DroneFlying Posted at 2017-2-2 06:02
Yeah, and I see now why he's here grasping at straws: it appears that he didn't physically recover the drone, so (as Chris and Watty2000 pointed out) it won't be covered under Care Refresh.

What's with the hostility? I posted a PSA so people could know what happened and avoid it in the future. Is it not a fact that it's not stated explicitly in the user manual or on the app that RTH flight times does not factor in wind conditions? You don't think that's an important piece of information to show new pilots? That would have been the difference between me losing the drone today or not. You don't think that's valuable feedback to them while they try to appeal to the mass consumer market?

I'm not here whining about them not giving me a replacement drone - because they haven't even decided whether or not they will.  I'm simply here trying to give my experience and my opinion on what happened, and to learn at the same time because I've learned a lot from this community.

With this type of hostility I am seriously doubting whether or not I should have posted this in the first place.

You wrote:

"I actually suspect that the battery was fault/unreliable and thus I was getting incorrect estimated flight times."

and

"I don't think my DJI Care should even be used because the battery information presented by the app was so inaccurate therefore causing me to misjudge how to operate the drone."

That sounds to me like someone trying to find a reason why his mistakes were someone else's fault. If you consider me calling that "grasping at straws" to be "hostility" then I'm sorry, but that's still my opinion. And that's all it is: the opinion of some anonymous person on the internet. Like you said, all that's really going to matter is what DJI decides. And as far as hostility goes, I can't help but notice that your prior message was automatically censored / deleted, so there seems to be also a bit of irony there.

Once again, I am (genuinely) sorry that you lost your drone. I'd be a lot more sympathetic, though, if you didn't seem to be refusing to accept responsibility for its loss.

I'm glad you started the thread - with the amount of Mavics clearly sold and still on order the number of 1st timers getting a drone for the first time has massively increased. If they can learn from your unfortunate experience then that's got to count for something. These DJI drones are more complicated than most people imagine. I started with a crappy little Parrot drone and worked my way up through P2, P3, P4 and now Mavic. Men don't read instruction manuals and when the Mavic one is 60 pages most people are going to skip ahead. I've picked up more tips & info from threads like this than simply reading a printed manual which we all seem to agree can have ambigious info - maybe something gets lost in the translation from Chinese to English. So thanks for sharing and sorry for your experience.........

DroneFlying Posted at 2017-2-2 06:46
You wrote:

"I actually suspect that the battery was fault/unreliable and thus I was getting incorrect estimated flight times."

The quotes you made were from my initial OP - that was before it was pointed out to me that flight times may not factor in wind conditions, which is what I had assumed the aircraft and app does. I pointed out the relevant passage in the user manual where it was ambiguous.

The post that was auto-censored was written completely in Chinese (in response to another user who left a message for me in Chinese saying he was Taiwanese). I think it's because the forum auto-censors fully non-English replies.

It won't be the end of the world if DJI does not choose to allow me to use DJI Care - but like I said, the difference between me losing this almost brand new drone today or not would've been a simple popup like the multitude of warnings that they already provide in their app during flight. I personally feel like that is a huge oversight.

Good luck, and be sure to let us know how things turn out.

Sorry to hear about this. The reason it could not predict your return time accurately is because you were probably flying with the wind on your way out sea and flying against the wind on the way back. Regardless, you should take care to always have MORE than enough battery required to return home. Running it on empty is asking for trouble. Best of luck.

Really feel for you losing your drone irrespective of whether long range flight tests are wise or not. I understand why you may have thought that wind allowances could be taken into consideration as I've seen plenty of examples where the Mavic has transmitted high wind warnings back to the receiver. How this works I don't know, but I didn't imagine it could ever detect wind direction: possibly just a gyro triggered warning that an outside influence is affecting flight characteristics.

