Took the Mavic Mini over the park this evening, not flown it for a few weeks after finding a crack in an arm, now repaired (Gorilla glue). It seems to have had a sort of a stroke; it flies, but not properly. GImbal is stuck, and the drone seems not to be positioning steadily with GPS, but wobbling about all over the place, and the phone image is jerky and undampened. The gimbal goes through it’s usual movement when the drone is powered on. I’ve been through everything that might need calibrating in the ‘3 dots’ part of the GoFly screen, and nothing seems to work, but the gimbal calibration is stuck on 10%, can’t get back out of the screen or get it to progress past the 10% point after several hours. IMU calibration, which it doesn’t say is needed but I tried to do it anyway, is similarly stuck on 95%.
Any suggestions (preferably clean) before I send it off to Drone Doctor or someone for repair? I keep this drone active as it can be used with Maven app, which is potentially handy sometimes.
Yeah, must have, hence the cracked arm, but it had been flying fine even with the cracked arm before I noticed it. I’ve had a few minor bumps and knocks with it, but not anything I thought was serious enough to call a crash! Noticed the crack while I was putting it away from the last flight, also a chip in a prop, so I’ve replaced the props with a full set of new ones (3rd party as DJI were out of stock and I don’t think they keep them any more). This was the first time I’ve flown with the new props, which seemed fine and weren’t making any wierd noises or anything!
So, I think I might have crashed it harder than I thought, and now it won’t fly very well! I’m not sure the gimbal is the only problem, as I can’t see why a stuck gimbal would cause the jerky flying. Gimbal moves freely on it’s rubber mountings in all 3 axes, and the mountings are all attached properly to their anchor points.
Oh dear
Yes the same advice you gave to me & the best advice I’ve took regarding repair/drone replacement, oh & how cheap it was plus new 2 year warranty
No no or no, the crack developed during the last flight, though a microscopic split that I’d missed may well have been there previously. I spotted it after landing, so while I was in breach of the Drone Code before landing on that occasion, there was no way I could have been aware of this. It is not a case of my knowingly flying an unfit drone. I was aware of a change in prop noise which promted me to land and see what was wrong, which is when I noticed the crack and the chip in a prop.
I’d repaired the crack, and to the best of my knowledge the drone was good to fly when I took it over the park this evening. As soon as I realised it wasn’t (which was very quickly), I landed it, tried to calibrate everything (having already been required to calibrate the compass when I was preparing to fly), took off and landed almost immediately when I realised I’d failed, and went home. Don’t see how I could have complied any more closely with the Drone Code! How do you know if your model aircraft is fit to fly, assuming it to be good to the best of your knowledge and not have any visible defects or those shown up on indicator lights or phone displays, if you don’t fly it! I was in a quiet area away from other people so not causing any danger to anyone except myself.
If you buy a brand new drone, charge up the batteries, pair it with the controller, register it with the CAA and bind it with DJI, you don’t actually know it is going to fly safely until you actually fly it, and there is no way you or anyone else can state with 100% certainty that it is fit to fly, or even if it will fly. Of course, it most probably will be fine, and I understand the spirit of what the CAA Drone Code instruction is quite well, but my interpretation of a drone that i had repaired and which was clearly structurally sound, probably to a greater extent than it was new, and had flown fine last time, was that it should be good this time. It wasn’t, so I landed immediately.
I will send it to DJI this time; nothing to lose by doing so…
The CAA recommends that RPAS operators and remote pilots should:
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for installing/removing propellers.*
Ensure good condition of all propellers before each flight.*
Do not use aged, chipped, or broken propellers.*
Check, not just the surface and edge of the propeller, but also the hub/root and attachment points.* Only use original or manufacturer-approved parts
Do not mix propeller types. When different types of propellers are approved for use all propellers fitted must be the same type.*
Consider adding cross-checks to your pre-flight procedures to double-check installation, especially where the propellers are regularly removed/attached for transportation.*
