Hi,

I am very new to drones and have only had my Mavic Air for 1 week now. I'm not sure if this is just a misunderstanding of the messages or incorrect settings.

When Jim (my drone) detects it has only enough battery it auto initiates RTH, good, well we all know that. But twice now (both under very undesirable scenarios) the following has happened:

• Batter drops past threshold bsaed on distance to home location
• RTH is automatically initiated
• Not very long, possibly just seconds, after it starts to head home, the messages displays "Landing" rather than "Returning to home"
  

This was very worrying as once I was "lost" in my neighbourhood and the second time I was out at sea. Both times I managed to take control (the first was even more sketchy as I had first lost signal) but both times, I took control and navigated the drone home, rather than relying on the RTH to bring it back sucesfully.

Is this right?
Does it mean it is Landing.. "where it is" rather than returning to home first?
If I didn't take control, would it just set down there
Or, am I just misunderstanding the meaning when it says Landing.. I haven't waited to find out because of the location, but I'm hoping it will happen while I am in an open field so I can see if it just lands in situ or comes back first. In the meantime I will of course ask you lovely people

Thanks

Two things, if your drone is within 20 metres of home it will just land, if you want to change this you have to enable in your app.
Second if you are using app to RTH you may be just sliding the land command.

The RTH 'limit' that the drone calculates does not take into account the wind, so if there is a stiff headwind then Jim isn't coming home. I very rarely use RTH preferring to fly the aircraft, that will be the pilot in me.

RTH is a failsafe as far as I am concerned, it will give the best chance of a safe return if something happens to the RC link between drone and pilot. There are settings in the App for return to home level for the battery 30% by default, critical is 10% I think. The aircraft will always try to land if the battery is down to its last as this is preferable to plummeting from the sky.

There are many tales of woe that start with 'RTH failed...' Practice flying the aircraft rather than relying on the tech, its very clever, it cannot ever replace the human decision making process, for example RTH will always attempt to come back at the current altitude or 30M (default) which ever is higher. This can put the drone into high winds making the return difficult. The human can reduce this height to keep it in the lighter winds and anticipate problems along the way.

On hearing the 'Landing' message you really are running out of time, once the critical landing starts you will have very little control as to what happens, when you come back from a flight and its close to you & low! Let the battery go to critical and let it start to land and you will see what little control you have. The manual does describe these events but actually experiencing it will better prepare you when it catches you out as you become more confident.

And 'Landing' means Landing right now!

You should fly it home before you ever get to "LANDING".  That's what the initial warning is for, to alert you that it is time to get home before it gets to critical stage.

hallmark007 Posted at 2018-2-12 15:15
Two things, if your drone is within 20 metres of home it will just land, if you want to change this you have to enable in your app.
Second if you are using app to RTH you may be just sliding the land command.

This is a little confusing to me, are you talking about a RTH triggering by itself when it reaches the "H" on the battery bar and then innitiating a different procedure then pressing RTH yourself?
I understand that when a battery reaches 'critical' it would land immediately, but I have done nearly half a battery of RTH testing (because of the flyaway topics I wanted to see for myself how the MA reacts to different circumstances) and it doesn't land immediately if the HomePoint is within 20 meters if you initiate the RTH yourself. The following things happen when I initiate RTH:


Homepoint < 5 meter, initiate landing
Homepoint > 20 meter, ascend to 20 meters (conform set RTH hight setting in the app) and fly to, and land at the Homepoint
Homepoint > 5 meter and < 20 meter, fly to Homepoint and land at Homepoint, if craft was higher then 2,5 meter, it retains its level flight to the Homepoint. If lower, it would go to 2,5 meter hight and flyes to Homepoint.

I see the best advice is fly home earlier. I'm still very new and find there is SO MUCH info its hard to take it all in. I think as a result one detail I'm ignoring is "battery life." I know this isn't good and I will try to improve on all of your good advice.

The specific issue that's baffling me is it seems to first start RTH (Jim, not me, so I don't think I'm hitting land by mistake) and THEN very soon after saying "Landing." I can't speak for the first time, but the second time there may have been a strong head wind, but it seemed to happen almost instantly, with nowhere near enough time to have returned home, even with no wind.

I guess the most import detail to understand is.. When it says Landing, it really does mean descending to the ground, and not RTH.. and I have in these two examples done the best thing (especially over the sea) to take control and head it inland a.s.a.p. yes?