On the subject of wind direction: it doesn't follow that the wind will remain constant throughout the length of a given flight. It can change speed, but just as importantly it can change direction. This is called wind shift, and can happen very quickly. Say you start by flying head on into a constant 10mph wind. At that constant you would feel pretty safe flying up to 50% of your indicated battery flight time out, knowing the drone will return wind assisted on the way back. However, you cannot make that assumption. The wind could shift by as much as 180 degrees, and it could pick up to say 15mph. Now you're in big trouble!

I only mention this from my experience of being the father to a keen amateur sailor, and have seen this happen on many occasions both on inland and coastal waters. Reading the wind on long distance flights is vitally important, but almost impossible if the drone is remotely located from you. A generous margin of error should always be allowed for in case the worst happens.

Good luck and thanks for your candid post and subsequent follow up replies.

rick39 Posted at 2017-2-2 08:21
Really feel for you losing your drone irrespective of whether long range flight tests are wise or not. I understand why you may have thought that wind allowances could be taken into consideration as I've seen plenty of examples where the Mavic has transmitted high wind warnings back to the receiver. How this works I don't know, but I didn't imagine it could ever detect wind direction: possibly just a gyro triggered warning that an outside influence is affecting flight characteristics.

On the subject of wind direction: it doesn't follow that the wind will remain constant throughout the length of a given flight. It can change speed, but just as importantly it can change direction. This is called wind shift, and can happen very quickly. Say you start by flying head on into a constant 10mph wind. At that constant you would feel pretty safe flying up to 50% of your indicated battery flight time out, knowing the drone will return wind assisted on the way back. However, you cannot make that assumption. The wind could shift by as much as 180 degrees, and it could pick up to say 15mph. Now you're in big trouble!

Thanks for the additional information about wind speed and direction. This is why I love the community.

You are right on- part of the reason why I had always assumed that the drone takes into account wind during RTH  is because it does show a warning regarding high winds during certain flights, meaning that the drone is aware of its external conditions (in addition to hovering stationary when your hands are off the countrol; the on board microcontrollers definitely have to account for wind in order to make calculations to propellor speed and orientation)- guess calculating RTH based on that information is not accurate or the Mavic just isnt smart enough yet ...

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 08:39
Thanks for the additional information about wind speed and direction. This is why I love the community.

You are right on- part of the reason why I had always assumed that the drone takes into account wind during RTH  is because it does show a warning regarding high winds during certain flights, meaning that the drone is aware of its external conditions (in addition to hovering stationary when your hands are off the countrol; the on board microcontrollers definitely have to account for wind in order to make calculations to propellor speed and orientation)- guess calculating RTH based on that information is not accurate or the Mavic just isnt smart enough yet ...

I think there are far too many variables for the Mavic to compute wind speed velocity and direction against available flight time; wind shift being one.

First, I don't understand why you would do a Long Range Test over water, with nowhere to land in case of emergency.  If I were to do something like this, I would have found a high place to control from (hill or something) and flownin a long flat place just in case, I had to emergency land.

Second, as for high wind warnings and such, I think the Mavic determines this by how hard it has to work to stay on course (using gps).  If it is constantly having to work extremely hard to stay on course because of a side wind or whatever, that is when it probably throws the High Wind Warning.

rick39 Posted at 2017-2-2 08:45
I think there are far too many variables for the Mavic to compute wind speed velocity and direction against available flight time; wind shift being one.

It's calculating everything else in real time, it should be able to give estimates based on what conditions it is experiencing at that moment. Knowing what it knew flying OUT (tailwind), it should have never allowed me to get that far in the first place knowing that it is LIKELY that there will be tailwind coming back - or at least give a visual warning that it's a possibility

Irish Posted at 2017-2-2 08:46
First, I don't understand why you would do a Long Range Test over water, with nowhere to land in case of emergency.  If I were to do something like this, I would have found a high place to control from (hill or something) and flownin a long flat place just in case, I had to emergency land.

