3 Days ago i made a flight in Thailand, near Krabi. Mavic was 200m away with 100m altitude, then i lost connection. Battery was on 67% at that moment. All around was Jungle and some
typical steep rocks.
All settings in the App where default.
Unfortunately, the mavic did not come back. In the track I saw that she was last marked in front of a rock. Later I went there and searched for two hours, but the jungle was too dense and I could not find it. In the drone was still a 128gb SD card. I am very sad that the wonderful drone has already lost after a week and also all the photos and videos of the two weeks holiday. My question to DJI, how can it be that the Mavic stopped in front of the mountain where I was higher before the connection lost. She should have come back in my opinion?
Can i buy only the drone? If yes, where?

In this area she's crashed i suppose. I was on the other side of this rock, 70m away. Can't search more because i am back in Switzerland.

Raini Posted at 2018-3-20 03:56
In this area she's crashed i suppose. I was on the other side of this rock, 70m away. Can't search more because i am back in Switzerland.
[view_image]

You can put in your flight log here we might be able to see what happened or why it didn’t RTH.

Just click on link and follow instructions come back here and post your link.

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

Sorry for your loss. When you fly out the best option is enabled return to home

RIP young Mavic Air

Sad story.

I am also very sorry to read this! Maybe the flightrecord can give some explanations.

Sad to read and as mentioned, if you upload your logs it may be possible to ascertain what went wrong. However, looking at that picture, if you were on the other side of that big rock and 70m away, I can guess at why connection was lost. Thick rock and heavy vegetation are pretty good at absorbing WiFi. Looking at the logs will hopefully show what went wrong with RTH.

Loosing a drone is one, but also all the footage from a two week trip - that is so unfortunate! So sorry for you!

I feel your pain. I've been there.

Not a nice read - sorry to see that

Did you have the disconnect setting changed to hover, or was it still set to return to home?  

Is that rock less than 200 meters?  Hard to judge by distant eyesight.  Perhaps a tall tree caught the drone.  Disconnected because of the rock or trees in the signal path?  Nice Grom motorcycle.

Maybe hit this rock when RTH?

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Wyke Posted at 2018-3-20 04:51
Sad to read and as mentioned, if you upload your logs it may be possible to ascertain what went wrong. However, looking at that picture, if you were on the other side of that big rock and 70m away, I can guess at why connection was lost. Thick rock and heavy vegetation are pretty good at absorbing WiFi. Looking at the logs will hopefully show what went wrong with RTH.

I agree. If you upload your flight logs then someone might be able to explain what happened. I am so sorry for your loss.

Damn that's a hard read, I too am sorry you lost your drone.

Thank you for your participation! Here are the last dates I have from the Mavic Air before the loss. In my understanding, the mavic should have come back. Or what do you mean?
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/ACK265SO5NES5UDFQK16/

This is the start:


This is the last record:

This was my position:

Did you hit the autolanding feature instead of the return to home feature that is just below the autolanding icon?  I didn't see any problems crop up in the log.  It just started autolanding on the cliffs.

Hmm, when i watch the video an log, it looks like this. But what i remember is that i had a connection lost. Then a popup appeared on the phone (in the middle of the display). As I recall it was the question of whether I want to go home automatically. I clicked on it.

You probably hit Auto Landing and than when you where behind the mountain you lost connection with the aircraft. That's when the app stopped the log and you were still at 360 ft. The craft probably kept landing and stayed hovering above the trees until it ran out of batteries. Mountains and trees are wifi killers if they stand between you and the craft

Raini Posted at 2018-3-20 22:25
Thank you for your participation! Here are the last dates I have from the Mavic Air before the loss. In my understanding, the mavic should have come back. Or what do you mean?
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/ACK265SO5NES5UDFQK16/

I'm sorry for your loss!  That was a beautiful area you were in, I can see why you wanted to try to capture it.  I really like the geometric pattern of the tree farm mixed in with the rugged and random natural environment.

GoldenSun Posted at 2018-3-20 05:10
Loosing a drone is one, but also all the footage from a two week trip - that is so unfortunate! So sorry for you!

A good reason to have multiple cards, and swap at end of day.

HedgeTrimmer Posted at 2018-3-21 08:45
A good reason to have multiple cards, and swap at end of day.

Well you'd have to have a card for each day... seems a bit of a hassle.

Watching video and comparing it to where you were standing, it does not look like Rock / Vegetation got in way of Drone's Transmission.

In last few seconds, Drone appears to be descending, and looks like Drone might have landed on top of Rock.

Raini Posted at 2018-3-21 00:04
Hmm, when i watch the video an log, it looks like this. But what i remember is that i had a connection lost. Then a popup appeared on the phone (in the middle of the display). As I recall it was the question of whether I want to go home automatically. I clicked on it.

If you lose connection, I don't see how it can ask if you want to RTH.  Odd, that it started down if you neer initiated RTH or landing.

Those icons are pretty close together and I never use RTH or autolanding.  I can't help but think it will try to land on a fence, tree, or rock.

GoldenSun Posted at 2018-3-21 08:51
Well you'd have to have a card for each day... seems a bit of a hassle.

Not a card for every day of a trip.  A card for a couple of days, that is recycled.

