Lost Spark due to GPS connection, never saw it again (happened 1-2 hours ago)

[OwYeah]

Hello,
I was piloting my spark with a friend who was piloting his phantom 3. I was in a forest but in a tree-free area. I was piloting my drone, everything was fine. I went behind some trees but I could still see the drone. I noticed a strange warning about magnetic field interferences and decided to gain altitude to plan a return home. After that I lost the connection to my drone, waited few minutes for it to come home but it never came back. It happened so quickly I couldn't even run towards it. I went to search around the area the app last recorded it but I definitively lost it. Here is the log : DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

I was using my drone in fair conditions, the time between warning and disconnection was too fast for me to react. The return home didn't work. I already had issues because for an unknown reason I could not connect my phone to the aircraft without going through RC, and couldn't have the 2.4 GHz wifi either. What am I suppose to do ? Is it entirely my fault here or did the drone messed up ?

Thanks in advance

 

[Andre Levite]

Hello,
I was piloting my spark with a friend who was piloting his phantom 3. I was in a forest but in a tree-free area. I was piloting my drone, everything was fine. I went behind some trees but I could still see the drone. I noticed a strange warning about magnetic field interferences and decided to gain altitude to plan a return home. After that I lost the connection to my drone, waited few minutes for it to come home but it never came back. It happened so quickly I couldn't even run towards it. I went to search around the area the app last recorded it but I definitively lost it. Here is the log : DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

I was using my drone in fair conditions, the time between warning and disconnection was too fast for me to react. The return home didn't work. I already had issues because for an unknown reason I could not connect my phone to the aircraft without going through RC, and couldn't have the 2.4 GHz wifi either. What am I suppose to do ? Is it entirely my fault here or did the drone messed up ?

Thanks in advance

Watch the video cache for view of last location and heading. Try "Find My Drone" feature of DJI Go app. Upload your flight log to this site and some kind soul will review it.

There are many threads on each of those topics using this forum's Search feature.

It you're in the forest don't forget to look up -- they often hang up on branches.

Time is of the essence. They don't do good left in the weather.

 

[OwYeah]

Thanks for your answer but I already did that. I searched in an area of 100m radius around the last known location, I couldn't find anything.
Now what is interesting me is to know if it's my responsability or the drone's... It seems I didn't do any error while flying and the connection/GPS signal were lost because of some issue. Can I get DJI involved in that ? How am I responsible for my lost drone if the flaw comes from the sensors ?

 

[Andre Levite]

Thanks for your answer but I already did that. I searched in an area of 100m radius around the last known location, I couldn't find anything.
Now what is interesting me is to know if it's my responsability or the drone's... It seems I didn't do any error while flying and the connection/GPS signal were lost because of some issue. Can I get DJI involved in that ? How am I responsible for my lost drone if the flaw comes from the sensors ?

Your best bet is still to find your drone. Uploaded flight log plus Google Maps can pin it down closely sometimes. You only searched 100m radius but at full speed that distance is covered in just ~15 seconds of flight.

Without the drone you can't use DJI Care. Without the flight data DJI won't even consider a replacement. There are several posts about replacement vouchers given if you could prove a malfunction - but only if drone activated less than 12 months.

My only experience with this issue is second hand. There are many many threads if you search "fly away". Hard to find a common thread and even hardee to find consistency in DJI's response.

 

[jimlips]

Hello OwYeah:

I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your Spark. While this message probably won't be any help in recovering your drone, I can give you some pointers that may help you not lose another drone:

1 - I noticed your battery was at 63% when you took off. While this works fine most of the time, I would only take off with a battery that was 90% or more. You just never know what is going to happen. I took off yesterday with a Phantom Advanced that showed 53% left on the battery, but after hovering for only 30 seconds, I got the message "Critically low battery, landing", and it landed in the grass.

2 - I also noticed your speed was pretty high when the errors started showing up. Were you in Sports mode? All of the problems I've had with my Spark showed up when I was in sports mode. This is probably just me, but my Spark has done some really goofy things when I made the switch to Sports mode.

