Hello DJI support,

until my 22nd flight, my "Mavic life" was a dream and I was thrilled by the functionality of this fantastic bird, which I had just received this Monday!!!

What happened on my 23rd flight is as follows:

With 9:32 min flight time remaining at a heighth of 121 meters and 602 meters away over the water, the controller connected to the DJI lates app (iOS) lost its signal entirely and could not reconnect. Instead of initiating the failsafe RTH nothing happened. Evidently a manually triggered RTH also failed and I had to experience  my beloved bird to go down into the open sea.

At the time the Mavic lost the connection to the remote controller it was connected to 17 satellites, which makes me riddle why the failsafe RTH was not initiated or did not work.

On my flight previous to that 22nd flight, the same happend to me at a distance of 338 Meters and 124 meters altitude. At that time the failsafe RTH kicked in corretly and allowed me to reconnect after a short period of time eventually even cancelling the RTH and to return manually.

I am very frustrated and would strongly hope you can help me and investigate this incident, hopefully allowing me to get a new drone. (I have a care refresh signed-up but I understand that it does not kick in if the drone is "lost"). I do however feel that I did not do anyhting wrong and feel that the Mavic was not responding the way it should have.

PLEASE HELP!

Kind regards

Klemens

Your fly away is caused by thermal wind current that you cannot see........ its not DJI problem its mainly a human problem.

I guess people have no idea about thermal wind gust, and aerial meteorology conditions... Before you take the risk and fly your drone far beyond your sight of vision do not fly if you do not know what your doing with aerial pilot meteorology flying conditions.

Wow seems to be alot of these fly away mavics..... It seems almost all of them have been over water ... Unlucky ... Hope they can help you out.

Curious to learn how a thermal wind current causes the connection to be lost? Care to explain? Thanks

Klemens, really sorry to hear about your lost.
Please sync the flight records and provide us your APP account for analysis.

DJI Natalia Posted at 2016-11-27 18:45
Klemens, really sorry to hear about your lost.
Please sync the flight records and provide us your A ...

I have sent an email to customer support and have already synced my flight records. Hoping for some positive answer. Thank you.

kkimac Posted at 2016-11-27 17:56
I have sent an email to customer support and have already synced my flight records. Hoping for som ...

No problem, our engineers will help you analyze the data and contact you for the details.

DJI Natalia Posted at 2016-11-27 18:59
No problem, our engineers will help you analyze the data and contact you for the details.

thank you for the quick response...hope all the rest also turns out in a positive way for me.....

ton848 Posted at 2016-11-27 20:29
Curious to learn how a thermal wind current causes the connection to be lost? Care to explain? Thank ...

Yep funny how that causes a connection supposedly good for approx 5km to be lost at 500m

ton848 Posted at 2016-11-27 17:29
Curious to learn how a thermal wind current causes the connection to be lost? Care to explain? Thank ...

your mavic has a barometric pressure reading and changes in this could effect the device plus the GPS and all the technology involved which one of them is when your hovering and you try to push your mavic it goes back to where it was position but if this thermal pressure is strong enough and it is strong enough you could actually have gust of up 30 mph pushing you up you would lose your craft..... and the mavic technology, will not tell you about this because its not built into the craft but there is technology that could detect thermal wind gust.... so I highly recommend many of you out there to fly within visual distance and if you try to go beyond that I do not recommend going beyond 2 miles already because you do not know the flight conditions of that particular area..... Just because your mavic could flight 4.3 miles does not mean its fly away proof. at 200 meters you already dealing with thermal wind gust. By the way that beeping sound is the thermal wind detector and as you could see on the right of his image its telling you the height on meters, on the bottom vertical climb speed, on the left the speed that the thermal wind is pushing him upward. Maybe something to consider for DJI to put thermal wind gust detector in all their new craft. So incidents like this would not happen.

watuse Posted at 2016-11-27 12:05
your mavic has a barometric pressure reading and changes in this could effect the device plus the  ...

What he's describing isnt the same thing though .. he's talking about RC connection being lost, which has got nothing in the slightest to do with any thermal wind gusting ...

While thermal wind gusting may be a thing ... compass issues and rc dissconnections have nothing to do with this.

