Hi friends,

Let me start by saying how much I love my Mini 2.

Yesterday I was flying here in Germany above a lake and suddenly (without warning that the signal is weak), it was just gone. The signal was gone, the drone was gone. I was just 180m away from the drone, pretty open landscape and 15m above. It was lost in the air - no sign of crashing into the water or anything.

I waited for it to come back, when it loses connection it goes up and comes back to me - for like 10 minutes and it didn't regain signal or come back as it should have.

Then I went quickly to the closest point of the last point seen (last point was above the lake) and saw nothing and heard nothing - and no signal was gained.

This is so unfortunate!!!!...

How could it happen? Weather was good, there was zero wind and there was no reason for anything to happen. I really want to know what went wrong.

I attach the last screenshot when it was lost and the Google maps with where I was and drone's last connection.

Would love to hear from you asap.

Best regards from Berlin, Germany - Neil.

Last screenshots

Google Maps

Hello there tierecke. I am sorry to know what happened to your DJI Mini 2 and thank you for reaching out. Since this unfortunate event happened, I would recommend 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. If the DJI drone is still under the warranty period and it is evaluated as a non-pilot error, the warranty service will be provided. Again I am sorry for this trouble and thank you.

Thanks a lot - I also uploaded the flight log - I flew just for a few minutes before disappearing and the battery was full...

https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/4DD2CH8ZB0T3B7SQWWHI/

I wrote DJI two days ago a mail using support@dji.com and haven't got a reply. Will try your link.Thanks for the nice words.

tierecke Posted at 8-25 22:53
Thanks a lot - I also uploaded the flight log - I flew just for a few minutes before disappearing and the battery was full...

https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/4DD2CH8ZB0T3B7SQWWHI/

Had a look at your log

At1m25.5 (93% battery) in the log a battery error, see my chart of your data.
Last record at 3m28.5 still 93% batery level, should be lower ofcourse.
Remaining flight time is calculated during all flight, in you log the remaing fly time set to zero.

Last mesages:
"Weak signal. Adjust antennas"
"Image transmission signal may be blocked. Position remote controller to face aircraft and adjust antennas for optimal signal strength or fly at higher altitude. Image transmission signal may be blocked. Position remote controller to face aircraft and adjust antennas for optimal signal strength or fly at higher altitude .

If if i look at the map than line of sight was not that good or indeed blocked, drone flying at 14.6 meters at 252 meters away is the cause of loosing contact.

Drone should RTH but i think that because of the battery comms error the software did think that level was too low/zero so it did a forcelanding due to low battery at the last position. . From that height took only few seconds to land in the water.

Hope that DJI can help you out.

cheers
JJB

Thanks a lot!...
Chatted with someone online (immediate reply!... No Chatbot!!! Amazing!!!)...
And they told me to open a flyaway call and they'll check it all and see.

Will update!.

As for what you say - right, it is very strange that it stayed at 93%!... It went down until then and then stopped. But of course the battery was still far from being empty, also when I went to the point it should have been not empty.

As for the line of sight - I was flying in much worse conditions and there was never a problem. Additionally, the drone does not lose contact at once - it complains about bad signal for a while, then the footage on the phone's screen gets jagged and only then it disappears (and comes back very quickly when the drone goes up and RTH). Here it was just ogne.

Thanks for your help! Really appreciated.

tierecke Posted at 8-25 23:42
Thanks a lot!...
Chatted with someone online (immediate reply!... No Chatbot!!! Amazing!!!)...
And they told me to open a flyaway call and they'll check it all and see.

Hi,

Ofcourse the battery level was good, 93% and lower after flying for few more minutes.
But due to the batt comms error the craft system did see a low or zero value, hence the forced landing in RTH mode.

Every out of line of sight situation is different, in this flight the connection was just lost....

Guess DJI will find the same battery error, so on a new drone it is probably a warranty case.

cheers,
JJB

Hello,

I have had exactly the same issue as this. I was flying my mini 2 within 1 kilometre range and less than 100 feet altitude. It lost the signal completely while flying and never got reconnected to RC. I also have the last footage while it was RTH. But it just landed somehow and damaged badly. It didn’t hit anything on the way as there was no obstruction at all.
I have. sent it to dji repair centre. The problem is, the warranty was expired 3 months ago and now they would not check the flying data to find out what exactly went wrong. They want to charge some fees. I object to pay that as it was totally technical error. I feel like they want to just rip me off  by charging flying analysis and then repair of course. Honestly this wasn’t expected from dji

Post the txt flight log here and see what the folks here can come up with.
Go to
https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
read the instructions there, retrieve the log, upload it to that site, post the resulting URL here.

djiuser_wlXJ397MCB1I Posted at 2023-12-30 10:26
Hello,

I have had exactly the same issue as this. I was flying my mini 2 within 1 kilometre range and less than 100 feet altitude. It lost the signal completely while flying and never got reconnected to RC. I also have the last footage while it was RTH. But it just landed somehow and damaged badly. It didn’t hit anything on the way as there was no obstruction at all.

We are sorry for the unpleasant experience you encountered, we understand that must be frustrating.
Kindly understand that if the drone is beyond the warranty period, a paid repair service is required. The customer can request to pay to analyze the accident data, however, the analysis result will not affect the solution of a paid repair service. We hope for your kind understanding.

https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/6K20J76ZIPR3IWQQ3MEI/

That’s the flight log. I’d really appreciate if someone could look into these logs and find out what really went wrong. Thanks!

Just from a quick glance the drone was at a height of 317ft and a distance of 1152ft when the signal was lost, I think that's just 15deg above horizontal. There appears to be a big lump of rock that might be in the signal's way at that angle of elevation, was/is it in the way?