Second, as for high wind warnings and such, I think the Mavic determines this by how hard it has to work to stay on course (using gps).  If it is constantly having to work extremely hard to stay on course because of a side wind or whatever, that is when it probably throws the High Wind Warning.

Hindsight is always 20/20. I watched this beautiful video of harmony of the seas out at sea. I wanted to shoot a similar video.

Irish Posted at 2017-2-2 08:46
First, I don't understand why you would do a Long Range Test over water, with nowhere to land in case of emergency.  If I were to do something like this, I would have found a high place to control from (hill or something) and flownin a long flat place just in case, I had to emergency land.

Second, as for high wind warnings and such, I think the Mavic determines this by how hard it has to work to stay on course (using gps).  If it is constantly having to work extremely hard to stay on course because of a side wind or whatever, that is when it probably throws the High Wind Warning.

And I think it's important to note that I have had let Mavic activate RTH many times in the past, and have always landed back home point with more than 10-15% battery to spare, which is super impressive and made me feel very safe letting the autopilot do the work. The drone was still 1.2KM away from home point when I lost HD this time!

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 08:50
It's calculating everything else in real time, it should be able to give estimates based on what conditions it is experiencing at that moment. Knowing what it knew flying OUT (tailwind), it should have never allowed me to get that far in the first place knowing that it is LIKELY that there will be tailwind coming back - or at least give a visual warning that it's a possibility

How would it calculate for a sudden change in the wind, what you are expecting from this machine which cost $1k is ridiculous,
It's almost like saying if it starts to rain it should raise the rain cover.

The reality is your are the operator of this AC it's up to you to know its limitations , it's up to you to know what conditions you are flying in,

I think you said in your opening post that you had started someways back from the beach, because of people on the beach,  can I ask if your AC just made it back to the beach what your plan was to avoid it dropping on someone's head.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 08:50
It's calculating everything else in real time, it should be able to give estimates based on what conditions it is experiencing at that moment. Knowing what it knew flying OUT (tailwind), it should have never allowed me to get that far in the first place knowing that it is LIKELY that there will be tailwind coming back - or at least give a visual warning that it's a possibility

Maybe it did calculate the wind speed on the way out, and gave you an estimate on when to return home.  However on the return trip if there was a head wind and it picked up higher than it was on the way out,  how would the Mavic predict that.  At that point the Mavic did what it could but was unable to reach dry land.  Putting in sport mode just added to the problem.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-2-2 09:03
How would it calculate for a sudden change in the wind, what you are expecting from this machine which cost $1k is ridiculous,
It's almost like saying if it starts to rain it should raise the rain cover.

WRT to the question whether going full throttle in sport mode was the correct decision, the answer is almost certainly no.

The goal was to cover the maximum distance with the remaining battery life.  Rather than maximum speed, what's important is maximum EFFICIENCY.  And the drone is probably least efficient at full throttle.

OTOH, if you're fighting headwinds on the return trip, speed also becomes a factor since you have to fly at least as fast as the wind to make any headway at all, and things become a lot more complicated.  But my guess is that if the OP had kept it in P mode, he would have had better chance of making it back.  

As for the question whether the Mavic takes winds aloft into account in calculating RTH, I would be very surprised if this were the case.

To the OP:  You clearly made some mistakes here, but they're the same kinds of mistakes many novice flyers make, and I'm sure you've learned some good lessons.

"part of the reason why I had always assumed that the drone takes into account wind during RTH  is because it does show a warning regarding high winds during certain flights, meaning that the drone is aware of its external conditions . . . it should have never allowed me to get that far in the first place knowing that it is LIKELY that there will be tailwind coming back - or at least give a visual warning that it's a possibility"

I'm guessing you did get a high wind warning: I get them all the time, even in what I'd consider low-wind conditions. You seem to be under the impression that the Mavic can or at least could take wind speed into account, but I don't believe the Mavic knows the wind speed. What you see reported is ground speed, not air speed.

