Hi, I lost my drone (Mini SE) in the woods this evening, searched until sunset with a friend but couldn't found it. It fell somewhere in the border of pine trees, where there was a lot of wild growth nearby, making searching harder, and there was a creek running close by. As the drone went off, I can still see the camera facing upwards somewhere. I searched on the GPS marking, but terrain conditions making a small object like that very hard to spot. I will search again tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, I browsed this forum, and saw similar crash report, where it was directed to https://repair.dji.com/repair/index. But this isn't about repair, is it?


I wonder if there are any general tips for those who faced similar situation, what tools to search with, etc.

I will update tomorrow's search result here. Hope for the best. Rainy season and all that, the sky's clear tonight tough.

Had same thing happen yesterday.  Got "weak transmit signal.  Tried to increas alt. and pressed come home button.  That failed and auto return failed.  it went about a mile in wrong direction before coming down in woods.

By the way, I get a "Not authorized to post new thread message"  How do I fix that?  Can't even figure out how to message administrator.

Hello there djiandme. I am sorry to read and to know what happened to your DJI Mini SE and thank you for reaching out. Since this unfortunate event happened and you have lost your DJI drone. It would best for you to contact our DJI Support Team at https://www.dji.com/support?site=brandsite&from=nav for further assistance with regards to this matter. We will do there best to help you and give out the best resolution for the said issue. Again, I am sorry and thank you.

In the Fly app,  go to Profile -> right hand menu,  Find My Drone.   Last recorded place will be shown.

DAFlys Posted at 4-27 23:50
In the Fly app,  go to Profile -> right hand menu,  Find My Drone.   Last recorded place will be shown.

Thanks for all  the answers.

Update on today's retrieval mission, no luck. Been searching from 8 am till 3 pm with a team of three. The field is a little bit treacherous. Since this place is not my hometown, I got in touch with the local population, with the hope that they could return it if they found it.

Also, my tips for people who might experience this in the future: 1. screen cap the last image from the drone, and 2. download the latest video while the drone still have the battery to help with the retrieval. I regret I didn't do those two things. And if I bought another drone in the future, for sure I will try to invest in GPS tracker, depending on the availability in my country.

djiandme Posted at 4-28 03:52
Thanks for all  the answers.

Update on today's retrieval mission, no luck. Been searching from 8 am till 3 pm with a team of three. The field is a little bit treacherous. Since this place is not my hometown, I got in touch with the local population, with the hope that they could return it if they found it.

Under Find my drone you can make the drone beep and flash to help finding it.  but you cannot leave it days before you search,   you really have to do I right away.

I, too, lost my Mini 2 for awhile. I had lost visual eyeball contact but the monitor was working OK.
I got a low battery warning and was near a river, and I surely didn't want to end up in the water with it.
Using the monitor I made sure that I was over land, pointed the camera down to take in as many landmarks as possible.
And then it 'self' landed in a wooded area by the river.
I searched for about 20 minutes, then drove home, picked up my wife, and came back. Using the aerial  footage she found it in less than 10 minutes...
Naturally I was relieved.
10 minutes of total flight time isn't very much and it has my looking at another drone with a longer flight time now.

I lost mine the other day as well.  What saved me was the Find My Drone and the option to have it beep.  You might be out of luck at this point.

djiandme Posted at 4-28 03:52
Thanks for all  the answers.

Update on today's retrieval mission, no luck. Been searching from 8 am till 3 pm with a team of three. The field is a little bit treacherous. Since this place is not my hometown, I got in touch with the local population, with the hope that they could return it if they found it.

Your Find My Drone, may still show the last location recorded. When my drone crashed last fall, I was able to go back with a group and find my drone based off of the last location showing in the app.

Update:

I found it! Or rather, someone found it and kind enough to gave a call to return it (I wrote my name, number, email address, on the drone). Let me know if anybody want to hear the story.

Thank you everyone who replied, this case has taught me to invest in one of the GPS tracker that will keep the GPS signal even when the drone battery is out. I'm looking forward to buy one to install it on the drone. Small investment to prevent the same thing happened again in the future.

Hope you are having a nice weekend DA.  

What drone did you loose? I think DJI has a (last seen) feature on the app. It will show you the last place the drone's GPS got.

djiandme Posted at 2022-4-28 03:52
Thanks for all  the answers.

Update on today's retrieval mission, no luck. Been searching from 8 am till 3 pm with a team of three. The field is a little bit treacherous. Since this place is not my hometown, I got in touch with the local population, with the hope that they could return it if they found it.

I just lost my drone this afternoon flying away and check with farm owners afew hours around last location shown on phone and no luck farmer told me to put GPS on it if am going to buy another drone

chenfengjie@msn Posted at 12-8 00:51
I just lost my drone this afternoon flying away and check with farm owners afew hours around last location shown on phone and no luck farmer told me to put GPS on it if am going to buy another drone

Hi, chenfengjie. Sorry about what happened to your drone. If your aircraft cannot be found, you can report a flyaway case via Flyaway Service. After successful registration, a DJI customer service agent will contact you and communicate with the service solution. https://repair.dji.com/au/repair/flyaway. Thank you for your great support.