Nearly crashed my drone today! Somebody tell me what I did wrong

Questions & Answers
1

I hope somebody can help me. I don’t want the feeling I went through today again! First Of all, I’m new to all this, and I’ve only had my drone probably for about 3 to 4 weeks. So still Learning.

I was flying over a building, doing a point of interest manoeuvre using my mini three pro. It was probably a bit too windy to be flying today, but as it’s one of the first chances I’ve had, I thought I’d give it a go. When I was flying, I had a Highwind warning And that I should land immediately. At the time I was over the building, so cannot come straight down . At the same point, I could not fly up because I knew the wind would be worse.

I brought the drone down as long as I could, and then try to fly it towards me, but for some reason, the drone just stopped above the building and would not fly forward. I remember seeing a video about flying in the wind, so switched the drone to Sport mode Hoping this would help.

I was trying everything I could. My legs were shaking and I was feeling physically sick, thinking that the drone was going to end up crashing as I could see it blowing around all over the place.

The drone was just hovering above the roof for What felt like ages and I’m not too sure what happened eventually, but I managed to get it unstuck from the point it was and land it.

First of all, I thought the issue was down to the wind, and maybe the drone was having problems flying towards me, But I’ve seen quite a few videos of Drones flying in the wind, and I’m not too sure if it was this now, as the drone just physically wasn’t moving not making any headway. It Was as if the controller was ignoring what I was telling it to do.

I was thinking afterwards, was it something to do with the fact that the camera was focused on the building? And maybe somehow it would not fly past the building, because this meant it would lose its line of sight, because of this drone was physically, just not flying past the building.

Has anybody else ever had this issue before and do you know a way around it? I do have a full video as the drone was on record at the time if this helps anybody. A little bit embarrassing, But I guess we all have to learn

Thanks Alex

2

You will need to share the Airdata

And the video

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3

Forgive me for asking What’s the air data? How do I access it? And I was flying for about half an hour. How would I know which point this was?

4

If you google airdata, uav set up an account ( they do a free one) link itvto your dji account. There are instructions on the web page how to do this.
Once that is done if you go into the fly app on your controller / phone and sync your flights. As you sync to the dji database it will auto sync to airdata.
You can then log into airdata and see your flight data.
Click on the flight you had a problem with and you will find a menu to share the flight. This will create a link which you can copy and paste into a reply here.
We ca then look at the data and determine what happened.

5

just some ideas, could be avoidance and the drone paused, or return to home, i know that when it returns to home if the height has been set to a certain height, it will go to that altitude then start flying back to home, i think with the mini 3 pro avoidance is bypass, stop and off. I could be wrong but when in sports mode the avoidance is turned off

6

Here a link to airdata

7

as a couple of post before me the data might help,

8

This is the kind of thing we would be looking at

Screenshot_20231022_224106_Samsung Internet
Screenshot_20231022_224106_Samsung Internet1080×2400 290 KB

This green button to get the page to create the link

Screenshot_20231022_224234_Samsung Internet
Screenshot_20231022_224234_Samsung Internet1080×2400 191 KB

Click this to get the link

Screenshot_20231022_224249_Samsung Internet
Screenshot_20231022_224249_Samsung Internet1080×2400 291 KB

2 Likes
9

Okay guys, I’m on it. I’ll be a pro by the time you finished with me lol :joy:

10

Hope that helps,

11

Okay guys, next silly question how do I paste a video on here? I tried just attaching it I’ve got this message. I feel like a virgin all over again😩

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IMG_09062732×2048 532 KB

12

Upload the video to youtube or Vimeo and post a link to the video

1 Like
13

Just taking a wild stab in the dark here, but was it still set to POI recording while you were trying to bring it home? I vaguely recall a situation with mine where it ignored my stick inputs until I cancelled the POI.

2 Likes
14

Yes it was, I’m glad it’s not just me then

15

It looks like you were still in POI but the log says active track, thats because it’s tracking a POI. Due to this even though you thougt you had swithed to sports mode you didn’t as i believe you can only switch between tripod, position and sport when in a normal flight mode. Hence at the end of the flight when it landed it suddenly jumps into sports mode as it auto cancels active track once landed as the switch was in sports position. So chances are it was just stuggling to fight the wind.

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16

This is the video

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17

Judging by the video it doesn’t look like it was fighting the wind. But not counting it out.
It is more likely that it was wanting to finnish the point of interest, and you were trying to take full control without cancelling. You do have limited control during a poi, such as gettin closer, moving away and altitude.
I would put this down to a conflict of interests.

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18

it might be that you were within a foot or two of an obstacle - so you might have been above the object by a foot or so but the sensor has still picked it up so would not let you fly forward as you were quite close to the top of walls / roof etc.

Have found that the mini 3 can stop even if there is plenty of space for it to fly forward but something just bellow it stops it

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19

I didn’t consider that, but if I remember, I think I did fly up at one point and it still wouldn’t fly forward. Was all a bit of a scary blur. What I might do is try and do some test flights and recreate a scenario on a less windy day and see what happens. That’s why I can learn how to get out of the situation. I did read somewhere that if you press the pause button on the control, it cancels out all the point of interest etc does anybody know if that works?

20

I’d go along with Steve’s @stevesb line of thought - you were still in Active Track mode and according to the stick trace indicators you tried to descend a few times and the drone started to lower its altitude but then immediately went back up. Flying limits and obstacle avoidance function a little differently in Active Track mode which may have caused the refusal to descend as you were over the building. Sports mode didn’t activate until you were on the ground.
The user manual does state the following :

Screenshot 2023-10-23 at 09.41.32
Screenshot 2023-10-23 at 09.41.321298×248 55.7 KB

… so when things start to go wrong press the pause button (your best friend) and then you have time to gather your thoughts and all auto flight setting will auto cancel and should give you control :+1:

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