I was 2000 meters out in the line of sight 90 meters high and I hit the return to home button. The machine started coming back perfectly in line with my house. I could now see the machine clearly above the horizon and I thought everything was ok because I was 900 meters out and had 45 percent battery left. Out of nowhere without hitting any buttons the machine had said that it lost connection and as you can see from the end of the flight log it started going into a direction that was not towards my takeoff location. After it started going of track with no communication it began coming back home again as the controller had told me. At this time the barrery was running low because of all the misdirection that the return to home ended up creating. The machine got to 700 meters away and ran out of battery and looked to emergency land. My questions are why did the return to home malfunction? Is there any way I could get a better location where the drone currently is being that the remote continued to track the distance it was away from me even after the app crashed. Please look at the attached flight data as I have saved for this machine for 6 months and now its gone because of a malfunction. Please if there is any way to get later flight information out of remote let me know. I have looked for it for 5 hours and still have not been able to find it but if the remote can show me a more precise location where it actually landed I am sure I will be able to find it.

Please look at the attached flight data

I'm sorry you lost your aircraft, but I don't see any logs.

same here, no data

When you check you flight logs does it show last position before thing to land? When i last mine i used the longatude and lattitude cordenates to find it and was sucessful?  Sorry for your logs would really suck to have feeling of not finding it yet! Could see and attached logs? Got screenshot or anything?

1. When Mavic loses connection to RC for more than 3-5 secs it should return home by itself (Smart RTH)

Therefore it should not be a matter of having connection or not to the RC

2. This could only happen when Mavic loses GPS-lock "out of nowhere" which was reported here many times

Sorry to hear that. Just a question if you had line of sight which is not easy at 2000 meters, why did you hit RTH..
Also as others have said no logs. You can upload here http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/.

This is the flight log

You can see at the end that it started to deviate from the correct return to home location. DJI said that nuthing happened but why did it stop returning to home by itself without me touching the joystick? The reason I hit return to home was because i thought it would be the easiest way to get the machine home. As you can see i had plenty of battery left and DJI said this is the last known location. I had lost communication and searched that whole area. Even with no communication the remote said it was 720 meters before it emergency landed. Last communication was 944 meters out so i am assuming the machine shouldve been 224 meters closer to original location then this states. Has this ever happened to anyone and should i assume it is 224 meters closer to me then this location. I google earthed it and it wouldve been in parking lot. i drove there within minutes and it wasnt there. Could i assume that the remote was incorrect?

First of all, export the logs and upload them so we can check what was going on.

Second, I've seen your image and this is the last location you're displaying there: https://goo.gl/maps/zTKNPn4v4uM2

It does not look like a parking lot. What was your RTH altitude? It seems that your drone goes back straight to you and then it falls down. Maybe it hit something or maybe it performed an emergency landing due to the low battery. Mind that your RTH altitude is set based on your starting point, and might not be enough clearance if you fly to a position where the ground is higher. Mind as well that the remaining flight time is an estimate, and the winds can change a lot when you go up, and when you go further, so you might face strong winds/front wind and be left with not enough juice.


Good luck with the search, and if you give us those logs on healthydrones.com or phantomhelp then we'll probably be able to help you further.

Just seen the picture again and you still had 30% battery, I would say... it looks like it hit something :/ Definately upload the logs!

When people mention uploading the flight log, they're talking about a file that's created / stored on your mobile device during the flight. Here's a link to the Healthy Drones instructions on how to do that.

From the screen shot you provided, it looks like the Mavic's last reported position was at the edge of some trees; what is / was your RTH altitude set to? Most likely it wasn't high enough for your Mavic to clear the tree line. And as far as the path right before that not being straight goes, that was probably object avoidance (OA) being activated to prevent it from running into obstacles (trees). Yes, the automated RTH will try to return to you in a straight line, but if OA is active it'll also try not to run into things on its way back and can / will deviate from the straight line if it needs to. On the other hand, if it reaches a line of trees that's taller than its RTH altitude, it'll never make it back to you because it won't ascend higher than you've allowed it to.

MarcShibley Posted at 2017-2-8 07:35
You can see at the end that it started to deviate from the correct return to home location. DJI said that nuthing happened but why did it stop returning to home by itself without me touching the joystick? The reason I hit return to home was because i thought it would be the easiest way to get the machine home. As you can see i had plenty of battery left and DJI said this is the last known location. I had lost communication and searched that whole area. Even with no communication the remote said it was 720 meters before it emergency landed. Last communication was 944 meters out so i am assuming the machine shouldve been 224 meters closer to original location then this states. Has this ever happened to anyone and should i assume it is 224 meters closer to me then this location. I google earthed it and it wouldve been in parking lot. i drove there within minutes and it wasnt there. Could i assume that the remote was incorrect?

224 meters is roughly the distance from the southern edge of the wooded area to the front of the strip mall. If it wasn't in the parking lot, then there's a chance that it landed on the roof of one of the buildings. I'd visit each of the stores to ask if they know of a drone being found and, if that fails, maybe ask if there's some way to check on the roof. The forum software doesn't seem want to let me include the name of the sporting goods store, but I'd guess that "Richard's" Sporting Goods looks like your best bet.

I 100% didnt hit something the elevation was about 50 meters lower then home and 4 minutes after this location i saw it land. It was around 150 meters high when it started dropping.