I was flying my Spark today and  when I was about 400 meters away, the drone disconnected from the controller. I tried to use Return To Home to get it to come back to me, but after several minutes of attempting to do that, it wouldn’t work and it never came back to me. I ended up trying to find it with the Find My Drone feature on the DJI iOS app, but that didn’t work.
I’m very confused as to why the RTH feature would not work. As I look to get a new drone, Can anyone help me understand what might have happened and provide me with any tips or suggestions on how I can avoid having a situation like that happen in the future?

Here is a copy of my flight log: http://app.airdata.com/main?share=sVNPfX&page_id=SENSORS

Do I see that right, you did fly your Spark over three 5 or 6 storey buildings out of LOS?
This is not a reason for "no RTH", only to trigger a connection loss. In my eyes.

Griff84, I am so sorry to hear about your loss. Please check the flight records on the DJI GO 4 app of this accident, check the take-off point, pull the progress bar to the end if it is right, then you can see the location of the last signal of your drone. Try to find your drone there.
Please note that manually toggle RTH doesn't function when the drone disconnected.
BTW, had you reported this to our support? If you haven't, please send an email to support.us@dji.com and start a data analysis, we will help to find out the reason.

Yet another, 'yaw error + spark lost' case. There are quite a couple of them reported recently here. At 8min 51s of flight time, Spark reported a yaw error. After that Spark invalidated any gps info it was getting and switched into atti mode. Hence it was unable to perform RTH and kept flying in its prior direction till it either landed due to law battery or crashed hitting some obstacle. I guess the first case is more likely as you altitude was over 100m and the map does not show anything of this height. Thus it may easily be miles away now.
The real question is what caused the yaw error in the first place. It might have been a magnetic interference as many people suggested in other similar threads, but I see that the altitude at that time was 111m and magnetic interferences do not just fly in the air. The number of recent fly-away reports with similar symptoms is quite striking, btw.

"The real question is what caused the yaw error in the first place. It might have been a magnetic interference as many people suggested in other similar threads, but I see that the altitude at that time was 111m and magnetic interferences do not just fly in the air."

Interesting point. Would be really nice to know what is the "Safe Altitude" to exclude magnetic interference from the ground objects and what other magnetic interference opportunities might be encountered during the flight

nixuspix Posted at 2017-11-14 00:30
"The real question is what caused the yaw error in the first place. It might have been a magnetic interference as many people suggested in other similar threads, but I see that the altitude at that time was 111m and magnetic interferences do not just fly in the air."

Interesting point. Would be really nice to know what is the "Safe Altitude" to exclude magnetic interference from the ground objects and what other magnetic interference opportunities might be encountered during the flight

My spark flew away while I was travelling in Japan. After 1 min in the air (nothing far or high), RC indicated compass error,  then it switched to ATTI and said weak GPS signals, I tried RTH a few time but it failed, at one point, it was trying to land in water.  I tried to use ATTI to manually fly it back but it would not respond and eventually went away. Case reported to DJI and am just informed that they will compensate me with a brand new one. They said from an analysis of the flight data extracted from my phone, there was a compass error so they will give me a brand new one. However, after this incident, I am not sure if the same thing may happen to the new one.  Sounds like this fly away problem is random - I flew my spark at the same spot an hour before the fly away incident without any problem then on the 2nd go, it went away about 20 meters away from where i stood...

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-11-13 22:53
Griff84, I am so sorry to hear about your loss. Please check the flight records on the DJI GO 4 app of this accident, check the take-off point, pull the progress bar to the end if it is right, then you can see the location of the last signal of your drone. Try to find your drone there.
Please note that manually toggle RTH doesn't function when the drone disconnected.
BTW, had you reported this to our support? If you haven't, please send an email to  and start a data analysis, we will help to find out the reason.

Thank you for the message DJI Thor. I spent quite a while looking for it last night to no avail, unfortunately. I used the "Find My Drone" feature on the DJI GO 4 app, and scoured the area where it indicated that it would be, but couldn't find it. It might be in that area, but it's near a lot of houses (I shouldn't have been flying in that area, I know) and the drone is so tiny.

Anyway, I have submitted an e-mail to the support.us@dji.com like you suggested, and am waiting for a response. Thank you.

Also, just so I'm clear: you're saying that you can't manually use RTH when the drone disconnects? I'm quite confused by this because I have a Phantom 4 and I have been able to manually use RTH many times when it has disconnected in the past. Is that simply the nature of the difference between the Spark, and entry-level drone, and a higher end drone like the Phantom 4? I was expecting to be able to manually toggle RTH with the Spark, and it sounds like I shouldn't have.

How is RTH initiated via RC supposed to work when there is no connection between RC and AC? Fail-safe RTH normally is initiated automatically after the connection is lost however, RTH only works when the AC has a working GPS/compass and that is not the case in ATTI mode.

