rsands Posted at 2017-5-14 22:24
Sorry but I am going to agree with OP here, if the manual does not state it does not use the motors full power to get home then DJI are to blame.  Simply put (whether we like it or not) it does not say this in the manual (sorry if I have missed it) and if the drone is capable of fighting the wind in sport mode then the RTH function should use all it has got to try and get home.  But really this has nothing to do with the manual - if the drone has more power then use it

It is the drones highest priority to try and get home and it should do that with all it has got.

What if the AC is flying at full power into a headwind that drops its real velocity to some distance/per remaining battery which is less than the distance remaining to get home. It just won't make it, simple as that.
What you and the OP are asking is that the Mavic system has the smarts to continually recalculate its ability to get home given whatever the current (and possibly future) wind speed/direction is at any time. It just doesn't work this way. Say for 50% of the flight (and battery) there was no wind but when it got to the RTH point a howling gale come up opposing the return journey; never going to cope with that.
A better plan would be to always make the outbound journey upwind and then you've got a chance that if all remains the same the wind will assist the return journey. Does this make sense?

Something like trying to swim against a rip tide. Best bet is to swim across the rip toward an alternate "safe place' which may not necessarily be home or in this analogy, the beach.

TJAUS Posted at 2017-5-14 22:59
What if the AC is flying at full power into a headwind that drops its real velocity to some distance/per remaining battery which is less than the distance remaining to get home. It just won't make it, simple as that.
What you and the OP are asking is that the Mavic system has the smarts to continually recalculate its ability to get home given whatever the current (and possibly future) wind speed/direction is at any time. It just doesn't work this way. Say for 50% of the flight (and battery) there was no wind but when it got to the RTH point a howling gale come up opposing the return journey; never going to cope with that.
A better plan would be to always make the outbound journey upwind and then you've got a chance that if all remains the same the wind will assist the return journey. Does this make sense?

I am not saying the mavic should be smart to constantly adapt to wind gusts that it cannot detect flying downwind.  However the user pressed RTH with a lot of battery left.  If it is the case as that "sport mode" power is able to progress towards home then the mavic should do that.  It makes no difference whether it calculates if it can get home or not - we are talking two different things here: Smart RTH and RTH being invoked.

Smart RTH cannot work out windspeed and I agree that is not possible.  However during RTH its primary goal is to get home - nothing more nothing less.  Should it need more power to do that, then do it.  It is not hard in software engineering to see that you have the motor power at X and the distance to home is not moving.

rsands Posted at 2017-5-14 23:06
I am not saying the mavic should be smart to constantly adapt to wind gusts that it cannot detect flying downwind.  However the user pressed RTH with a lot of battery left.  If it is the case as that "sport mode" power is able to progress towards home then the mavic should do that.  It makes no difference whether it calculates if it can get home or not - we are talking two different things here: Smart RTH and RTH being invoked.

Smart RTH cannot work out windspeed and I agree that is not possible.  However during RTH its primary goal is to get home - nothing more nothing less.  Should it need more power to do that, then do it.  It is not hard in software engineering to see that you have the motor power at X and the distance to home is not moving.

That's is the point when i said RTH is useless in wind. If I called it back with 50% of battery or after flying more than 10 mins, I will take it as 100% of my mistake. Though I don't blame DJI for my loss since I took my own risk for what i wanted to do,  I am sure they have much room to improve RTH algorithm or at least give proper safety notes under RTH usage guideline.

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-15 01:31
That's is the point when i said RTH is useless in wind. If I called it back with 50% of battery or after flying more than 10 mins, I will take it as 100% of my mistake. Though I don't blame DJI for my loss since I took my own risk for what i wanted to do,  I am sure they have much room to improve RTH algorithm or at least give proper safety notes under RTH usage guideline.

Two obvious problems with switching to Sport mode during RTH are:

• RTH is also triggered by the battery being low, so people would understandably be angry if the Mavic did something that caused it to consume power even faster.
• OA is ineffective / disabled in Sport mode, so using Sport mode for RTH would undoubtedly sometimes result in the Mavic crashing into things on its way home, and again you'd see people complaining about that.
  

In other words, switching to Sport mode during RTH probably would have saved your Mavic -- but it would also likely have resulted in a loss by many other people who've benefited from the fact that it doesn't.

Having said all that, I do also think that adding more information to the user manual about RTH behavior is a good suggestion because I can understand that a novice might assume that the Mavic would use its maximum speed to return home. In other words, I think the current behavior is probably best in most cases, but I also think that it's probably a good idea to document that behavior.

