When flying my Mavic Pro today at 2 m/s wind speed, I noticed that it goes slightly to the left when flying straight ahead. Is it normal behaviour that the drone drags a little to one side?

Try a compass and a handset configuration that may help.

Not in those wind speeds. Calibrate your RC and IMU at home before your next flight.

No - not normal behaviour - but quite possibly something you can correct. The RC is very sensitive, it is possible that when you are making forwrd stick input that at the same time you are also pushing a little bit to the left and this could be the cause of yr drift.

Bekaru Tree Posted at 2018-1-20 08:44
No - not normal behaviour - but quite possibly something you can correct. The RC is very sensitive, it is possible that when you are making forwrd stick input that at the same time you are also pushing a little bit to the left and this could be the cause of yr drift.

Good point! I will try again when weather permits and be very careful on how I control the sticks.

Usually depends on how many drinks you have had.........and whether the police are involved during the straight line test......

Plus, the drone needs to anticipate the rotation of the earth and lean a bit to overcome it.  

Please see, and add your comment to this thread, so that they know there is more than just one Mavic Pro with this problem: New (Replacement) Mavic Pro Rotates/Slides with No Controller Input

Howdy2u2 Posted at 2018-1-20 18:44
Usually depends on how many drinks you have had.........and whether the police are involved during the straight line test......

Arrre youuu accuss... Accussi... Saying I'm driiinking toooo mucccch?

Anthony566 Posted at 2018-1-20 08:32
Try a compass and a handset configuration that may help.

I always make a compass calibration when starting up. Will try a handset calibration as well (not quite sure how to do it, but Google is my friend ;) )

A CW Posted at 2018-1-20 08:37
Not in those wind speeds. Calibrate your RC and IMU at home before your next flight.

Will do! And thank you.

Ole Frederiksen Posted at 2018-1-21 01:33
I always make a compass calibration when starting up. Will try a handset calibration as well (not quite sure how to do it, but Google is my friend ;) )

It's most likely a defect. I've had two Mavic's with this same issue... Both went back to DJI. I'm currently waiting for DJI to send a third Mavic Pro.

StanfordWebbie Posted at 2018-1-20 21:10
Plus, the drone needs to anticipate the rotation of the earth and lean a bit to overcome it.

Ah.. So I have been out on a day where the Earth was spinning a little faster than usual

Okay, today I went to an old air field where the landing area is a straight road.
The weather was perfect: 0-1 m/s!

Here is a video of the result:


The first part I had just let the drone take off. And it goes slightly to the left.
The second part shows how it goes pretty much to the right.

When setting the course lock on, it should follow the air field pretty good. I was standing right behind it and could positively say it was pretty perfect lined up.

Before going off, I had calibrated the RC and calibrated the GPS.

Are we talking about I have to bring it back for repair?

These are the calibrations I might do, I've not heard of any GPS calibration, would that have been the compass ?

1) Sensors (Using DJI Assistant 2 v1.2.0, latest version), usually done just after update on Assistant 2.

2) IMU calibration (on a flat level surface).

3) Gimbal (just after IMU).

4) RC sticks (with aircraft off).

5) And compass (in an open area (not over steel reinforced concrete), away from ferrous materials or electromagnetic interference). Get one good calibration, and that should be all that is needed until informed by system or erratic flying that needs investigation. Note that any ferrous metals very close to legs (steel frame in desk, cutlery in kitchen drawer, windowsill strengthening etc) will generate a 'compass error', this does not mean compass needs recalibration. just move the aircraft away from source of interference.

Aardvark Posted at 2018-1-21 08:53
These are the calibrations I might do, I've not heard of any GPS calibration, would that have been the compass ?

1) Sensors (Using DJI Assistant 2 v1.2.0, latest version), usually done just after update on Assistant 2.

Compass calibration is what I call GPS calibration :-).

I will try all 5 calibrations and give it another try.

Is it correct that 1-4 can be done at home? And then #5 at the location where I am going to fly.
Or do I have to do #2-3 at the location where I am going to fly?

Ole Frederiksen Posted at 2018-1-21 10:28
Compass calibration is what I call GPS calibration :-).

I will try all 5 calibrations and give it another try.

They can all be done at home if you have an open garden where compass could be done.

So yes first four would be done at home (pc needed for Assistant 2).

Compass can be done in any fairly clear area, and that's it, it should never need to be calibrated again until prompted by system (remember to move aircraft away from any local source of interference, metal frames in desk, screws hinges on tables etc. The compass is at the bottom of one of the legs). Or if there were some erratic flight behaviour (which you might have :-) ).