Fafawong Posted at 2017-11-14 01:16
My spark flew away while I was travelling in Japan. After 1 min in the air (nothing far or high), RC indicated compass error,  then it switched to ATTI and said weak GPS signals, I tried RTH a few time but it failed, at one point, it was trying to land in water.  I tried to use ATTI to manually fly it back but it would not respond and eventually went away. Case reported to DJI and am just informed that they will compensate me with a brand new one. They said from an analysis of the flight data extracted from my phone, there was a compass error so they will give me a brand new one. However, after this incident, I am not sure if the same thing may happen to the new one.  Sounds like this fly away problem is random - I flew my spark at the same spot an hour before the fly away incident without any problem then on the 2nd go, it went away about 20 meters away from where i stood...

Sounds like you had a similar experience as me. I'm really glad to hear that they are going to compensate you with a new one. What was that process like? After hearing your story, I'm optimistic that I might be able to get the same result with DJI. I'm just trying to learn from this, even if it was a malfunction and not due to anything that I did wrong. Perhaps I don't properly understand how RTH works with the Spark? I have a Phantom 4, and I have always been able to manually bring it back to me using RTH when it has lost a signal.

In the future I will definitely take better precautions when flying, such as not flying over a lot of private property, which significantly limits your ability to retrieve a drone in that type of situation.

Can you upload your log to link below airdata provide very little info and are usually incorrect. Just click on link and follow instructions come back here and post your link.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

_pk Posted at 2017-11-13 23:00
Yet another, 'yaw error + spark lost' case. There are quite a couple of them reported recently here. At 8min 51s of flight time, Spark reported a yaw error. After that Spark invalidated any gps info it was getting and switched into atti mode. Hence it was unable to perform RTH and kept flying in its prior direction till it either landed due to law battery or crashed hitting some obstacle. I guess the first case is more likely as you altitude was over 100m and the map does not show anything of this height. Thus it may easily be miles away now.
The real question is what caused the yaw error in the first place. It might have been a magnetic interference as many people suggested in other similar threads, but I see that the altitude at that time was 111m and magnetic interferences do not just fly in the air. The number of recent fly-away reports with similar symptoms is quite striking, btw.

Like hallmark007, I would prefer to first see the other logfile reading from phantomhelp. But if the Airdata reading is confirmed, you can see that the problems started already very early in the flight at much lower altitude with the AC switching to ATTI multiple times.
Correction: I had not read the logfile carefully enough and my observation here above is wrong. It did not switch into Atti mode at an early stage of the flight. Apologies for any confusion caused.

Griff84 Posted at 2017-11-14 05:58
Sounds like you had a similar experience as me. I'm really glad to hear that they are going to compensate you with a new one. What was that process like? After hearing your story, I'm optimistic that I might be able to get the same result with DJI. I'm just trying to learn from this, even if it was a malfunction and not due to anything that I did wrong. Perhaps I don't properly understand how RTH works with the Spark? I have a Phantom 4, and I have always been able to manually bring it back to me using RTH when it has lost a signal.

In the future I will definitely take better precautions when flying, such as not flying over a lot of private property, which significantly limits your ability to retrieve a drone in that type of situation.

The difference is that the guy in Japan was still in radio control of his Spark when it went to ATTI mode.  Not sure why he would hit RTH.  That is a good way to make it try to fly away since it has no GPS signal in ATTI mode.  He is claiming the drone ignored his stick commands which is odd.  Perhaps ignored stick commands because he had already initiated RTH?

Just fly it back to you manually when it goes into ATTI.  Or drop it right down to the ground if you don't have ATTI piloting skills, so you can find it in a known location to search.

Griff84 Posted at 2017-11-14 05:44
Thank you for the message DJI Thor. I spent quite a while looking for it last night to no avail, unfortunately. I used the "Find My Drone" feature on the DJI GO 4 app, and scoured the area where it indicated that it would be, but couldn't find it. It might be in that area, but it's near a lot of houses (I shouldn't have been flying in that area, I know) and the drone is so tiny.

Anyway, I have submitted an e-mail to the  like you suggested, and am waiting for a response. Thank you.

I am confused... If as you say the drone is disconnected from the controller how do you expect to initiate RTH... The control is not in communication with the drone, how could it send the command to RTH.

LouisP Posted at 2017-11-14 11:47
I am confused... If as you say the drone is disconnected from the controller how do you expect to initiate RTH... The control is not in communication with the drone, how could it send the command to RTH.

If controller disconnects from AC for more than 3 seconds AC will RTH. Automatically.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-11-14 12:09
If controller disconnects from AC for more than 3 seconds AC will RTH. Automatically.

not without GPS

Griff84 Posted at 2017-11-14 05:44
Thank you for the message DJI Thor. I spent quite a while looking for it last night to no avail, unfortunately. I used the "Find My Drone" feature on the DJI GO 4 app, and scoured the area where it indicated that it would be, but couldn't find it. It might be in that area, but it's near a lot of houses (I shouldn't have been flying in that area, I know) and the drone is so tiny.

Anyway, I have submitted an e-mail to the  like you suggested, and am waiting for a response. Thank you.

It is really painful that you couldn't find the drone at the end. Hope our support will give you some feedback on this accident. Just to clarify, when the drone is disconnected to the RC, then the order from the RC is not able to be received by the drone, so manually control won't work. If it is the transmission disconnect or app disconnect, but the linking of the drone and RC still keeps contact, you will be able to control the drone. But if condition available, the drone will initiate failsafe RTH. If you need more info about the failsafe RTH, please refer to the manual.