Dear all

I just joined this Forum as I yesterday lost my Mavic Pro and want to inquire further what happened. :-(

I  have been on a regular flight and started to use Tap to Fly which was a bad idea it seems. The Mavic was  on a descending path when suddenly I lost signal. Obviously the drone  was getting too low and there where some obstacles between me and the  drone which must have blocked the signal.

First I wasn't too  concerned as I was trusting on the VPS sensors and was sure it will stop  and initiate RTH. But noting like this happened. After a couple of  minutes I took a boat and paddled to the place were I lost it. A  fisherman who was around told me he saw it and the Mavic just continued  descending until it hit the water. For me very surprising and not  understandable as the VPS sensors always worked very fine, even over  water.

We will try to find the drone again today, the water is  not too deep there but yesterday it started raining and sight was  getting bad.

Flight details can be found here: http://app.airdata.com/main?share=ZhMXwd

If  anyone can give me more hints what went wrong, this would be much  appreciated. Do I have any chance to claim for warranty as this should  never have happened in my view? And last question, is there a  possibility to see the VPS signal on Airdata? I could not find. But at  the end of the flight, just when I lost signal, it should already have  seen ground I believe.

Thank you very much for any possible support.
Daniel

i dont usually use tap to fly or whatever it is called, i tried it only a few times and everytime i have used it almost resulted in crashes usually with the ground... im pretty sure it just ignores VPS...  i cancel it on my mavic pro because its obviously not watching out for itself as it starts heating into a tangled mess of trees or kicking off fine dry dust off the ground... but when i used to own a spark, i did let it crash a few times (softly) and it seemed very ignorant of the ground coming at it...

hopefully DJi approves you for repair for free, because it sounds like a malfunction regardless it should be smart enough to avoid obvious stuff like water/walls/trees, it is advertised/intelligent as a smart feature which implies it should use sensors as needed.

Sorry to hear, Daniel, is the drone still within the warranty period? If yes, I would recommend you report this to the Support, they'll start a case for you. http://www.dji.com/support

@HereForTheBeer This is about exactly the impression I got. It just ignored VPS... Sad I lost connection the moment I wanted to cancel and pull up. :-(
I guess it was the last time I used Tap to Fly... Independent how this ends.

@DJI Diana: thanks I will do so. However, I guess I must find the drone first prior to your support being ready to discuss further, right? Currently it is still floating on the ground of Volta River in Ghana.... :-(

In any case, thanks for your feedback.
Daniel

dlauchen Posted at 2017-9-25 02:01
@HereForTheBeer This is about exactly the impression I got. It just ignored VPS... Sad I lost connection the moment I wanted to cancel and pull up. :-(
I guess it was the last time I used Tap to Fly... Independent how this ends.

Daniel, I understand your frustration. Generally, we do not suggest to fly closely above the water as the barometer will be affected and measure altitude maybe not accurate.

As the drone has fallen into the water, I think finding the drone and contacting DJI Support can be done at the same time. We also would like to look into this and learn from the accident. Please tell us your case number once you got it, I'd like to help. Also, safety is top priority, please take care when you are looking for it. Good luck!

DJI Susan Posted at 2017-9-25 05:30
Daniel, I understand your frustration. Generally, we do not suggest to fly closely above the water as the barometer will be affected and measure altitude maybe not accurate.

As the drone has fallen into the water, I think finding the drone and contacting DJI Support can be done at the same time. We also would like to look into this and learn from the accident. Please tell us your case number once you got it, I'd like to help. Also, safety is top priority, please take care when you are looking for it. Good luck!

Thank you @DJI Susanne
I will contact DJI Support and keep you posted while the search continues.

Best
Daniel

dlauchen Posted at 2017-9-25 05:59
Thank you @DJI Susanne
I will contact DJI Support and keep you posted while the search continues.

Case number is CAS-1036660-F7M8V1
But I am not sure about next steps. It said they will send me a label for shipping which I can't do before I found the drone... Let's wait and see for the moment.

Really sorry for your loss.......I'm sure it really is a bummer.
Don't mean to be a wet blanket but there are a couple of things in the Mavic manual that maybe you didn't see......first off on page 18 it talks about the limitations of  the "Tap to Fly".  I have included a screen shot of the manual page.
Secondly under the VPS section on page 26 it talks about how the VPS sensors are affected under certain conditions.  The second screenshot is of page 26.
Sounds like the sensors just were not working over the water.

Again really sorry for your loss and hope you can retrieve your Mavic AND I hope you have DJI Care.
Good Luck!!

That being said.......you should always start a ticket and see what DJI can figure out from your logs.......its possible it was not the sensors, but some kind of malfunction.
You never know.

dlauchen Posted at 2017-9-25 06:25
Case number is CAS-1036660-F7M8V1
But I am not sure about next steps. It said they will send me a label for shipping which I can't do before I found the drone... Let's wait and see for the moment.

Well received, thank you! Per the case log, the drone has not been found for now, so the case has been revised as RTHF. Here is the new case number: CAS-1036877-Q4H8P0. The data analysis has been submitted, our colleagues will contact you as soon as the analysis finished. Appreciate your patience.

Thank you @Tmygun and @DJI Susan, well noted. I indeed only saw these points in the manual afterwards. However, when fist time flying over water I was very careful and started to have more trust when I realized that the VPS sensors always showed credible results. So I am very surprised they did not come in this time.
But as DJI Susan mentioned we seem to have also a RTHF here, followed by the crash later on. Not so sure we still can find the drone. Some fishermen went out yesterday and searched for it with no luck. They promised to try again today but I am not too optimistic anymore. There is some little current there and I have no idea about the floating behavior of a Mavic Pro. Don't want to use another one to find out... :-)
Let's wait for the reply from DJI support and hope for the best in the meantime.