Go home height was 98ft so the drone would have RTH'ed along the straight line from that point to home at 317ft. If the rock is in the way there's your answer, I think. The drone would have simply flown into it.
I don't have the software to get that answer others do.

Precisely where did you find the drone?

djiuser_wlXJ397MCB1I Posted at 1-1 11:45
https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/6K20J76ZIPR3IWQQ3MEI/

That’s the flight log. I’d really appreciate if someone could look into these logs and find out what really went wrong. Thanks!

Hi

Had a look at your log.

See the charts of your data.

Looks like you flew your drone beyond the hill, so signal RC<>Drone was obstructed.
Radio signal also needs "line of sight"

RTH was initiated and your drone turned towards HP and flew to Homepoint.

So why i did not land at HomePoint, no idea.
Where did it land ??

cheers
JJB   [ Charts by FRAP ; the 'best' software for data and visual flightlog analysis (www.jjbfrap.eu) ]

It was found on the hill. But there wasn’t a big rock or hill or any other object that could have been a cause to be crashed into. It was landed on a flat surface, there were big rocks a little far behind it. The fact that I don’t understand is why the drone didn’t continue to go home, even if there is a signal loss because of the hill or something, it had enough hight and clearance to continue RTH, but it didn’t and landed straight down on that hill.

DJI Susan Posted at 1-1 00:19
We are sorry for the unpleasant experience you encountered, we understand that must be frustrating.
Kindly understand that if the drone is beyond the warranty period, a paid repair service is required. The customer can request to pay to analyze the accident data, however, the analysis result will not affect the solution of a paid repair service. We hope for your kind understanding.

Hello, I understand the policy for flights logs analysis. Now you can see the I’ve posted the flight logs and a couple of people pointed out that there was signal loss due to some obstruction and drone initiated RTH. Please help me understand why the drone didn’t land at home point and landed straight down on the hill even though there was enough hight clearance, no rock or any other object on my drone’s way home. Thanks!

djiuser_wlXJ397MCB1I Posted at 1-1 15:22
Hello, I understand the policy for flights logs analysis. Now you can see the I’ve posted the flight logs and a couple of people pointed out that there was signal loss due to some obstruction and drone initiated RTH. Please help me understand why the drone didn’t land at home point and landed straight down on the hill even though there was enough hight clearance, no rock or any other object on my drone’s way home. Thanks!

You flew around behind a hill that was much higher than the spot where you launched.
At 10:23 you started to receive warnings about your signal being blocked, but instead of climbing or returning on the path you had taken, you continued until signal was completely lost.
Then Failsafe RTh was your only hope to bring the drone back.
But your RTH height was 98 feet and inadequate for the flight, so RTH wasn't going to climb high enough to clear the hill and the drone flew toward home at 316 ft relative to the launch point.

On the RTH path, the hill was approximately 262 feet higher than the launch point, which left only 60 feet clearance above the hil.
But any trees taller than 60 feet will have been obstacles in the path of the drone on RTH.
Just before signal was lost, the last three lines of your flight data show that the VPS was detecting something only 12 feet below the drone, indicating that the drone was approaching obstacles at or close to the level of the drone.

There is no data to show what happened after that, but it's not much of a stretch to work out that the drone, hit a tree and came down, shortly after losing signal.

This would have been easily preventable by not flying behind a hill or having set an appropriate RTH height to avoid the obstacle.
In summary the incident was caused by poor piloting.

djiuser_wlXJ397MCB1I Posted at 1-1 15:11
It was found on the hill. But there wasn’t a big rock or hill or any other object that could have been a cause to be crashed into. It was landed on a flat surface, there were big rocks a little far behind it. The fact that I don’t understand is why the drone didn’t continue to go home, even if there is a signal loss because of the hill or something, it had enough hight and clearance to continue RTH, but it didn’t and landed straight down on that hill.

Hi,

Can you point out by GPS position where it was found on the hill ?
See the map with the last position in flight, close to that point or ?

As you said your drone found near rocks, rocks behind the drone in fly to home direction. Any trees near the rocks ?
If it landed 'normally' on a flat surface then ofcourse no damage to your drone, but is was badly damaged. uh?
So it must have hit something in air and dropped down...to get it badly damaged.
cheers
JJB

Labroides Posted at 1-1 17:49
You flew around behind a hill that was much higher than the spot where you launched.
At 10:23 you started to receive warnings about your signal being blocked, but instead of climbing or returning on the path you had taken, you continued until signal was completely lost.
Then Failsafe RTh was your only hope to bring the drone back.

Good catch on the VPS height.

djiuser_wlXJ397MCB1I Posted at 1-1 15:22
Hello, I understand the policy for flights logs analysis. Now you can see the I’ve posted the flight logs and a couple of people pointed out that there was signal loss due to some obstruction and drone initiated RTH. Please help me understand why the drone didn’t land at home point and landed straight down on the hill even though there was enough hight clearance, no rock or any other object on my drone’s way home. Thanks!

Official data analysis was not proceeded, so I may not be able to provide you the exact reason for your case.
However, to help you understand why the drone does not return to the home points, there are some reasons for your reference:
1. RTH is not selected for Aircraft Signal Lost Behavior in Advanced Safety Settings. There are three options to choose, RTH, Descend, and Hover.
2. No sufficient GPS signal for the drone to find its way home.
3. No sufficient battery left for the drone to return home.
4. The RTH height is set to a value lower than the surrounding obstacles that the drone can not override.
The listed reasons can not cover all the scenarios. Only after data analysis is proceeded, we can understand what happened exactly at the moment.
Hope for your kind understanding.