"it does show a warning regarding high winds during certain flights, meaning that the drone is aware of its external conditions (in addition to hovering stationary when your hands are off the countrol"

The stationary hovering isn't done by compensating for wind speed; GPS and the VPS are what allows it to hover in one place so well. Again, you seem to have made a lot of assumptions about what the Mavic does and how it does it.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-2-2 09:03
How would it calculate for a sudden change in the wind, what you are expecting from this machine which cost $1k is ridiculous,
It's almost like saying if it starts to rain it should raise the rain cover.

It doesn't have to calculate for sudden change in wind - it just has to calculate how much tailwind it's getting and inverse that for headwind and tell me if it's likely I'll make it home. That's really not that difficult for it to extrapolate when it's capable of doing everything else already. Or at least tell me that it's a possibility!!

The whole reason why the Phantom from one generation to the next, and now the Mavic is so appealing to the mass consumer market is because the price is coming down while the intelligence is going up.

I never even considered the fact that there was a chance that the AC would "just barely make it back" because I've never had to deal with it miscalculating the amount of power it would need to fly back in the first place. I had flown the drone in other environments and it has acted in a very predictable manner always. As an extra precaution, I took off and set the home point away from the people.

Sure, me as a single operator can accept the reality that I made a mistake which cost me my drone. Im an adult and I can take responsibility for flying in conditions I wasn't familiar with.

But isn't it more important for DJI to own up to the fact that this is a huge oversight in adequate warning through either the manual and on screen prompts to new pilots that this was possible, thus preventing all future potential accidents? You asked me what I could've done in order to prevent the AC from landing on people during emergency landing. The answer to that is absolutely nothing - because I followed the instruction manual and the on screen prompts and I did not operate the drone in any dangerous way, and I was suddenly put into a position I was totally unprepared for. Now is that fault mine, or DJI's?

"it just has to calculate how much tailwind"

The Mavic doesn't have a built-in anemometer; it doesn't know how fast the wind is blowing.
"But isn't it more important for DJI to own up to the fact that this is a huge oversight in adequate warning through either the manual and on screen prompts to new pilots that this was possible"

No, it's more important for you to accept responsibility for your mistakes. That'll make you a better and safer pilot in the future.

fab6mR8WKokt Posted at 2017-2-2 09:24
WRT to the question whether going full throttle in sport mode was the correct decision, the answer is almost certainly no.

The goal was to cover the maximum distance with the remaining battery life.  Rather than maximum speed, what's important is maximum EFFICIENCY.  And the drone is probably least efficient at full throttle.

Learning lots today. Hope others learn from my mistake

DroneFlying Posted at 2017-2-2 09:33
"part of the reason why I had always assumed that the drone takes into account wind during RTH  is because it does show a warning regarding high winds during certain flights, meaning that the drone is aware of its external conditions . . . it should have never allowed me to get that far in the first place knowing that it is LIKELY that there will be tailwind coming back - or at least give a visual warning that it's a possibility"

I'm guessing you did get a high wind warning: I get them all the time, even in what I'd consider low-wind conditions. You seem to be under the impression that the Mavic can or at least could take wind speed into account, but I don't believe the Mavic knows the wind speed. What you see reported is ground speed, not air speed.

Yeah, I kind of had to, because the manual and the app doesn't make it very clear. Don't you think that's a problem for a consumer UAV?

Irish Posted at 2017-2-2 08:46
First, I don't understand why you would do a Long Range Test over water, with nowhere to land in case of emergency.  If I were to do something like this, I would have found a high place to control from (hill or something) and flownin a long flat place just in case, I had to emergency land.

Second, as for high wind warnings and such, I think the Mavic determines this by how hard it has to work to stay on course (using gps).  If it is constantly having to work extremely hard to stay on course because of a side wind or whatever, that is when it probably throws the High Wind Warning.

I'm with you, the most obvious way to detect a high wind is likely a mix of 'power to progress' for one axis, 'power to maintain altitude' for another axis and amount of course correction to fly a straight line to the destination.