Compass readings can also be checked by looking at 'Main Controller Settings' / 'Advanced Settings' / 'Sensors' and then you will see IMU stability, and by tapping on 'Compass' tab the compass stability (green is good, and the smaller the better).

Aardvark Posted at 2018-1-21 08:53
These are the calibrations I might do, I've not heard of any GPS calibration, would that have been the compass ?

1) Sensors (Using DJI Assistant 2 v1.2.0, latest version), usually done just after update on Assistant 2.

Regarding calibrating the Compass: I had other problems with my drone once and was told by DJI that I should calibrate every time I get to a new location (or simply: whenever I arrive at the place I want to be) before flying.

Also reading their 15 beginner tips (https://forum.dji.com/thread-130098-1-1.html) tip #6 is about calibrating before each flight.

Thank you for all the tips! I have done the first 4 and just needs to do a compass calibration. Hopefully the weather is nice next weekend so I can fly the drone again. Living in a big city makes it a bit difficult flying a drone :-)

Was out again today after calibrations. And no luck! It still turns to one side.

And today another Mavic Pro user was out in the same field and his drone flew perfectly in a straight line.

Weather conditions: About 4 degrees Celcius and 3-4 m/s wind speed. Cloudy.

I will send the drone in for repair.

Ole Frederiksen Posted at 2018-1-27 07:40
Was out again today after calibrations. And no luck! It still turns to one side.

And today another Mavic Pro user was out in the same field and his drone flew perfectly in a straight line.

Get the drone back from the supplier. They calibrated everything and said it is now flying perfect.

Today I was out in 3-4 m/s and ... it flies just as badly as before the calibration :-(. Now I'm not sure if I'm too sensitive about how straight it should be able to fly in 3-4 m/s.

I will make some more tests when the wind is better and then try flying somewhere else where the drone is also protected against the wind.

Ole Frederiksen Posted at 2018-1-27 07:40
Was out again today after calibrations. And no luck! It still turns to one side.

And today another Mavic Pro user was out in the same field and his drone flew perfectly in a straight line.

I'm on my 5th Mavic Pro. They all did what you are experiencing, all to different degrees. One, if I flew 300 yeards out, turned around and flew back, it would miss the entire hill I was flying from by 200 yards. This was how DJI washed their hands of the entire situation:


"We have checked and reviewed the video you sent. Also, it is really hard to tell if we are just going to base on the video that you sent but with your explanations, we have a little bit view about the point.

The views and activity of the Mavic is normal and it does not have any problem. However, I would suggest to calibrate the IMU and Compass before flying the aircraft the next time."

In other words, the defective behavior of your Mavic Pro is normal. Hahahaha. Love it.

Just ignore the DAT files, and the entire history of the problem, and the other people experiencing the same issues. Close your eyes, plug your ears... Just tell your customers "It's normal"

Ole Frederiksen Posted at 2018-2-10 09:52
Get the drone back from the supplier. They calibrated everything and said it is now flying perfect.

Today I was out in 3-4 m/s and ... it flies just as badly as before the calibration :-(. Now I'm not sure if I'm too sensitive about how straight it should be able to fly in 3-4 m/s.

No matter how much DJI pretends they've never heard of it, this problem had been going on for a year! Look at this thread!

StanfordWebbie Posted at 2018-1-20 21:10
Plus, the drone needs to anticipate the rotation of the earth and lean a bit to overcome it.

He is trying to fly to far.  The Mavic Pro is smart enough it is compensating for earth being a globe, by taking most efficient route; using Great Circle Navigation.

Hi, i've got exactly the same problem, did you find any solution ?

Nocomstudio Posted at 2018-2-24 00:45
Hi, i've got exactly the same problem, did you find any solution ?

Not yet. The wind has been more than 2-3 m/s the times I have had the time to test the drone. I would like to do some more tests before I might return it. The weather forecast this weekend doesn't look to good either!

I do fly the drone in more wind than 2-3 m/s, but for this test I would like it to be more calm.

Okay , this does not really count as a proof that something is wrong with the drone since I was using Litchi as my controlling app (and the controller) to fly the drone. But apparently it is not only a straight line that is the problem! Also the height causes problems.

The drone was (according to my flight record in Lichi) approimately 13-14 feet above the ground - but the drone and Earth did not agree on that! As I was flying on a frozen lake, I assume that the ground was pretty level!

Both my mavic pro and P4P do this also and I've never been able to pinpoint quite why. There must be a reason for it, but since they both do it it must be normal somehow. IMU and compass calibration doesn't seem to have any effect. Neither does wind, since it happens in no wind conditions too, though a crosswind does make it a little worse.
Some of this is the camera drifting too. After a yaw-only turn, I notice the view keeps drifting a bit after I go back to center stick. If I apply corrections it eventually stops.

