New drone - Crash! - Mavic Pro

Questions & Answers
1

Hello everybody. Been lurking here for a few weeks, but just had an incident that prompted me to sign up.

Im a bit late to the drone party, but gave a mate a few quid for his Mavic pro and got stuck in!

There has been a few times where the go4 app has been giving me compass warnings when taking off, but i figured it was due to the rebar inside the concrete I was taking off from.
One time in particular the drone just decided to fly away and it took a few seconds to bring it back under control. I never worked out why it did that, as it happened so fast.

Well today, it did it again, but this time flew straight into a tree, and took a hard crash.

The only input on the controller I was making during this crash was telling it to increase altitude, trying to clear the trees it was flying towards.
What is the reason for the drone taking off and just flying off at full speed? In this case, it just flew directly to its left at full speed.

The drone still actually hovers, despite the props being heavily damaged, and some bad scrapes and cracks in the body. One of the landing legs has broken off too. Will it be ok?

Thanks in advance! the main reason for this post is to figure out why the drone just flew off on its own for the second time!

2

Hello Jim @late2theparty

It was probably due to all the compass errors you mentioned? :thinking: :person_shrugging:t2:

But if you upload your flight logs to AirData.com and share the link here, a few people will tell you exactly what happened.

No, it absolutely will not.

Replace the props before you fly it again.

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3

As Rich (@PingSpike ) has already suggested, upload your flight log to Air Data Jim - we can then have look and give a good idea what went wrong but it already sounds like a compass error or possibly insufficient satellites locked on for gps.

Definitely change the props before flying again or you’ll shake the poor drone to bits - and any video would probably be spoiled with jello (waviness in the picture) anyway. As a temporary fix on the landing leg you may be able to “superglue” back in place but keep a close eye on it in case it separates again. Not a good practice but it should get you back in the air again to test it safely. :+1:

4

Thanks for the replies guys. Yes I will be replacing the props :rofl:

I meant apart from that will it be ok? I hope so!

I will work out how to upload the flight logs and get onto that.

Some further info. While I was flying today I tested an app on a seperate phone, OpendroneID OSM, an app iv seen metioned on here and was curious to see what it said. 0 Drones detected is what it said, but during the same time, the controller totally disconnected from the app and the app would not reconnect. I had to manually land it, turn everything off and back on again before the app would connect! Is this just a conicidence? Or did it somehow interfere??

So further questions: why did OpenDroneID OSM show nothing? the phone is a samsung s21, which is listed as fully compatible. Was the controller disconnect related with using that app possibly? :thinking:

THe crash came later btw.
Thanks for the prompt responses guys! now to the flight logs

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5

Thanks JhDee, yes those props came straight off! Was expecting to be putting the drone in the bin to be honest! WAs amazed it still tookoff in the state its in! Ordered some new props of amazon

6

Iv pasted the flightlog from the txt file onto here:

Let me know if that works :sweat_smile:

7

DJI drones don’t broadcast Drone ID data when flown in the UK, it’s a geolocated service.

And your Mavic Pro won’t support Drone ID if / when it does come to the UK, due to its age, you’ll need a third party add-on.

8

Is it possible that the app somehow interfered with the controller? As it disconnected around the same time, weird because its the first time its ever done that

9

It’s very likely that running a droneid app caused issues with your GO4 app and prevented it from reconnecting. Did you force-close the droneid app before trying to launch the GO4 app again?

If you’re planning on keeping your Mavic Pro I think everyone here would recommend ditching the GO4 app and investing in the Litchi app instead.

10

Good to know, I wont be doing that again!
To be honest i didnt even think of closing the droneID app, I force closed the GO app a few times and couldnt get it to reconnect, all while the drone was midair, and had to land it, power the drone, controller and app down and start everything again for it to connect.

As for Litchi, thanks for the recommendation. Whats the issues with Go4? Im not paricularly bothered about the camera other than for seeing where I am!

11

Could this also be why the drone took off into the nearest tree? :scream:

12

It used to be a great app but it got very bloated in its later years, anything beyond v4.1.2 started to go downhill. Plus of course now, the sheer age of it. It’s not had any love since DJI Fly was invented (which is also considered old app now).

Litchi is very lightweight, not bloated in the slightest, still actively being developed, and won’t send your data to China.

No.

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13

Another benefit of Litchi is you can read your height and speed information in a font that isn’t FUTURISTIC (read:illegible)

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14

Afraid its not possible to read the flight logs that way - they need to be uploaded to AirData.com where they are decrypted and put into a format where the details can be easily read.
You will need to go to AirData.com open an account and then sync your flight logs to the account - you will then be able to see exactly what happened on both flights :+1:

2 Likes
15

I think the first question has to be… did you do a compass calibration from your new take-off position before launching :thinking:

16

I’ve had my Mavic Pro for 6.5 years - never done a single compass recalibration, despite travelling all over western Europe with it.

Edit: To put some meat on that statement, let’s go back several more years to my Phantom 2 days … when fly-aways were frequent.

To try and get a handle on them, I logged every one that was reported on various forums, with as much info as I could determine.

Of all the things I logged, one stood out by being a fact(?) on every flyaway - they’d done (or claimed to have done) a compass recalibration before the flight. That was 100% of them.

Now - I’d never suggest that one should never do a compass recalibration, but those stats significantly suggested to me that it’s possible to to perform one and end up with an undesirable calibration. Very much a case of “if it’s not broke don’t fix it”.

So - with the MP when I got it, it flew perfectly without a compass recalibration, it’s never suggested one should be done, and I’ve never done one. Neither has it performed a flyaway.

17

No, I just ignored it. I know it sounds stupid and I prbably paid the price, but my freind who demo’d it told me to ignore it, its just when theres something metalic around the takeoff spot.
SOmetimes I simply moved the drone and the app went all green. Other times, I just took off with it giving some orange compass calibration error, and everything went green once a at 2m height.

This time though, it just flew into a tree lol

18

is the event I described (drone taking off and just flying straight into a tree) known as a ‘flyaway’?

19

That depends. In most of the ones from years ago they would both continue to fly with the sticks neutral and they failed to demonstrate any response to stick input … so the pilots claimed.

Logs were only on the drone, back then. There wasn’t anything smart about the controller, and there was no device/app to check satellite counts or signal strength (how things have changed) … or, in fact, any live video feed if one hadn’t been cobbled together and added. So proper evidence was non-existent where it had been impossible to retrieve the drone.

If you uploaded your log to AirData (it’s free for a basic account) at least there would be something to possibly suggest what the issue was.