Danny-B- Posted at 2016-11-27 20:12
What he's describing isnt the same thing though .. he's talking about RC connection being lost, wh ...

you would be surprise what it could do we are talking about something that could affect the craft with all the technology in it one of them could be lost of connection... Just the other day at 1km of flight I lost partial connection and many things could be part of that trees the way the antenna are position high power lines anything... Like I said I would not recommend flying this craft beyond the visual point of reach.... But yes can DJI update the software by looking at the data but if nothing they could find because of other causess like radio waves, power lines which emits radio way interferences cell tower communications, anything this is out of the hands of DJI.... Yes sorry for the guy who flew his drone beyond probably reach of sight in the ocean or what ever he was flying over.... There are many factors to take into account for a safe flying....

"...your mavic has a barometric pressure reading and changes in this could effect the device plus the GPS.."
So does my Garmin watch. Now I am worried it might fly away too!
Keep the explanations coming. They are very entertaining.

Danny-B- Posted at 2016-11-27 20:12
What he's describing isnt the same thing though .. he's talking about RC connection being lost, wh ...

also the mavic technology which one of them that helps that stability in the air could mess up with the instrumentation of the craft which is again and I repeat myself thermal wind gust. If he picks up a gust of 20 plus miles per hour and its fighting to gain control of where it is position it will be sucked up by the thermal wind if it is strong enough, making the compass and gps and even the RC to lose connection because the system is fighting something that its with out of its reach.... One of them is seeing how some people fly over the beach where there is an insane amount of thermal wind gust and you see them trying to gain control of the craft losing control and such is because its fighting this thermal wind gust.. All I am saying that I too was caught in one and it was just 1km away from where i was at 300 meters and lost briefly connection and I immediately hit the Return home button right after it would get worst and that day I saw Vultures flying near by the craft it look cool but not cool for the craft and one of the reason of this lost of control is because of this..... I think I explain myself enough... It definitely has a lot to do with losing control of the craft, hell you could lose control at 300 feet distance at 200 meters high but if that craft hits a strong thermal gust of wind your in deep shit.

watuse Posted at 2016-11-27 13:27
also the mavic technology which one of them that helps that stability in the air could mess up wit ...

His topic is not an actual fly away. Nothing to do with wind.

It is about RTH not kicking in when RC lost connection.

DJI Natalia Posted at 2016-11-27 17:59
No problem, our engineers will help you analyze the data and contact you for the details.

Natalia if you can talk to the engineer about putting a thermal wind detector for the next Mavic 2 or any new craft, it will be of a great help, to put a thermal wind indicator........

watuse Posted at 2016-11-27 04:26
https://youtu.be/6XYEhpIPSIw

Is this your latest ploy to discourage people from flying beyond VLOS?  So it's "thermal updrafts" causing Mavics to fly away?  But only when they are flown BVLOS? Odd also that prior models weren't affected by this mysterious phenomenom you have discovered.  Seriously dude you need to get out of your parent's basement...

Nees Posted at 2016-11-27 21:43
His topic is not an actual fly away. Nothing to do with wind.

It is about RTH not kicking in when ...

that`s the way I see it. As I described. Just the flight before (with another battery of course as I got the combo finally delivered on November 21st orders in the early morning of the 29th of September) I had the same phenomenon, this time at a distance of 338 meters as described before. Did not give me the best feeling but when the connection was lost, the RTH kicked in and about 20 seconds later it reconnected and I could take over control of the aircraft again. It was a shocking moment but kind of gave me some good feeling for the flights to come. I would have never imagined that just during the next flight, I would bump into the same problem but this time failsafe RTH failing on me, never allowing me to reconnect to the Mavic despite gaining visibly again as I was changing my position running to ensure there would be a straight visible line between me and the Mavic....

guys, I appreciate your comments but the reason why I spend more than a 1000 dollars on a drone was the fact that I felt it would need to have enough technology in case connections would brake up. This can always happen, due to zillions of reasons, but not being able to reconnect at all is what finally kills you, well in this case at least my drone. I hope DJI acknowledges this and come around with a replacement considering that I even signed up for a DJI refresh package which does however not apply if you cannot recover the copter.