When I was seriously into taking phots, I had several memory cards for camera.
Every evening, I would dump card(s) used that day to Laptop.
If I had several pictures I thought were great, I burned them to CD or DVD.

Let me throw this out.  If you take a vacation to some place that is costly to travel to/from, and expensive to stay at - isn't cost of a few extra cards worth it?   

Raini Posted at 2018-3-20 03:56
In this area she's crashed i suppose. I was on the other side of this rock, 70m away. Can't search more because i am back in Switzerland.
[view_image]

Having looked at your flight log and viewed your video, there are a couple of things, you say you lost signal this is reported nowhere in your log except during auto landing but for only 0.01 of a second.
So there was no problem with signal, when watching your video however it’s very clear that at the end of the video you can hear the beeping , this beeping is associated with 2 things operator pressing RTH or using app to slide RTH , or using the slide which is very similar to RTH slide to initiate auto Landing, auto landing is only initiated in two cases One is by the operator and the other is in critical battery landing which aircraft was not in, so is it possible that instead of hitting RTH you accidentally hit auto landing. You wouldn’t be the first to accidentally make this mistake.
If this was the case then only way to halt this is to use X on screen or pause button.

After looking at your flight logs, i summarize the events as following:

There were no telemetry drops or timing gaps until the log stopped at 425,2 seconds.
I can not tell if you had video feed loss at that time.
In the final moments, no stick input (throttle, yaw, elevator, aileron) were recorded in the logs.
At 404,7s you stopped your gimbal down movement exact as seen in your second video.
At 409,9s the event 'AppAutoLanding' appeared.
That means, GO4 executed the command to land the aircraft. (@Gunship9 and @lomo2017 assumed already that the user pressed the 'land' button)
At 410,6s the aircraft started descending
At 425,2s log ends.

Gunship9 Posted at 2018-3-20 23:32
Did you hit the autolanding feature instead of the return to home feature that is just below the autolanding icon?  I didn't see any problems crop up in the log.  It just started autolanding on the cliffs.

If the drone auto landed, assuming a perfect landing with no jarring, wouldn't the video feed continue?
I don't have the Air, just the MPro, so perhaps there is a different set of functions on landing.

On a more helpful note, I would be tempted to phone the Hub Café and ask if anyone is prepared to climb up the karst (OP called it a mountain). A copy of the video and a generous reward for safe return of drone and SD card would be a thing to try. The men in Thailand are very brave and resourceful.

Dirty Bird Posted at 2018-3-21 10:30
More of a hassle than losing the entire trip's worth of photos & video?

You can just backup everyday in the evening No need for multiple cards.

HedgeTrimmer Posted at 2018-3-21 09:23
Not a card for every day of a trip.  A card for a couple of days, that is recycled.

When I was seriously into taking phots, I had several memory cards for camera.

Everything's worth it when you're in the situation of loosing it all. But the thing is here to browse all the option and select the one that suits you best.

GoldenSun Posted at 2018-3-21 08:51
Well you'd have to have a card for each day... seems a bit of a hassle.

I was thinking a HD with wifi card slot would be ideal for trips like this. Western Digital makes one, but the online reviews are a bit low, which makes me hesitate on purchasing one.

Dirty Bird Posted at 2018-3-21 13:20
Sure you Can do that.  But if you capture some awesome photos & video on flights 1 through 3 of the day, then lose the bird on flight 4...

...there's always tomorrow!

Anything can happen! ;) You could change cards every flight and still loose your drone just before landing. All in all, just have to have a little bit of luck

Tom_A Posted at 2018-3-21 14:05
I was thinking a HD with wifi card slot would be ideal for trips like this. Western Digital makes one, but the online reviews are a bit low, which makes me hesitate on purchasing one.

True, an HD like that with auto backup could be one of the best solutions. Maybe other brands make them too?

AlansDronePics Posted at 2018-3-21 10:29
If the drone auto landed, assuming a perfect landing with no jarring, wouldn't the video feed continue?
I don't have the Air, just the MPro, so perhaps there is a different set of functions on landing.

The video would be fine until it lowered itself for landing behind dense trees or rocks.  1 ghz and higher can carry a lot of data on its wavelength but it is very prone to blockages versus VHF (30mhz-150mhz) or HF (2mhz to 30mhz).  

GoldenSun Posted at 2018-3-21 14:10
True, an HD like that with auto backup could be one of the best solutions. Maybe other brands make them too?

I have been looking. I think that Seagate makes one too. I have lost too much due to Seagate incompetence already to consider any of their solutions.

You all are right, beginner errors...
I should have backed up after every flight. The problem was that I had a backup diskette where I can put the SD card and automatically copy the data. I tested this at home with a 64GB SD card. But then I bought a 128GB SD card before traveling and it seems that the backup disk does not support this size . So I had no chance to back up my data.

To the last video. It is recorded that the controller is beeping and it looks like the drone is about to land. But the drone still had visual contact with me and it is still many feet above the rock. Nevertheless, the connection breaks off before it was behind the rock.

My email is placed on the drone. Maybe someday somebody will send me the SD card .
I have little hope for the drone. In the region it often rains very heavily and the humidity is high. It will oxidize quickly ..

Thanks for help guys!
I hope now DJI helps me with a good offer. Let's see..

I think DJI should re-arrange the 2 buttons , RTH and Autolanding. One left up and one right bottom on the screen.