I've just learned to hand fly them with aileron and yaw stick inputs to keep them going straight.....

luciens Posted at 2018-2-24 08:12
Both my mavic pro and P4P do this also and I've never been able to pinpoint quite why. There must be a reason for it, but since they both do it it must be normal somehow. IMU and compass calibration doesn't seem to have any effect. Neither does wind, since it happens in no wind conditions too, though a crosswind does make it a little worse.
Some of this is the camera drifting too. After a yaw-only turn, I notice the view keeps drifting a bit after I go back to center stick. If I apply corrections it eventually stops.

It's a problem DJI is aware of, but they are not doing anything to fix it. If you send your aircraft back to them, they'll "fix" a random part, then ship you back another, random refurbished drone - not even the one they just "fixed". They won't even test the refurbished one to make sure it doesn't do what yours did.

Jyunte Posted at 2018-2-27 20:38
It's a problem DJI is aware of, but they are not doing anything to fix it. If you send your aircraft back to them, they'll "fix" a random part, then ship you back another, random refurbished drone - not even the one they just "fixed". They won't even test the refurbished one to make sure it doesn't do what yours did.

Well, all the more reason I just learned to hand fly mine . And yes you're right, for the most part, Bugs Are Forever with DJI in general and you just eventually learn to live with them/work around them. And therefore never ever update your firmware once you finally land on the one with the least nasty bugs .

That said, the crooked flight course thing fortunately isn't that severe with my P4P. The mavic pro has the usual camera problems so it's useless for videography; I fly it just for fun FPV flying and don't care if it doesn't fly straight. But my P4P which I do take videos with doesn't require really huge inputs. Just hold a little left or right stick as needed when going up a long hill or etc. The trick is just practicing and inputting just the right amount to keep it going straight at just the right speed and the right time....

luciens Posted at 2018-2-27 21:04
Well, all the more reason I just learned to hand fly mine . And yes you're right, for the most part, Bugs Are Forever with DJI in general and you just eventually learn to live with them/work around them. And therefore never ever update your firmware once you finally land on the one with the least nasty bugs .

That said, the crooked flight course thing fortunately isn't that severe with my P4P. The mavic pro has the usual camera problems so it's useless for videography; I fly it just for fun FPV flying and don't care if it doesn't fly straight. But my P4P which I do take videos with doesn't require really huge inputs. Just hold a little left or right stick as needed when going up a long hill or etc. The trick is just practicing and inputting just the right amount to keep it going straight at just the right speed and the right time....

The camera on the Mavic is fine for what it is, and can produce some great results... But not if the flight of the aircraft is uncontrollable and unpredictable. It's the unpredictability of it that destroys the shot. One time, I was flying above an empty road. I used full left "aileron", but couldn't stop the aircraft from drifting to the right. I couldn't add left yaw, because that would rotate the camera. The aircraft was crabbing sideways, not turning and flying in a different direction. This same problem occurs when there's no wind, when there's a headwind, tailwind, or cross wind. It always crabs to the right.

This is the kind of problem you need to get on a plane and visit DJI and insist on getting an engineer to have a test flight with you and demonstrate the problem and don't go home until they understand the problem.

What happens one day if I stop my drone and in the process it shoots off to the right several meters and chews someones face off?
Or crashes into something and destroys itself while doing its uncontrollable shoot off to the right? Operator error? Like hell!

My mavic pro does this aswell, didn't do it from new but 3 months on and trying to fly along a straight railway track is very hard and ruining my shots

I have changed my props aswell but that didn't work either

I wonder if this is a later firmware problem?
Jyuntes first drone didn't do it, what was the firmware at back then?
Jyunte, what version of firmware is your mate running?

Mavdude Posted at 2018-2-27 23:24
This is the kind of problem you need to get on a plane and visit DJI and insist on getting an engineer to have a test flight with you and demonstrate the problem and don't go home until they understand the problem.

What happens one day if I stop my drone and in the process it shoots off to the right several meters and chews someones face off?

Yes, I will get a flight record of this showing it to DJI. But first we need higher temperatures than -7 C and wind speeds at about 10 m/s on average!

Steeevo Posted at 2018-2-28 00:31
My mavic pro does this aswell, didn't do it from new but 3 months on and trying to fly along a straight railway track is very hard and ruining my shots

I have changed my props aswell but that didn't work either

Exact same symptoms here! First three months - no problem. Then it all started :-(

Coriolos effect. If you were south if the equator it would drift right.  