Waiting on the technicians to contact me.

watuse Posted at 2016-11-27 07:45
Natalia if you can talk to the engineer about putting a thermal wind detector for the next Mavic 2 ...

I vote for mounting a thermal wind detector near you...

a question to the support team while I am waiting for a hopefully positive response from the support team:

if I click on the "share button" (takes me to albums, WeChat, etc.) of the screen of my individual flight record (flight nr. 23 in this case), it takes me to the page where I can pick how to share it (also download to album is available). In the upper right hand corner it gives the option to "export CSV". If I click on it it works and tells me the data was saved under "DJIGo/Documents/ExportFightRecords/". Where do I find this folder in the app? Evidently I cannot connect my Mavic to my Mac anymore.....

kkimac Posted at 2016-11-27 08:05
a question to the support team while I am waiting for a hopefully positive response from the support ...

If your phone/tablet is an android device, that is the folder location you can locate the file in when you connect it to a PC. If it's an Apple device not sure as there's no easy way to pull data off it other than photos unless it's jailbroken, but that's another story.

clarksbrother Posted at 2016-11-27 23:13
If your phone/tablet is an android device, that is the folder location you can locate the file in  ...

thank you, this got me thinking.....I have an iOs device. Connected it to iTunes, went to the DJIGo app, and simply dragged the folder (ExportFlightRecords) that popped up there onto my desktop.....

Things can be so simple at times....hope that my case also turns out by simply sending me a new drone as I still do not understand what the mistake could be that I did....

kkimac Posted at 2016-11-27 09:54
thank you, this got me thinking.....I have an iOs device. Connected it to iTunes, went to the DJIG ...

The issue you're reporting here seems to be far too common to be some sort of repeated user error issue. Assuming the logs will bear that out. If you're willing, I think we'd all be interested in seeing the flight logs here online.

How many times does this guy need to post these videos on thermal uplift we get the message.

Fact: after smoking a fat blunt I have decided that flying over the Bermuda Triangle with thermal winds lurking about is probably not a good idea...I say pilot error

watuse Posted at 2016-11-27 01:22
Your fly away is caused by thermal wind current that you cannot see........ its not DJI problem its  ...

You don't know that. To just claim concretely that the mavic was lost due to thermal wind without any proof is a bit arrogant and to shift blame away from DJI so easily is BS.

Being flying RC aircraft for 40 years and we go looking for thermals with gliders but never in my life have I ever heard or seen a thermal knocking out or durupting signal between your craft and controller, time someone got of the whacky backy. Mavic can travel at 60kmh and not loose signal and you trying to tell everyone that a mavic lifting in a thermal at a posible speed of 15to 30khm is going to loose signal if a thermal has that affect on rotation blade aircraft. The mavic will just fly down to its GPS position anyway. No different than flying in 20knots of wind.
And what you are saying means everyone that flys their mavic in any wind will loose signal as wind is same as thermal only horizontal instead of vertical.

Tells Posted at 2016-11-27 21:38
You don't know that. To just claim concretely that the mavic was lost due to thermal wind without  ...

He's just trolling every thread with the same irrelevant  nonsense. Surely admin will ban him soon though.

clarksbrother Posted at 2016-11-28 01:37
The issue you're reporting here seems to be far too common to be some sort of repeated user error  ...

DJI Support has been extremely fast and responsive so far. I just got done to get the whole claim process started (filling in an exel file, providing flight logs, giving some other personal details).

So let's see what their analysis will show. In case I get a positive response I will let you know and can provide more details if anybody is interested and if DJI allows me to do so.

So before, I was so eager to get it waiting for it for about 2 months. Now it feels I am right back into this feeling. Let's hope the best.

I hope they replace your Mavic, none of these issues makes me very confident in flying the mavic, once I get one...

70challenger Posted at 2016-11-28 16:42
I hope they replace your Mavic, none of these issues makes me very confident in flying the mavic, on ...