It just triggers an alert if it goes over a limit rather than measuring the actual wind direction speed and changeability.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 09:47
Yeah, I kind of had to, because the manual and the app doesn't make it very clear. Don't you think that's a problem for a consumer UAV?

I think the manual could be greatly improved, yes. But I do think the problem in this particular scenario goes a little deeper than just reflecting the fact that the manual doesn't explicitly say that the RTH estimates are just estimates and that they don't take wind speed (which the Mavic doesn't even know) into account.

rick39 Posted at 2017-2-2 08:21
Really feel for you losing your drone irrespective of whether long range flight tests are wise or not. I understand why you may have thought that wind allowances could be taken into consideration as I've seen plenty of examples where the Mavic has transmitted high wind warnings back to the receiver. How this works I don't know, but I didn't imagine it could ever detect wind direction: possibly just a gyro triggered warning that an outside influence is affecting flight characteristics.

On the subject of wind direction: it doesn't follow that the wind will remain constant throughout the length of a given flight. It can change speed, but just as importantly it can change direction. This is called wind shift, and can happen very quickly. Say you start by flying head on into a constant 10mph wind. At that constant you would feel pretty safe flying up to 50% of your indicated battery flight time out, knowing the drone will return wind assisted on the way back. However, you cannot make that assumption. The wind could shift by as much as 180 degrees, and it could pick up to say 15mph. Now you're in big trouble!

I agree, I learnt to sail on an inland reservoir and had to deal with 'flukey winds' as the norm.  It taught you to always be on your toes and observing things like the patterns on the water, the position of clouds, and the surrounding trees, etc..

Anywhere around water or coasts where there is a difference in temperature between the land and water is difficult to predict.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 08:50
It's calculating everything else in real time, it should be able to give estimates based on what conditions it is experiencing at that moment. Knowing what it knew flying OUT (tailwind), it should have never allowed me to get that far in the first place knowing that it is LIKELY that there will be tailwind coming back - or at least give a visual warning that it's a possibility

The stats on the amount of tech in a Mavic pro is astonishing. I don't know how it detects wind conditions to put out a high wind warning. Whether it makes these calculations through the gyros or can compute power consumption through GPS data and work rate of the motors or any other in built sensory perception is conjecture to me. I am fairly satisfied that it can't detect wind velocity or direction, and even if it could, it would only be relevant to it's real time position at any given time, which would make such information unreliable. It you think about it there are so many variables, including air density and humidity to factor in too.
The intelligent batteries interact with the Mavic in a way that wasn't available a short time ago. Taking all things into consideration, it's amazing that RTH is as good as it is. The drone didn't fail, it did everything it was supposed to do.
You have been very honest with your description of the flight to the benefit of others here on this forum. The point of your post wasn't to brag about how far you flew your drone, but about the consequences of having done so. I can't condone your decision to do what you did, but I appreciate the information you have shared.
Hypothetically, you could have conducted your test a short way off the shoreline parallel to the beach. At least you could have found a safe location to put it down on terra firma and retrieved it on foot in a similar situation, although as you have already stated, benefit of hindsight won't bring your Mavic back.

"Learning lots today. Hope others learn from my mistake"

Here's a good rule of thumb: always fly upwind on the outbound leg of your flight. Yes, I know: you don't get to pick the wind direction or speed and that can be a real bummer if you had your heart set on a particular flight route, but the alternative is, well, basically what happened here. And unfortunately you were over water when it happened.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 09:01
And I think it's important to note that I have had let Mavic activate RTH many times in the past, and have always landed back home point with more than 10-15% battery to spare, which is super impressive and made me feel very safe letting the autopilot do the work. The drone was still 1.2KM away from home point when I lost HD this time!

