we started running towards the last known direction as we were flying within line of sight (I was the spotter) and miraculously the drone briefly reconnected.
While still out of breath, we did managed to get it back in one piece and everything ended with a BIG scare.

The one thing that got me by surprise is that the automatically picked 2.4Ghz channel was now totally red...

In our defense, my buddy was using his Huawei phone and the screen is quite dim in bright light so I couldn’t distinguish any pop-up messages on his screen besides the ones he could recognize and repeat to me.

I can only speculate that because we flew over a stadium, the iron reinforced cement structure caused some interference with the GPS, OR the hill and it’s surroundings is full of iron deposits, otherwise I cannot explain it...

Lessons learned:

1. Pick a frequency manually!
2. High winds are a no go (check UAV app). Knew that, never flew before in those conditions. Will never do it again.
3. Fly within VLOS and / or with a spotter (this saved the Mini as I knew at all times where to point the antennas)
4. Get DJI Care Refresh or any other insurance. S...t happens!
5. This one is tricky but try to learn about any peculiarities of the area you’re flying like geological deposits, electric stations nearby, buildings, etc
6. Don’t panic and walk / run towards the drone in case it reconnects

Hope some of you can learn from our mistakes!

I posted a few weeks ago about the fact that my Mini starts in Manual Transmission mode if not reset every time.

So the story goes as this:

I bought a 2nd Mini as a gift to my best friend, wrapped it and here we are in his 3d flight, pre flight check done, compass calibration done, etc.
We noticed that the Transmission mode was retaining the previous setup in Manual mode (5.8Ghz) and because we are flying in a hill just outside the city, we decided to switch back to Auto and let the Mini pick a suitable channel. It chose a channel in the 2.4Ghz frequency with very low interference (this fact is very important for later).



So far so good. However, 300+ meters away, we get a weak signal and a brief loss of transmission. Winds are quite strong (shouldn’t be flying but he was very excited with his new toy) so after getting a few warnings at 50m high we decided that enough is enough and we called it a day while the battery was plenty and tried to return back while in Sport Mode. We lowered the drone even more to fight the gusts and while everything was seemingly ok, we suddenly experienced a total loss of GPS signal (note that we had a lock on 14-16 satellites previously). No map, no screen, RTH obviously not functioning properly, remote beeping like crazy and repeating a message “landing, landing”...

As you can imagine, we freaked out as in all these years, I never had a fly away other than the typical RC connection issues with the Spark and Mini within the city center. We packed up swiftly while I kept pushing up intermittently to avoid landing on the highway or a roof as I positively had guessed that with the high winds and without a GPS lock, the Mini will drift away towards the outskirts of the city... we started running towards the last known direction as we were flying within line of sight (I was the spotter) and miraculously the drone briefly reconnected.
While still out of breath, we did managed to get it back in one piece and everything ended with a BIG scare.

The one thing that got me by surprise is that the automatically picked 2.4Ghz channel was now totally red...

In our defense, my buddy was using his Huawei phone and the screen is quite dim in bright light so I couldn’t distinguish any pop-up messages on his screen besides the ones he could recognize and repeat to me.

I can only speculate that because we flew over a stadium, the iron reinforced cement structure caused some interference with the GPS, OR the hill and it’s surroundings is full of iron deposits, otherwise I cannot explain it...

Lessons learned:

1. Pick a frequency manually!
2. High winds are a no go (check UAV app). Knew that, never flew before in those conditions. Will never do it again.
3. Fly within VLOS and / or with a spotter (this saved the Mini as I knew at all times where to point the antennas)
4. Get DJI Care Refresh or any other insurance. S...t happens!
5. This one is tricky but try to learn about any peculiarities of the area you’re flying like geological deposits, electric stations nearby, buildings, etc
6. Don’t panic and walk / run towards the drone in case it reconnects

Hope some of you can learn from our mistakes!