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After 2 years of enjoyment, Sparky went missing in flight today
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<blockquote data-quote="Chuck c" data-source="post: 105508" data-attributes="member: 3549"><p>Thanks all for the responses. Two more hours walking around today, no Spark unfortunately. I think Northwood has it - I crawled underneath the wooden deck of the place I'm staying and what did I see? A GIANT STEEL CROSSMEMBER! Presumably it's there to provide torsional stability to the deck, and goes right underneath my launch point. Ugh. Oddly, I got no warnings before takeoff and both compass and IMU showed green (though the compass bar was very small). It's also strange to me that I flew for 7 1/2 minutes before the compass error showed up, but what do I know. </p><p></p><p>Lessons learned: </p><p>1. Wait for "home point updated" before taking off (I knew this already, but didn't abide by it). It probably wouldn't have mattered in the case of compass error, but who knows.</p><p>2. Keep the drone in sight. This one is much harder to do. I had the drone in sight (a very small speck) all the way up until auto RTH, at which point I looked at my phone and saw the video feed spin my direction and accelerate back towards me. Right afterwards, I heard "atti mode" and looked at my phone again. When I looked back up, I wasn't able to spot the drone. Under "normal" circumstances (i.e. no compass error) the drone should have hovered and drifted slightly with the light wind. I think if this were the case I would have picked it up visually again and been able to fly manually. With the compass error however, I think it probably went "wonky" and moved from it's previous position quickly and I couldn't see where it went. Remote contact was lost about a second later, in which case whatever control inputs I made would not have mattered anyway.</p><p>3. Consider one of those little stick-on GPS tracking devices. I may have found Sparky by now with one of those. Maybe. </p><p></p><p>An alternate theory - I have been reading and watching YouTube videos about the new Mavic Mini recently. Maybe Sparky found out, got jealous, and decided to leave me?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Chuck c, post: 105508, member: 3549"] Thanks all for the responses. Two more hours walking around today, no Spark unfortunately. I think Northwood has it - I crawled underneath the wooden deck of the place I'm staying and what did I see? A GIANT STEEL CROSSMEMBER! Presumably it's there to provide torsional stability to the deck, and goes right underneath my launch point. Ugh. Oddly, I got no warnings before takeoff and both compass and IMU showed green (though the compass bar was very small). It's also strange to me that I flew for 7 1/2 minutes before the compass error showed up, but what do I know. Lessons learned: 1. Wait for "home point updated" before taking off (I knew this already, but didn't abide by it). It probably wouldn't have mattered in the case of compass error, but who knows. 2. Keep the drone in sight. This one is much harder to do. I had the drone in sight (a very small speck) all the way up until auto RTH, at which point I looked at my phone and saw the video feed spin my direction and accelerate back towards me. Right afterwards, I heard "atti mode" and looked at my phone again. When I looked back up, I wasn't able to spot the drone. Under "normal" circumstances (i.e. no compass error) the drone should have hovered and drifted slightly with the light wind. I think if this were the case I would have picked it up visually again and been able to fly manually. With the compass error however, I think it probably went "wonky" and moved from it's previous position quickly and I couldn't see where it went. Remote contact was lost about a second later, in which case whatever control inputs I made would not have mattered anyway. 3. Consider one of those little stick-on GPS tracking devices. I may have found Sparky by now with one of those. Maybe. An alternate theory - I have been reading and watching YouTube videos about the new Mavic Mini recently. Maybe Sparky found out, got jealous, and decided to leave me? [/QUOTE]
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After 2 years of enjoyment, Sparky went missing in flight today