"first round" rejected - what a surprise - but I do not feel treated correctly, so I wil not give up - I even have a care refresh package signed up for but if I do not have the physical drone to show, it does not help me....I will keep the community posted on any further "progress" and hope that DJI will enventually follow my arguments as their reply had too many contradictions which I surely commented....waiting for their next reply....

are there small GPS tracking devices that would help me finding a lost mavic? I dont live near the seas so this might actually work... or are they simply to heavy/ interfering?

Camolin Posted at 2016-11-29 23:31
are there small GPS tracking devices that would help me finding a lost mavic? I dont live near  ...

I kind of like the idea - too late to install now, but if I should ever own a DJI drone again, it would surely be something I would be interested, as I cannot find a drone where the battery is off since it was not able to reconnect to the remote ever since it lost connection....

kkimac Posted at 2016-11-30 00:38
I kind of like the idea - too late to install now, but if I should ever own a DJI drone again, it  ...

I think all of us should be aware of the following:

- in the failsafe RTH mode (f this is not failing which is what I am still suspecting in my case) the mavic will not go beyond the altitude limit that was set (most of us are probably setting it to whatever legal limit is existing in the respective country we are flying in). I am not talking about the RTH altitude but the max altitude that can be set between 20 and 500 meters. IN case you wonder why this matters: Well, if your bird is above the RTH height at the time it loses connection and ASSUMING that the RTH mode is properly working, the mavic WILL NOT descend to the set RTH height but go straight back to the home point. If it now encounters an obstacle that is HIGHER than the set max altitude, the RTH mode will stop working as the mavic wil only climb until it has reached the limit that was set, even if that means that it cannot overcome the obstacle that made it stop. In this case, according to DJI, the drone would eventually simply land when the battery is in a critical stage. But how to find the drone then. Basically not that hard, when taking the trajectory of the point it lost connection and the homepoint and looking for the obstacle it could not overcome due to the altitude limit (NOT RTH limit) that was set.
Well, if the drone is however not there, is is more than likely that the failsafe RTH has not worked at all. Well, I will hopefully find out pretty soon, continuing my discussion with DJI customer support.....

After rejection of the claim, I just got the second rejection following my comments that I had made when I got the first recection. Even though DJI cannot prove that the RTH function actually worked (I think it failed) they claim it to be a pilot error as the RTH altitude was not set correctly. The strange thing is that in this case I should have been able to find my (potentially) crashed drone right where the Mavic must have hit the building it could not overcome (by the 5 meter logic) due to the maximum height that was set and which cannot be exceeded by the system despite being in RTH failsafe mode. Without a drone I cannot claim my care refresh right, so I am punished twice. Lost 1000 dollars and wasted another 100 dollars on a care refresh package. What a frustrating reponse after 2 months of waiting for my Mavic. I don't want to give up yet and am thinking about making this a legal case...

DJI put all responsiblity on me despite not being able to prove 100% that the mavic was working accoring to its intended functionality if the signal is lost....what a frustrating experience after having waited 2 months! for the mavic to arrive and having had it for only 6 days while having signed up for a care refresh package that is worth nothing, as the drone is gone (I should be able to find it if DJI`s theory of the pilot error was correct)

How could I test the return to home failsafe? Just turn the controller off but have  my mavic not to far away and lots of clear landing space etc....

I cannot help but wonder about the contradicting explanations in this case.

In the first comment the drone was claimed to be lost over water, in the second to last comment the drone supposedly crashed into a building?


For this to make sense to anyone on this forum you should probably share the recorded flight from your phone so we can get an idea about where you lost the drone. But if there were buildings/trees between you and the drone that were higher than your failsafe altitude, then it seems quite obvious that DJI is not to blame for this.

Stokke Posted at 2016-11-30 17:12
I cannot help but wonder about the contradicting explanations in this case.

In the first comment th ...

Once you see the flightpath, it  will perfectly make sense to you. the issue is not so much whether it was a pilot error or not the issue is if it was a pilot error then it would have crashed into the building or at least hovered there until the battery would've run out which eventually would've allowed me to find the drone and then use the care refresh  package I signed up for to claim a new drone at a significantly reduce price. this is ultimately why I am so frustrated.  This stupid care refresh insurance doesn't cover flyaways so it's completely worthless in my case even though DJI claims that the return to home function was initiated which would eventually allow me to also find my drone