I have seen several videos on the issue of flying above water- not 50-60 feet above, but below 10 feet- that mention the sensors under the drone have a hard time determining that it is "solid ground". However, many of the issues appear to be with fast-flowing water, and not stagnant (lake) water. Since I am a new user, I want to make sure I don't have this issue..can anyone chime in? It almost sounds like that is the case here...

I FLY WITH MY MAVIC PRO OVER THE OCEAN IN RIO DE JANEIRO IN TAP FLY AND I RUN EVERYTHING ALL NORMAL BUT I WAS FLYING HIGH, IT FOLLOWS THE LINK OF THE FLIGHT, A LONG FLIGHT BUT BEAUTIFUL

"to use Tap to Fly which was a bad idea it seems."


Oh wow, hope you find the MP and resolve the issue with the assistance of DJI. Always gut-wrenching to hear the lost of such an expensive copter.

Honestly, I don't even use that tap-fly feature. As least for me, it's not something that I trust enough to use freely. I've only used all three tracking options and tripod.

jeepguy67 Posted at 2017-9-26 04:50
I have seen several videos on the issue of flying above water- not 50-60 feet above, but below 10 feet- that mention the sensors under the drone have a hard time determining that it is "solid ground". However, many of the issues appear to be with fast-flowing water, and not stagnant (lake) water. Since I am a new user, I want to make sure I don't have this issue..can anyone chime in? It almost sounds like that is the case here...

I've flown over water as low as 16 feet on (S)port mode but nothing less. And, did it over a period of time of testing the altitude.  There's been talk about not going below 30 feet which is where I mostly stay but a couple of times, I pushed the envelope for certain vid shots.

Thank goodness nothing happen; also I do not recommend.  I know the MP automatic will descend and land at I think 9 feet (may def be effected if above water).

First of all, sorry for your loss.  It appears from the AirData report that you last attempt to enter TapFly mode failed and you continued in JoyStick mode (what ever that is). It appears that the downlink signal loss was momentary on several instances and probably not long enough to initiate RTH.  (Manual RTH would probably have been a good idea at that point.)
Hope you're able to find it.  Check your last recorded direction, altitude and rate of descent and try to calculate the splash point.  Remember that altitude may not be accurate.  Good luck!

dlauchen Posted at 2017-9-25 02:01
@HereForTheBeer This is about exactly the impression I got. It just ignored VPS... Sad I lost connection the moment I wanted to cancel and pull up. :-(
I guess it was the last time I used Tap to Fly... Independent how this ends.

Sorry you lost your bird.

I don't use tap to fly or any of that stuff. Trying to control a 3D object using a 2D screen is asking for trouble. I don't know why they even built it in there - it could be done better in some way.

droneflyers.com Posted at 2017-9-26 14:11
I don't know why they even built it in there - it could be done better in some way.

Yeah, it certainly could be done better in some way.  Like a pilot with two thumbs on the sticks.  It's not like you can say you've got your hands full riding a motorcycle or some other moving POI, yet still have time to tap around on a phone screen.

In the aviation world we have Children of the Magenta Line.  Here it seems we have children of the "intelligent" flight modes.

Indeed, tap to fly seems not the most convincing flight mode. Hardly used it so far and I  guess I am done with it...

dlauchen Posted at 2017-9-26 03:31
Thank you @Tmygun and @DJI Susan, well noted. I indeed only saw these points in the manual afterwards. However, when fist time flying over water I was very careful and started to have more trust when I realized that the VPS sensors always showed credible results. So I am very surprised they did not come in this time.
But as DJI Susan mentioned we seem to have also a RTHF here, followed by the crash later on. Not so sure we still can find the drone. Some fishermen went out yesterday and searched for it with no luck. They promised to try again today but I am not too optimistic anymore. There is some little current there and I have no idea about the floating behavior of a Mavic Pro. Don't want to use another one to find out... :-)
Let's wait for the reply from DJI support and hope for the best in the meantime.

Thanks for your time. We will keep follow up the case for you.

Hi again

Does anybody have experience how long it usually takes until one gets feedback from DJI support on a case? I placed my case close to two work weeks now. The feedback on my question by when I might expect an answer was:

The status of the analysis under case CAS-1036877-Q4H8P0 has been done.
As of now your case was forwarded to our engineers and waiting for final result. One of them will send an email regarding the final result of your analysis. This may take sometime for final result as our engineers are very cautious in the analysis.
We hope for your patience in regards with this matter.

I know I probably should be more patient. But who manages to be while waiting for getting back in the air...

Irate Retro Posted at 2017-9-26 15:09
Yeah, it certainly could be done better in some way.  Like a pilot with two thumbs on the sticks.  It's not like you can say you've got your hands full riding a motorcycle or some other moving POI, yet still have time to tap around on a phone screen.

In the aviation world we have Children of the Magenta Line.  Here it seems we have children of the "intelligent" flight modes.

Children of the Magenta Line... Those unable to stay on the glidesplope without ILS assist.

The only intelligent flight modes I used were follow and tripod (and tripod is basically a one-button reconfiguration of the controller). Tried tap to fly two times in controlled environments over land, but had to hit the breaks (pause button) both times to avoid undesirable flight behaviour, so this function is on my personal black list.

As for the Joystick mode - it's something the aircraft enters when commands from the controller/app go bad. You can't control the aircraft with the controller once it's in the Joystick mode (reads "Joystick" on the controller display), and the only way to exit it is to either initiate RTH or to switch to Sports mode and back.