DroneFlying Posted at 2017-5-15 02:59
Two obvious problems with switching to Sport mode during RTH are:

Definitely agree.  I love keyboard warriors here that think they are DJI experts and talk down to new members.  Everyone has to start out somewhere and a manual in the age of history is the go to source of truth for any product.  The manual from DJI is terrible and has so many missing bits of information - some very crucial bits as well.

Point one you make is smart RTH and that is different to what the user was doing here but I can see your concerns.

Point 2 would make me suggest a menu option be added - Use full power for RTH.  This will allow the user to set the drones mode depending on the weather.  If the user feels like that particular day needs more power they can enable that setting in the menu to let RTH use full power and accept OA is disabled.

This post has been littered with attitude and just going down the OP's throat and really he did nothing wrong other than assume the drone would use the required power to get itself home, which really it should do.

Dji could design a idiot proof drone and parents will continue to produce smarter idiots . WOW

I had a similar issue. My drone dived in to water in its first flight. No way to retrieve it

^^ Point proven .

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-15 05:20
it will be good that some idiots can understand how others can make enough $ to buy 10 drones if they spend the same amount of time for the idiots to learn how not to lose a drone.

Airdata shows an estimate of the time you'd get per battery. The lowest I've seen this is 11m 30s. I was flying in sport mode for a few minutes with the sticks maxed. So it can cut more than half the time.

Flycaster Posted at 2017-5-12 10:38
You might want to invest in something like this for practice at home:
https://www.amazon.com/Dromida-Unmanned-Vehicle-Quadcopter-Batteries/dp/B014MRAVUU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494614029&sr=8-1&keywords=dromida+drone

thanks. i will take some time to practice with new Mavic this time before next trip.

thehippoz Posted at 2017-5-15 07:28
Airdata shows an estimate of the time you'd get per battery. The lowest I've seen this is 11m 30s. I was flying in sport mode for a few minutes with the sticks maxed. So it can cut more than half the time.

Thanks for info.

rydfree41 Posted at 2017-5-15 07:16
^^ Point proven .

of cos, new drone will arrive in few days.   

Berk Posted at 2017-5-15 05:04
I had a similar issue. My drone dived in to water in its first flight. No way to retrieve it

I am sorry for your loss. I was a bit luckier to lose it in 2nd flight and still got a good memory of first and last short video with it. Good luck with future flights.

laceyboy Posted at 2017-5-12 12:51
For me, it's too much for just practice.

For me, it's too much for just practice.

That one yes, but the base Dromedia Komodo is like 80 bucks in the hobby shops. No camera, just a toy grade drone with ATTI mode. The one the other fellow listed is to much drone for a begginer. It will crash/gak....

PM160Mavic Posted at 2017-5-12 19:38
Well not just practice as in crashing lol.  Careful practice.  My fiancé asked what I wanted for my birthday so I asked for a drone lol.  Ended up grabbing me a Dromida.  Worked out great lol.

When you can do figure 8's with it, you should be ready to "Graduate".........

Who can analyse my below flight data and tell me what went wrong. My drone suddenly made a free fall to the water
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_Xak2U_YqpbTFFlcXNHaWs1T1k

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-12 07:21
I never claim that I'm a pilot who is familiar with drones. That was third time flying a drone as a beginner on 3rd day after opening the box. I m telling the fact with data that the drone recorded. RTH button is useless when windy.

You sound like an idiot for flying that far away, over water, and in the wind on your THIRD flight when you are clearly a noob, didn't read the manual, and the go and blame DJI for what is clearly pilot error.

Do the community a favor and take up a different hobby.

Berk 4 Posted at 2017-5-15 12:58
Who can analyse my below flight data and tell me what went wrong. My drone suddenly made a free fall to the water
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_Xak2U_YqpbTFFlcXNHaWs1T1k

If you have the cached video on your device. Airdata doesn't show much.

https://app.airdata.com/main?fli ... _id=GENERALOverview

Skold Posted at 2017-5-15 13:29
You sound like an idiot for flying that far away, over water, and in the wind on your THIRD flight when you are clearly a noob, didn't read the manual, and the go and blame DJI for what is clearly pilot error.

Do the community a favor and take up a different hobby.

yes, some idiots obviously think that keeping one drone to be safe for their life is a hobby. Can't accept the fact of discussion topic which they can't prove otherwise to disagree.

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-15 07:43
thanks. i will take some time to practice with new Mavic this time before next trip.