Psy, thanks for posting and continuing with the dialogue.  With the Mavic, DJI has produced its first really mass market drone with its portability and usability and therefore it has opened up the fun to a much wider range of people with differing skills.  They've also made the Mavic relatively simple to fly, until something goes wrong, and therefore it's a learning curve for many.  If as you mention if went out 4km and made it back to 0.5km, then that's only 6% left to go, you were very unlucky.  Of the many lessons the simplest one is about ensuring that you have fully charged batteries at the beginning as the 15% down you had might be the reserves.

Really hope you get back in the air soon, and look forward to seeing some more footage from you

DroneFlying Posted at 2017-2-2 09:47
"it just has to calculate how much tailwind"

The Mavic doesn't have a built-in anemometer; it doesn't know how fast the wind is blowing.

Again, I am totally not understanding the hostility that you seem to have towards me.

Yes, I would love if DJI were to give me a new drone after what happened today. I made a newbie mistake and I screwed up - that's why I spent more money and bought a the DJI Care insurance package. I knew the likelihood of me somehow messing up the drone was high. Surprise - that's why I bought the replacement plan.The only difference is that I was unable to retrieve the drone physically because it fell into the sea instead of concrete or into a forest somewhere where I am actually able to physically get it back. I'm fairly certain the main reason they have the physical drone replacement plan as part of the policy is because they want to prevent fraud (and also because they want to be able to recycle parts). That is obviously not what is happening right now.

Why does it matter so much to me if I'm just posting this as a PSA? Because I don't want other newbies to go through this terrible experience that I just had today. And I most certainly don't want some other newbie have their drone to accidentally hit some kid on the beach because they didn't know that RTH doesn't take wind speed into consideration, making an emergency landing when they didn't expect it, that's why.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 10:00
Again, I am totally not understanding the hostility that you seem to have towards me.

Yes, I would love if DJI were to give me a new drone after what happened today. I made a newbie mistake and I screwed up - that's why I spent more money and bought a the DJI Care insurance package. I knew the likelihood of me somehow messing up the drone was high. Surprise - that's why I bought the replacement plan.The only difference is that I was unable to retrieve the drone physically because it fell into the sea instead of concrete or into a forest somewhere where I am actually able to physically get it back. I'm fairly certain the main reason they have the physical drone replacement plan as part of the policy is because they want to prevent fraud (and also because they want to be able to recycle parts). That is obviously not what is happening right now.

Are you aware that DJI care refresh policy on needing the drone to be recovered changed around the beginning of the year? I think you may well be covered by care refresh.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 09:41
It doesn't have to calculate for sudden change in wind - it just has to calculate how much tailwind it's getting and inverse that for headwind and tell me if it's likely I'll make it home. That's really not that difficult for it to extrapolate when it's capable of doing everything else already. Or at least tell me that it's a possibility!!

The whole reason why the Phantom from one generation to the next, and now the Mavic is so appealing to the mass consumer market is because the price is coming down while the intelligence is going up.

You seem to want to blame DJI for not warning people that the drone can't calculate and take account of winds aloft.  So DJI is responsible for warning people about all the things the drone CAN'T do?

Sorry, but I don't think DJI can reasonably be blamed for this.  You chose to do a long-range test.  And you chose to do it over water.  And you chose to do it in windy conditions such that the drone would be facing a headwind on the return flight.  And you chose to do it with less than a fully charged battery.  And it was you--not DJI--that chose to switch to sport mode and go full throttle.

There's no way of knowing, of course, but it's seems quite possible that if you'd simply pressed RTH, rather than going full throttle in sport mode, you might still have your drone.

A1000 Posted at 2017-2-2 09:55
Psy, thanks for posting and continuing with the dialogue.  With the Mavic, DJI has produced its first really mass market drone with its portability and usability and therefore it has opened up the fun to a much wider range of people with differing skills.  They've also made the Mavic relatively simple to fly, until something goes wrong, and therefore it's a learning curve for many.  If as you mention if went out 4km and made it back to 0.5km, then that's only 6% left to go, you were very unlucky.  Of the many lessons the simplest one is about ensuring that you have fully charged batteries at the beginning as the 15% down you had might be the reserves.

