mtnphotoman
lvl.1
Flight distance : 187940 ft
United States
Offline
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Just had the same problem.
I've had my Mavic Pro for over a year now, and am an experienced pilot. I fly it at least 2-3 times a week just to stay in practice, and consider myself to be a competent pilot with it.
I was out flying my Mavic Pro, completely away from ANY restricted airspace or geofencing. Around my neighborhood as always with no problems.
I was out getting used to the fixed wing mode, and having a great time.
Everything was going smoothly as usual, until I came close to the limit (25%) on the battery power. So, like always I hit the return-to-home and was watching my drone start heading back for a regular landing.
Unfortunately at just the wrong time a headwind started to pick up and getting home was going to be close, but still possible. However the battery level was dropping quickly, and then at 13% battery the drone went into it's automatic landing mode.
I tried to cancel the automatic landing mode so I could fly it another 50 feet to the road where I could land safely.
However when I went to cancel the automatic landing mode, the button was grey and I was unable to cancel it. I tried everything I knew to get out of the mode while I still had about 10-13% battery, but nothing happened!
I've had to do this before (with less than 10% battery), and successfully cancelled the auto landing mode, flew the drone about 300 feet to a safe landing site.
However when I tried to do just that, I COULD NOT CANCEl THE AUTO LANDING!
I'm fighting with the controller, trying to figure out what was happening and the drone just hovered above a bunch of pine trees because it wasn't a good landing place.
If I were able to cancel the auto-landing, fly it manually another 190 feet I would have been able to land easily and safely on a dirt road.
Instead the controls would not respond to anything, and eventually the drone ran out of battery power, the props stopped and it landed in the top of an 80-foot tall pine tree!
It looked like it had a rather soft landing in the tree, I just hope it wasn't damaged.
Since the forest is so dense it's difficult to even find it, I'll have to go back out tomorrow and search for it. I don't even know if I'll be able to see it up in the tree.
So my question is why the hell did DJI make it so you can no longer cancel the auto landing? You used to be able to do so, but now you cannot!
If I had been able to cancel the auto-landing like before my Mavic Pro would not be stuck 80 feet up a pine tree!
DJI should have warned all its users about this critically important change to the firmware, had I known I would have changed how I fly it.
DJI FIX THIS, NOTIFY YOUR CUSTOMERS WHEN YOU MAKE RADICAL CHANGES THAT COULD AFFECT THE SAFETY OF OPERATING A DRONE!
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