Thanks everyone

LoSBoL Posted at 2018-2-13 04:44
This is a little confusing to me, are you talking about a RTH triggering by itself when it reaches the "H" on the battery bar and then innitiating a different procedure then pressing RTH yourself?
I understand that when a battery reaches 'critical' it would land immediately, but I have done nearly half a battery of RTH testing (because of the flyaway topics I wanted to see for myself how the MA reacts to different circumstances) and it doesn't land immediately if the HomePoint is within 20 meters if you initiate the RTH yourself. The following things happen when I initiate RTH:

Everything you say is correct. Except one difference

>5metre <20metre Aircraft will just land unless you have enabled RTH in your app, so you can choose to RTH @2.5 metre or higher if Aircraft is flying higher , or you can choose to land .

hallmark007 Posted at 2018-2-13 05:06
Everything you say is correct. Except one difference

>5metre

I thought I got it, but I still don't...

Do you mean that if the MA initiates RTH by itself due to hitting the H on the battery bar I would then get an option to land immediately or RTH?
Or that I would/should get this option when I hit RTH on the Remote? (Because it didn't, it just flew to HP)

Enabling/disabling RTH doesn't seem te be in the App settings, at least, I couldn't find it...

LoSBoL Posted at 2018-2-13 05:52
I thought I got it, but I still don't...

Do you mean that if the MA initiates RTH by itself due to hitting the H on the battery bar I would then get an option to land immediately or RTH?

Can confirm, there is no 'RTH at current altitude' on/off switch in the settings, I've seen it on a screenshot of a Spark, but it's not there in the Mavic Air's settings.
The Manual does speak about it though, and that it's on by default, which I can confirm testing RTH
Just no way to turn it off (yet), at least not with my current (Android) App.

LoSBoL Posted at 2018-2-13 05:52
I thought I got it, but I still don't...

Do you mean that if the MA initiates RTH by itself due to hitting the H on the battery bar I would then get an option to land immediately or RTH?

Top of the page.....

hallmark007 Posted at 2018-2-13 06:33
Top of the page.....[view_image]

Is that a Mavic Air?

Mine really does not have the option...

LoSBoL Posted at 2018-2-13 06:41
Is that a Mavic Air?

Mine really does not have the option...

Do you have Aircraft turned on when checking.

hallmark007 Posted at 2018-2-13 06:46
Do you have Aircraft turned on when checking.

Yes, 'wired' connection.

LoSBoL Posted at 2018-2-13 06:54
Yes, 'wired' connection.

Is your App up to date?  iOS or Android?

-Xathros

LoSBoL Posted at 2018-2-13 06:54
Yes, 'wired' connection.

Might be just android.

hallmark007 Posted at 2018-2-13 07:22
Might be just android.

I just can't stand loose ends

Hooked up an iPad mini 4, same, no setting to turn RTH current altitude on or off.

I too am missing the "RTH at current altitude" setting on my Mavic Air.

LoSBoL Posted at 2018-2-13 07:40
I just can't stand loose ends

Hooked up an iPad mini 4, same, no setting to turn RTH current altitude on or off.

Did see something about this being something not right in the app. Don't remember if it was on this forum or Mavic Pilot. It looked like this in the csv file and did not land on home point.

Maybe the "RTH at current Altitude" is for the Spark only?

G_Sig Posted at 2018-2-13 08:06
Did see something about this being something not right in the app. Don't remember if it was on this forum or Mavic Pilot. It looked like this in the csv file and did not land on home point.
[view_image]

That picture your showing is not correct, as you can see from your picture Aircraft was at homepoint getting ready to descend, if you had put up the rest of the log you will see where controller using elevator steered Aircraft away from homepoint. There was nothing strange in that log.

Dirk52 Posted at 2018-2-13 08:15
Maybe the "RTH at current Altitude" is for the Spark only?

It's working, you just can't turn it off

I think G_Sig is right, it should be there but it isn't at the moment.

This seems to be bleeding into other topics. I'm sure its related, but as a noob it's a little further down the line for what I'm thinking. (I think lol)

From what I can tell, it seems to have auto-activated RTH (not me requesting manual RTH) but almost immediately changing to Landing and I can't tell why.

While I still would like to know the exact reasons, the best thing I've taken away from this is that I should just be bringing him home myself. I've changed my battery alarm limit from 20% to 30% so I still have a moment flying before flying it back myself and still being around the 20% mark. Thanks

Saddle Life Posted at 2018-2-14 07:53
This seems to be bleeding into other topics. I'm sure its related, but as a noob it's a little further down the line for what I'm thinking. (I think lol)

From what I can tell, it seems to have auto-activated RTH (not me requesting manual RTH) but almost immediately changing to Landing and I can't tell why.

Yeah, sorry, my fault. I've made another topic concerning my question, Back on topic for this thread.