Preventing flyaways: DJI's advice

DJI blames ‘vast majority’ of flyaways on pilot error and gives five tips on how to prevent them. Worth a read.

2 Likes

Much as I’d love to defend our hobby and our pilots:

I have a sneaky feeling they may be right :cry:

The biggest offender seems to be those who RTH to the remote, usually while they’re on a boat or something and the location simply hasn’t updated :open_mouth:

I’d like to add something to their first point too:

Once a Home Point is set, you’ll see a prompt in the app, and a green Home Point icon will appear on your map.

Indeed it does. You also hear a voice prompt saying “The home point has been updated, please check it on the map”.

That’s the critical part!! As soon as I hear that prompt, the very first thing I do is to actually check it on the map!! And I make bloody sure that point is the same point on the ground that I’m stood on :smiley: What if it got it wrong? Instant flyaway :frowning:

Re point 2 and the compass. I hear horror stories of people taking off from the roof of their car :open_mouth:

Our friend FlytPath made a good point re compass calibrations when out and about, he demonstrated calibrating the compass in a public park, he was stood on concrete steps, looked innocent enough, until you realise the amount of steel rebar inside those concrete steps. Interesting stuff.

Point 3 made me stop and think… Has anyone ever heard of a flyaway while their drone was within VLOS? I don’t think I’ve heard of a single one :thinking:

Point 4 re moving targets (homepoints) comes back to my first comment above.

Point 5, RTH height - I’m not sure this was ever responsible for a flyaway? Responsible for some avoidable crashes certainly!

When I take off, I usually hover at about 20 feet or so and I stay there and just listen to the props. I’m listening for any usual noises or anything out of the ordinary. While listening, I’m also looking around for the highest object and setting my RTH height. Only then do I bugger off :smiley:

2 Likes

Also all these stories of people saying their aircraft just flew off over the treetops, and would not respond to their control inputs. Yep that’s called the wind :hugs:

I am amazed these fixed pitch machines can handle the wind they do but do people really appreciate how windy it gets at height? I think that’s a huge part of it personally

1 Like

Mavics big problem is no way to practice ATTI mode.

New user encounters a compass error or IMU exception, add in some wind, panic and it’s a recipe for disaster.

1 Like