Hello everyone,

I've had less than 2 flight hours on my Air 3, and today I've had a very concerning experience.
Namely, while flying forward (no input on rudder/height stick) the drone would change heading and altitude on its own. In some cases, it would go up by a meter or two, while in other cases, it would go down.
Especially while going down, the drone would seem as if its oscillating, and would need between say 0.5 to 2 seconds to recover and stabilize.


The wind speed was around 2 m/s with gusts up to 5 m/s, with temperature of around 30 degrees Celsius (battery temperature up to 50). The events when this happened were usually during situations when no wind was blowing, and the number of navigation satellites the drone would see was between 26 and 28.

Unfortunately, I had no means of filming such events, and the gimbal would do a very good job of compensating, so that they're not very obvious when looking at recorded video.


For example, in this log here:

https://app.airdata.com/flight/d ... ations&val=detailed
or here, where attitude can be more easily seen, https://www.phantomhelp.com/logviewer/7J39Q1P90NU7BYDO8RL9/

at 11m 19s, I was giving full right stick, drone was at height of 24.8 m and was moving forward at 11.1 m/s.
Then, at 11m 20.6s, the drone started decelerating and moving up. It went to 24.9 m, and 11.3 m/s. At the next data point, it was 25.3 m and 10 m/s, coming to 25.9 m and 9 m/s at 11 m 23s, then at 11 m 24.6 s it was 25.1 m, 11.4 m/s and started turning right. At 11m 27s, it would go back (on its own) to the original heading, at the height of 26.7 m and speed of 11.5 m/s.

Another simialar example in the same log cam be seen at 12m 33.4s. I just finished making a turn, and released the left stick, while giving full right stick. Aircraft was at 25.3 m and moving at 4.6 m/s. The aircraft goes up to 26.3 m at 12m 35.4s , and then down to 22 m at 12m 44.6s.

Another log where similar events happened is here: https://app.airdata.com/flight/d ... ENERALNotifications It doesn't seem very visible in the log, but while auto-landing the entire right side of the drone dropped some 30 cm, then the left dropped, and then the drone leveled out and stabilized.

Now, my previous experience with smart drones is only Mini 3 Pro, where I didn't have such issues. If the wind was strogn and gusty, it would move up and down, but my understaiding is that that's to be expected. However, with less than 2 m/s of wind, I'd expect Air 3 to be a bit more stable (if the issue is wind).

Looking at the drone physically, I can't see any obvious issues. It's clean, the sensors are clean, the propeller blades are clean and undamaged, motors spin freely, the propellers are securely attatched, when the drone is flying, the propellers spin in a plane, so there don't seem to be any deformations...

In my previous flights, and in the flight right after the two whose logs I posted, I did not notice this behavior of drone dropping down, or jumping up.

Therefore, before I write this strange behavior to wind, I'd like to hear some comments from fellow drone users.


All the best!

The Mavic 3 does the same and compensates for the ground height when the OA system is set to bypass, change your OA to brake and see if it still does that

Suren Posted at 8-20 10:57
The Mavic 3 does the same and compensates for the ground height when the OA system is set to bypass, change your OA to brake and see if it still does that

I'll definitely try that out, and see how it affects things.

In my case, the ground was relatively flat: Plowed field, with plants sticking maybe 10 cm up from the ground, but when flying, I did get a feeling that obstacle avoidance might be overreacting...