Jyunte Posted at 2018-2-27 23:03
The camera on the Mavic is fine for what it is, and can produce some great results... But not if the flight of the aircraft is uncontrollable and unpredictable. It's the unpredictability of it that destroys the shot. One time, I was flying above an empty road. I used full left "aileron", but couldn't stop the aircraft from drifting to the right. I couldn't add left yaw, because that would rotate the camera. The aircraft was crabbing sideways, not turning and flying in a different direction. This same problem occurs when there's no wind, when there's a headwind, tailwind, or cross wind. It always crabs to the right.

As I said, some of that seems to be the camera too. I see that on the P4P also, where the cam only very slowly drifts into position after making a turn. There's a pan-follow setting (can't remember the name exactly) that's supposed to make this smooth, but turning it on and off doesn't affect this slow drift. What I do is stop and pull into a hover, and wait until it settles down before hitting record.

So it's not entirely the aircraft's fault, but I'm not sure why the gimbal does this. It must be normal since it happens on both my mavic pro and P4P.

This is why  it's almost imperative to do shots FPV and with the goggles. Pretty fine hand-flying is required to keep the view from mushing around or the copter from drifting sideways.

As I also said, when there's little to no wind it's fortunately not that bad on the P4P. I wouldn't even try to do anything professional looking with a mavic pro, but it's still loads of fun for general FPV flying.

Mavdude Posted at 2018-2-27 23:24
This is the kind of problem you need to get on a plane and visit DJI and insist on getting an engineer to have a test flight with you and demonstrate the problem and don't go home until they understand the problem.

What happens one day if I stop my drone and in the process it shoots off to the right several meters and chews someones face off?

Well, most companies purposefully prevent direct access to their engineering staff for good reasons. Mainly because if they're constantly being hassled and interrupted they literally can't do their jobs. So that's a good reason companies do that.

Also, most companies get big with large profit margins partly by severely understaffing their development and support departments - the ratio of sales/marketing compared to dev/QA/support can literally be as much as 10-1 in a really big organization if not worse than that. Support, in particular, is a huge cost center so companies do their absolute darndest to make test and support as cheap as possible and capable of only the bare minimum required. That's not such a good thing, but it's kind of a fact of life for any customers of software/firmware/hardware businesses. Get as much of it sold as possible first, then actually manufacturing and shipping it in a working condition is priority, maybe #100, more of an afterthought than much else.

So these companies like DJI end up in a kind of rock & hard place situation: there's so much constant demand for new features now, now, now and also constant demand that they stop going so fast and just fix all the bugs now, now, now. And since they don't have the staff to do either, you get constant firmware releases with steady diets of new bugs in every one, and only occasional fixes of the existing bugs and then only in case it's something just completely totally broken. They kind of don't have much choice, though the problem is generally of their own making.

I've been in the software business my entire adult life, and this dreary situation is the one constant in my entire career at every place I've worked.

All that is just to say why the support at DJI is so bad and why their firmware updates are so infested with bugs. Not excusing it, just giving an explanation for why it's like this for better or worse so that we can at least understand the problem. It's actually very common in the whole high-tech industry and DJI isn't really that unusual..

Mavdude Posted at 2018-2-27 23:24
This is the kind of problem you need to get on a plane and visit DJI and insist on getting an engineer to have a test flight with you and demonstrate the problem and don't go home until they understand the problem.

What happens one day if I stop my drone and in the process it shoots off to the right several meters and chews someones face off?

I live an hour's drive from the DJI Cerritos repair facility, here in California. I volunteered to drive there to deliver my defective Mavic Pro and pick up the replacement. I was told they were unable to allow that to happen, for security purposes. The supervisor there told me he would personally test the last replacement Mavic Pro before sending out to me. He said his flight team would test fly it and video the flight. None of that happened. There were no flight records on the aircraft I received, the firmware was at mismatched levels, the battery had never been charged, there was no video on the SD card. When this was pointed out, he simply stopped responding to email. Later, I got an email from someone else at DJI saying that my Mavic Pro was "behaving normally"... a conclusion based on zero investigation on their part.

Mavdude Posted at 2018-2-27 23:24
This is the kind of problem you need to get on a plane and visit DJI and insist on getting an engineer to have a test flight with you and demonstrate the problem and don't go home until they understand the problem.

What happens one day if I stop my drone and in the process it shoots off to the right several meters and chews someones face off?

That is exactly my dear too. I like to shoot for proximity shots. But I can't because the aircraft flies off to the side when stopping!  Here's an example...