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Scary flight with my new spark.
697 10 2019-5-21
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NCflyer21
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Flight distance : 106506 ft
United States
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Here is my airdata flight log. https://app.airdata.com/share/uSQjzR

Recently while flying my spark on a camping trip, I experienced a situation in which my video feed went grey and said aircraft disconnected, but when I operated the controls I still seemed to have control and luckily was able to line of sight pilot it back home. However upon looking at my flight it shows me losing data downlink for almost 10 seconds twice! Shouldn't my spark have entered RTH mode on its own since it lost connection so long? What could have caused this malfunction, especially in a campground with no wifi? I am scared now to fly this any further than I would a toy drone, until I get a better understanding of what happened, and if this is normal behavior for a DJI drone.

Edit: I also wonder why I see 0% rc signal from about the 2min mark until I manually brought the spark back. I was standing in the open, less than 10feet from the take off spot and in clear line of sight to the aircraft, and had antennas positioned correctly.
Flying with Iphone 8+ normal wifi not OTG.

Thanks in advance for any assistance,
Ryan



2019-5-21
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Lysak2003
Captain
Flight distance : 500052 ft
Ukraine
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Hello! Did you fly in CE or FCC mode?
2019-5-21
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Nidge
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United Kingdom
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If the Google Map image is still current it would appear you were flying from within and above a heavily wooded area which at this time of year would be coming into full leaf. Trees are not invisible to RF energy and are effective at blocking and absorbing radio waves, especially at the frequencies used by the Spark.

Regards

Nidge.
2019-5-22
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Haggi
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Flight distance : 2581785 ft
Norway
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No.. its not normal, but not unseen behaviour either.
My Spark has 200+ flights, and I've had 1 similar to your issue.
You performed well by bringing it home manually.

You probably lost video-feed, not RC-AC connection, as you were still able to pilot the Spark back home.
If RC-AC connection is lost, RTH action will be initalized.
In this case, you could activate RTH by "press & hold" RTH button on your RC until it's start beeping.

Here is a link about RTH:
https://forum.dji.com/thread-156400-1-1.html
More in the Spark user manual (Page 13):
https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/Spark/Spark%20User%20Manual%20V1.6-.pdf

Not gonna speculate about your environment/location.



2019-5-22
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S-e-ven
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Flight distance : 5910961 ft
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Thailand
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" I was standing in the open, less than 10feet from the take off spot and in clear line of sight to the aircraft, and had antennas positioned correctly."

2 questions:
How do YOU position the antennas correctly?
And YOU could see the bird, but your remote is 40cm(ish) lower then your eyes.
How would habe been the view from there?

Nidge mentioned already, green "stuff" is messing with the signal. at first the video goes down, a little distance after that, the rest of the connection goes down.

To the RTH question, I am not sure how long it needs, till the app asked for "RTH Now?", after feed went down. But this is not a auto-RTH(afaik)
Auto RTH would it be, if the remote does not have a connection (3 secs, methinks), or the app chrashes (20 secs, methinks), or the battery is at the limit for the distance and RTH altitude settings.


To test, if it is a problem, or "just" trees in the VLOS between RC and Spark, but not in your eyes VLOS, try that with focus on this situation
At least at the max distance, you had a 45° angle from homepoint to bird
calculate with your distance from the treeline and the height of the trees, if the birds "vlos" could have been compromised!
Out of my experience, just "green stuff" near this remote/bird line can temper the connection.
How much humidity was in the air, that day?
2019-5-22
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NCflyer21
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Flight distance : 106506 ft
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Lysak2003 Posted at 5-21 23:34
Hello! Did you fly in CE or FCC mode?

FCC, I am in the USA.
2019-5-22
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NCflyer21
lvl.1
Flight distance : 106506 ft
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S-e-ven Posted at 5-22 06:58
" I was standing in the open, less than 10feet from the take off spot and in clear line of sight to the aircraft, and had antennas positioned correctly."

2 questions:

Hey there, so as far as antenna position I always flip them out and rotate until parallel, then I tilt them down slightly from the 90degree straight up position to about 60 degrees or so, not quite 45. I then make it my main priority to keep those flats pointed at the aircraft, which normally means constantly adjusting my rc and keeping the flats pointed correctly.  I always try to keep the rc higher than just down by my waist, normally I have the rc up around eye level because it makes it much easier to see my controller and have VLOS at the same time, in addition to making "pointing" at the spark a bit easier.

I guess I would be close to the small stand of trees, but they were all pretty small trees, 20-25 feet tall MAX, and I stayed over top of them purposefully because I have heard about the interference trees can cause.

For context, I was on vacation and this flight wanted to go out over the river at a safe height for some cool shots. I knew it would be a risky venture over water and therefor e did everything I could to insure a safe flight. Hover for home point, gps lock, flying extra high to try and have good signal. no sports mode, keep RC pointed PERFECTLY at spark (I was also watching signal str. bars this whole time adjusting as needed to keep full bars).

Humidity I am not sure, there was no rain that day afaik, but the ground was very wet from some flooding they had in that location a couple weeks back. That and being in a river valley I bet it was pretty high humidity.
2019-5-22
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NCflyer21
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Flight distance : 106506 ft
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Haggi Posted at 5-22 01:10
No.. its not normal, but not unseen behaviour either.
My Spark has 200+ flights, and I've had 1 similar to your issue.
You performed well by bringing it home manually.

What about the radio signal str. dropping down to 0%, is that just referencing the video feed connection? I thought the signal str showed in the airdata "hd flight viewer" was showing RC signal, but I could be wrong.
2019-5-22
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S.J
Captain
Flight distance : 322454 ft
Kuwait
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NCflyer21 Posted at 5-22 08:40
Hey there, so as far as antenna position I always flip them out and rotate until parallel, then I tilt them down slightly from the 90degree straight up position to about 60 degrees or so, not quite 45. I then make it my main priority to keep those flats pointed at the aircraft, which normally means constantly adjusting my rc and keeping the flats pointed correctly.  I always try to keep the rc higher than just down by my waist, normally I have the rc up around eye level because it makes it much easier to see my controller and have VLOS at the same time, in addition to making "pointing" at the spark a bit easier.

I guess I would be close to the small stand of trees, but they were all pretty small trees, 20-25 feet tall MAX, and I stayed over top of them purposefully because I have heard about the interference trees can cause.

I wish you could send us a picture of your standing position with the RC  to check the situation at ground level in relation to the DJI SPARK.
2019-5-22
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S.J
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Flight distance : 322454 ft
Kuwait
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NCflyer21 Posted at 5-22 08:45
What about the radio signal str. dropping down to 0%, is that just referencing the video feed connection? I thought the signal str showed in the airdata "hd flight viewer" was showing RC signal, but I could be wrong.

This is the quality of the DJI product. If you also notice while you do a 180 degree turn on the bird, the wi fi signal strength gets more worse . This is because the bird has the wifi receiver in the back rather than at the center.
2019-5-22
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S.J
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NCflyer21 Posted at 5-22 08:25
FCC, I am in the USA.

As long as you have set the RTH before flying out, you do not need to be scared off anything.

However, there are reports that the bird flies in a weird direction especially while using an iphone if something goes wrong with the flight parameters.
2019-5-22
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