Good luck with second one and do not make any assumption.

laceyboy Posted at 2017-5-15 15:42
Good luck with second one and do not make any assumption.

Thanks for advice. Next trip is in June and will have enough time to learn more about the capabilities of Mavic on safe ground. : )

Skold Posted at 2017-5-15 13:29
You sound like an idiot for flying that far away, over water, and in the wind on your THIRD flight when you are clearly a noob, didn't read the manual, and the go and blame DJI for what is clearly pilot error.

Do the community a favor and take up a different hobby.

And you want to fly higher than 500 meters for no other reason that you just want to, they call that POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK.

You expect the drone to have feature it doesn't have. Fair point.

But if you had read the manual you knew it didn't had that superdeluxe feature.

It's like standing beside the freeway with an empty gas tank cause your navigation didn't direct you to the nearest gas station when you ran out of petrol.

In both cases your own fault

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-12 07:27
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1fpg5kji2joq8zt/MavicLastFlyRoute.PNG?dl=0

If Mavic knows winds peed and direction during flying, what happened to this Return To Home path with 78% battery left ?

I used to fly the F-4 Phantom.  We easily had the power to overcome winds, except on landing where we had a crosswind limit of 25 knots.  However in WWII bombers coming back from bombing raids in Japan ran into the jet stream (100+ mph winds) which was unknown until then.  Suddenly they didn't have the fuel to get home.  Lower altitude got them out of the wind.  When we dropped bombs manually it is the wind at your flying altitude at release that effects the bombs drift and you have to compensate with the sight aiming up wind.  We would get wind information from the meteorologist for  every 100 feet.  The winds usually changed upwards in velocity and can also be significantly different directions than surface winds.  If you fly North with a Westerly wind your flight path will be pushed Eastward.  The aircraft can only compensate if the wind is less than it's max speed in that direction.  Hope this helps.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-5-16 06:04
And you want to fly higher than 500 meters for no other reason that you just want to, they call that POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK.

There is always a reason why people take risk. This is not first case that a new user misunderstood about RTH button based on the advice given from DJI in this forum in another post.  The limitation for using RTH button in different situations can be found only in this forum after reading random posts.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-5-16 06:04
And you want to fly higher than 500 meters for no other reason that you just want to, they call that POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK.

That's why a lot of hobby pilots fly.  I'd be taking some photos/video too by the way.  

Mcflying Posted at 2017-5-16 06:26
You expect the drone to have feature it doesn't have. Fair point.

But if you had read the manual you knew it didn't had that superdeluxe feature.

there is no safety note about using RTH button in wind in user manual. The right thing I should have done and didn't do is visiting DJI website and aware there is a forum that new users can post the problems they face and learn to understand common problems though they may never be addressed by DJI and there will be more new users facing similar problems.

Bill in Ohio Posted at 2017-5-16 06:27
I used to fly the F-4 Phantom.  We easily had the power to overcome winds, except on landing where we had a crosswind limit of 25 knots.  However in WWII bombers coming back from bombing raids in Japan ran into the jet stream (100+ mph winds) which was unknown until then.  Suddenly they didn't have the fuel to get home.  Lower altitude got them out of the wind.  When we dropped bombs manually it is the wind at your flying altitude at release that effects the bombs drift and you have to compensate with the sight aiming up wind.  We would get wind information from the meteorologist for  every 100 feet.  The winds usually changed upwards in velocity and can also be significantly different directions than surface winds.  If you fly North with a Westerly wind your flight path will be pushed Eastward.  The aircraft can only compensate if the wind is less than it's max speed in that direction.  Hope this helps.

Thanks for advice. Yes, i understand that an object can't go against any force stronger that its max power.
I should have knowledge that time time that it is more efficient manually to fly at lower attitude in wind. I flied it to the nearest land when battery is about 20% left. but emergency RTH is auto triggered soon after and the drone started flying to home direction which will lead to the water between it and home position. I tried to cancel auto RTH to fly to land manually again. But, connection lost when drone is almost reaching the land.

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-17 00:13
There is always a reason why people take risk. This is not first case that a new user misunderstood about RTH button based on the advice given from DJI in this forum in another post.  The limitation for using RTH button in different situations can be found only in this forum after reading random posts.

You will find all the uses for RTH in your Manual, it tell you exactly what happens clearly, unfortunately it would be impossible for any manual to predict the conditions your are flying in.
But the manual does tell you about flying in suitable environments, but there are something's you need to be able to work out using what the manual tells you and the flying conditions you are faced with.

