My Air 2S crashed in the river when all of a sudden, 60 seconds of rain appeared out of nowhere with a wind gust that blew the glasses off my face and sent the drone into the river.  I nearly lost my glasses to the river as well.

As bad as that was, when I got home, I looked in the DJI fly app to see what happened. It showed  only a 1 second flight but the actual flight was 10 minutes.  I clicked on the flight and it eventually loaded 10 minutes of detail:




I have a screen shot that 253 flights, 197 total miles.

So, I saw an "upload all" link so I figured I'd upload everything to my account for my DJI Refresh claim.  It aborted so I did it again, then it seemed to have succeeded.

I went into Apple's File App because I remembered you can upload the flight to 3rd party services to get a great deal of detail.

I noticed the date of the last flight records entry was the current time (which made me nerveous since I figured it should have been hours earlier).

Next thing I know when I switch back into the DJI app, it wiped all my flight entries showing zero flights.

There's still 278 items in my FlightRecords subfolder for DJI Fly on Apple Files for my iphone.

At this point, I don't want to touch anything for risk of losing the record of this flight.

With all that said:

• Does my DJI Refresh for my 6 month old Air 2S cover wind causing a crash into the river resulting in a lost drone?
• I see on DJI's website that if research will be required, don't submit an express claim and wait for customer service on Monday.  Any ideas what to expect or any tips for successful resolution?
• Any way to recover the 253 flight entries into the DJI app ?  (not essential, but I hate starting back from zero)
• Any other thoughts or comments very much welcome,
  

Thanks,
Mike

If you want to know what happened, the recorded flight data is the first place to start looking.
Unless you've deleted it the flight record should still be on your phone or tablet.

To get to your flight data, go to: https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
... where you'll find instructions to upload the data to that site and it will give a report
For help interpreting the data you can post a link for the report here.
Or just post the .txt file here.

Wow, thanks @Labroides , that was much easier than I envisioned.

Any idea what happened?

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/AP8X7IGI501M6709RXP1/

QUESTION:  Does DJI Refresh not cover me if it crashes in a river and I can't retrieve it?

Mike90210 Posted at 10-16 17:35
Wow, thanks @Labroides , that was much easier than I envisioned.

Any idea what happened?

At 10:31, the drone was hovering at 119 ft.
Despite no joystick input, the drone is making about 3 mph and at 10:35.3 it's making 25mph with no joystick input.
That indicates a very strong wind gust, possibly in the order of 50 mph.

A strong wind gust, faster than the drone's wind resistance, should only move the drone horizontally.
But at 10:35.7 the data shows you pulling the left stick hard down and holding it down.
This is what sent the drone into the river.

Thanks @Labroides.  

It really did feel like 50 mph winds - it was crazy.  I couldn't see: my glasses blew off.  I was attempting to lower it because I knew that winds would be worse higher up.  

Sounds like I over-corrected.

Does that mean no DJI Refresh because it's at the bottom of the river?

The Schuylkill river is a tidal river, with strong undercurrents and us too dirty for swimming or fishing.   The odds of recovery is ZERO.

BTW, which column indicates me pulling the left stick down and holding it down?

Mike90210 Posted at 10-16 18:16
BTW, which column indicates me pulling the left stick down and holding it down?

Column BT in the CSV file ... or you can see a graphic representation of the joystick input in the lower left of the map window in the Phantomhelp log viewer.
Highlight any line of data and it shows the stick positions.

Hi, thank you for reaching out. We're sorry for the unpleasant experience. In this kind of situation, I'm afraid that you may consider sending the unit in for a proper diagnosis. You can contact our support team to start up a ticket at https://www.dji.com/support. Thank you for your understanding and support.

Hi Mike,

Trying to understand part of your flight, so a question

Second TimeLapse your drone was flying backwards with no RC inputs and low values on drone pitch and roll attitude.

A free style TimeLapse  with no inputs and drifting on the wind ?
In the log no warnings about strong winds, so why did it moved in TimeLapse with 0.9 m/s and in the last part it moved with 14 m/s ?  
cheers
JJB

First, @JJB: it's very kind of you to take the time to look into my flight.  I must say folks here #ROCK !!!

I was doing a waypoint hyperlapse, trying to capture the highway traffic and clouds from the approaching thunderstorm.

When the 50 mph wind gust happened, blowing my glasses off my face, it left me completely disoriented, unable to see.

I did manage to hit the big red stop button on the hyperlapse.

My failing during the chaos was trying to reverse in sport mode while trying to lower my altitude to get out of the wind.

Obviously, you can drop 100 feet in 4 seconds in sport mode - I FEEL SO DUMB.

In retrospect, had I set the return to home altitude to 100 feet and thought about the return to home feature, that would have been much better, allowing me to find the glasses on the ground and do the final landing manually.

Because I knew I had such a short time before the storm hit, I didn't take the time to come up with a contingency plan in case things went bad.

Because I fly in the city, I always keep return-to-home altitude at 397 feet.  So, even if I thought to lower it to 100 feet for this over-river shoot, I probably would have forgotten to change it back since I don't set it each flight like I know I should.

BTW, what tool did you use to create those fancy graphs - so cool !!!

-Mike


-Mike

Mike90210 Posted at 10-17 04:19
First, @JJB: it's very kind of you to take the time to look into my flight.  I must say folks here #ROCK !!!

I was doing a waypoint hyperlapse, trying to capture the highway traffic and clouds from the approaching thunderstorm.

Hi Mike,

a waypoint hyperlapse, ok....but your drone was flying backwards, is that possible to fly a waypoint hyperlapse backwards?  have to try that out myself.

In sport mode descent can be really fast, see this > https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=251070

Thanks for the thumbs up for the charts, i use my own analysis tool called FRAP.
And in FRAP many many options and charts to make a flight 'visual' and better to understand.

cheers
JJB

You should be really proud of FRAP - that's super cool !!!

-Mike