Really hope you get back in the air soon, and look forward to seeing some more footage from you

Unfortunately, I don't know if having 100% charged batteries would've saved me in this situation, as the RC and HD were low but not cutting out and I would've most definitely kept pushing the drone to fly out further, relying only RTH estimates without the information and knowledge I learned here today (and from losing the drone of course ...)

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 10:08
Unfortunately, I don't know if having 100% charged batteries would've saved me in this situation, as the RC and HD were low but not cutting out and I would've most definitely kept pushing the drone to fly out further, relying only RTH estimates without the information and knowledge I learned here today (and from losing the drone of course ...)

I love your honesty! I had overlooked the human psychology angle

fab6mR8WKokt Posted at 2017-2-2 10:06
You seem to want to blame DJI for not warning people that the drone can't calculate and take account of winds aloft.  So DJI is responsible for warning people about all the things the drone CAN'T do?

Sorry, but I don't think DJI can reasonably be blamed for this.  You chose to do a long-range test.  And you chose to do it over water.  And you chose to do it in windy conditions such that the drone would be facing a headwind on the return flight.  And you chose to do it with less than a fully charged battery.  And it was you--not DJI--that chose to switch to sport mode and go full throttle.

Heck yes of course DJI should be warning people about the things the drone CAN'T do.

We are talking about a mass consumer drone for the price of an iPhone, meaning kids can easily get their hands on one. Why wouldn't we want to warn people of the things it can't do?!?!?!?

A1000 Posted at 2017-2-2 10:10
I love your honesty! I had overlooked the human psychology angle

It was a range test! How else would I know what the drone can and cannot do, until the aircraft told me to stop, right?

Although in hindsight, this mindset could've very possibly cost me a good chunk of change ...

rick39 Posted at 2017-2-2 10:06
Are you aware that DJI care refresh policy on needing the drone to be recovered changed around the beginning of the year? I think you may well be covered by care refresh.

Are you sure about this? I know they did begin covering water damage around that time, but I was under the impression that you still have to recover and send in the aircraft. And the Care Refresh page still says that to start the process you have to "send your product to a designated DJI repair center under the instruction of DJI Support staff". Otherwise, as the OP himself has pointed out, they have no way of knowing that you really did lose the aircraft and would open themselves up to fraud.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 10:11
Heck yes of course DJI should be warning people about the things the drone CAN'T do.

We are talking about a mass consumer drone for the price of an iPhone, meaning kids can easily get their hands on one. Why wouldn't we want to warn people of the things it can't do?!?!?!?

You could use your Care Refresh if you have James Cameron go down in his sub to fetch it.   

"Heck yes of course DJI should be warning people about the things the drone CAN'T do. "

That would make for a very long manual, my friend.

"The DJI Mavic Pro cannot do the following:

- Fly upside down
- Fly in outer space
- Prepare your breakfast"

etc. etc.

DroneFlying Posted at 2017-2-2 10:17
Are you sure about this? I know they did begin covering water damage around that time, but I was under the impression that you still have to recover and send in the aircraft. And the Care Refresh page still says that to start the process you have to "send your product to a designated DJI repair center under the instruction of DJI Support staff". Otherwise, as the OP himself has pointed out, they have no way of knowing that you really did lose the aircraft and would open themselves up to fraud.

Having gone through the process today, I'd say it'd be very easy for them to look into the circumstances regarding each individual crash on a case by case basis. The flight information I synced allows them to play back the flight second by second with all telemetry, throttle, warning, geo-location information as if I was piloting it in real time.

Psy Posted at 2017-2-2 10:16
It was a range test! How else would I know what the drone can and cannot do, until the aircraft told me to stop, right?

Although in hindsight, this mindset could've very possibly cost me a good chunk of change ...

Well I guess you found the edge of the envelope - 7.5km