So the manual tells you in RTH you are flying at 22 mph it also explains that this speed is in optimum conditions , so after reading the manual you now have all this information, so you now go out to fly with all this knowledge and make a decision to fly or not,

If conditions are like in your case difficult you need to be aware what you are doing and it's you and only you who can take responsibility for what happens .

RTH is perfectly explained in the manual there is nothing missing and nothing left out, you just made the mistake in flying in the wrong environment (which is explained in your Manual) but forgot to take into account the conditions you were flying in . You should know before you start flying what the conditions are (the manual can't know what these are) and you will then be able with what you read in your manual to work out how you are going to approach you mission, you didn't do this so got caught out.

So in answer to your question, everything is clearly explained in your manual it doesn't need any more explanation, and this is why it's important to read all the manual not just bits of it.

Do not constantly spend your time complaining about a problem you may be having or may be up against, focus your time toward correcting the problem. Always remember, Time is value!”

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-17 00:33
there is no safety note about using RTH button in wind in user manual. The right thing I should have done and didn't do is visiting DJI website and aware there is a forum that new users can post the problems they face and learn to understand common problems though they may never be addressed by DJI and there will be more new users facing similar problems.

I'd say that falls along the lines of common sense.  They can't spell everything out for you.

Sorry this happened to you, but it really does sound like you could have avoided disaster.  Hindsight....  hopefully, you will have many successful flights. Good luck

fans41561333 Posted at 2017-5-17 00:49
Thanks for advice. Yes, i understand that an object can't go against any force stronger that its max power.
I should have knowledge that time time that it is more efficient manually to fly at lower attitude in wind. I flied it to the nearest land when battery is about 20% left. but emergency RTH is auto triggered soon after and the drone started flying to home direction which will lead to the water between it and home position. I tried to cancel auto RTH to fly to land manually again. But, connection lost when drone is almost reaching the land.

Old saying "There are Old pilots and Bold pilots,  but there are no OLD BOLD pilots".  Flying a drone you get to walk away, in a manned aircraft you might have been swimming home.  When do they normally get in trouble - when they are first starting out and later when they feel real confident they can handle things and get sloppy.


In the AF you would have studied the manual and emergency procedures, then you would get regular sim flights where they test your knowledge, skill, and emergency procedures as they fail things like failure of an engine, oil, hydraulics, landing gear, bad weather to force you to abort and go somewhere else to land all the way up to the point the only option is to eject.  Situational awareness was stressed, where is your emergency landing if something happens - go see "Sully" if you haven't.  My classmate knew his options the moment the birds struck.

I know there were a few times in my flying days I was lucky, I came home.  The others situation awareness and training saved the day.  Learn from this and Have Fun!

Seen loads of these situations come up now..pilot flies drone out to sea in strong wind and craft can't make it back, I'm sure i won't be doing it in a hurry, if i do any costal flying ill be sticking close to shore

Bummer about your loss. Good looking video. Im getting the impression im the only one that uses RTH almost every time I fly, if for nothing more than to see it in action. Maybe Ive gotten used to how perfect it is in 3dr flight control.  

Baldo81 Posted at 2017-5-12 06:10
RTH has to be used just in emergencies! It's always better the pilot being in control of the aircraft.

Lol I wish more people took control over the drone, I got lambasted on another forum for saying that its better to fly home manually.
unrelated to the quote you also have another option than sport mode, you could of turned off the forward avoidence sensors, in calm winds the Mavic usually goes around 30mph and I've found it plenty for most windy conditions, if that doesn't work I'll switch to sport mode.

Hello,
I see a lot of statements like:
> "I slowly understand the limitation of RTH button in wind "

Is it meant "heavy wind" (i.e. wind warning from the Mavic), or normal wind (less 4m/s) ?

and the "only" problem the user (bether: the Mavic) had was, the Mavic can't reach the homepoint because of wind and low speed from the Mavic (long time to fly home) ?

Personal notices:
- I never came to the idea to fly over ocean after third day as a newbie
- I nver came to the idea to fly 800meters away as a newbie
- I ...

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-5-17 03:34
You will find all the uses for RTH in your Manual, it tell you exactly what happens clearly, unfortunately it would be impossible for any manual to predict the conditions your are flying in.
But the manual does tell you about flying in suitable environments, but there are something's you need to be able to work out using what the manual tells you and the flying conditions you are faced with.

Yes. It is customer's own responsibility to be able avoid the shortcomings of Mavic since they chose to pay for it.