3 - You were flying in a forest - this is never a good idea unless you are "overlooking" the forest from above. If your Spark was on the 5.8 GHz band, trees with leaves attenuate the signal to/from your RC terribly. 2.4 GHz is a better choice (especially in remote areas like where you were, and there aren't likely to be many competing 2.4 GHz Wifi signals) for remote control. I know you said you could see the drone and readings show it was only 319 feet away when you started getting Yaw errors.

And finally, follow this thread, the errors look identical to what happened to you: Spark Yaw error and loss of control

 

[hiflyer]

I'm sorry to hear that you lost your drone. It's surely in the trees. I'm confused by the connection problem. were you connected to the RC or just the phone?
was the flight only fifty seconds? Was your friend able to take a look with his Phantom?
I'm hoping that you will be able find it.

 

[OwYeah]

I'm sorry to hear that you lost your drone. It's surely in the trees. I'm confused by the connection problem. were you connected to the RC or just the phone?
was the flight only fifty seconds? Was your friend able to take a look with his Phantom?
I'm hoping that you will be able find it.

Hello OwYeah:

I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your Spark. While this message probably won't be any help in recovering your drone, I can give you some pointers that may help you not lose another drone:

1 - I noticed your battery was at 63% when you took off. While this works fine most of the time, I would only take off with a battery that was 90% or more. You just never know what is going to happen. I took off yesterday with a Phantom Advanced that showed 53% left on the battery, but after hovering for only 30 seconds, I got the message "Critically low battery, landing", and it landed in the grass.

2 - I also noticed your speed was pretty high when the errors started showing up. Were you in Sports mode? All of the problems I've had with my Spark showed up when I was in sports mode. This is probably just me, but my Spark has done some really goofy things when I made the switch to Sports mode.

3 - You were flying in a forest - this is never a good idea unless you are "overlooking" the forest from above. If your Spark was on the 5.8 GHz band, trees with leaves attenuate the signal to/from your RC terribly. 2.4 GHz is a better choice (especially in remote areas like where you were, and there aren't likely to be many competing 2.4 GHz Wifi signals) for remote control. I know you said you could see the drone and readings show it was only 319 feet away when you started getting Yaw errors.

And finally, follow this thread, the errors look identical to what happened to you: Spark Yaw error and loss of control

Hi. Thanks for your feedback. Even though I understand it's better to take off with 100% battery, it's supposed to work fine with 8 minutes of autonomy.

Second thing, that's the strange part that quick acceleration. I did not put the sport mode specifically because the drone was a bit far and I couldn't see it really well.
And last thing, I was located on a cliff with only the top of the trees in front of me, the signal was suppose to be ok but even though the drone was high above the trees and wasn't suppose to loose the GPS signal. It never returned home that's what I don't understand...

I'm sorry to hear that you lost your drone. It's surely in the trees. I'm confused by the connection problem. were you connected to the RC or just the phone?
was the flight only fifty seconds? Was your friend able to take a look with his Phantom?
I'm hoping that you will be able find it.

Hi, thanks for your answer. I was piloting with RC controller and phone connected through WiFi to the controller.
And yes the flight was only fifty seconds. My friend tried to look but he couldn't see anything on his phantom, with the snow and the size of the spark it was impossible.

 

[DavidBlezard]

Sorry for your loss. I’d open a support case with DJI. Don’t ask you don’t get. The IMU though the Spark was only about 2 feet high. VPS altitude N/A.

 

[nilanjan118]

Looks like a hardware malfunction to me. Normal flight with 17 satellites and full reception till 47s and then Yaw error. Then at 47.6s, 17 satellites locked but no reception. AC switches to Atti mode at 48.2s. If you had VLOS at this point, which is possible since you were only 327 ft away from home, you should have flown back manually home. You let go off the right JS at 50.1s and the AC seems to be drifting on its own from here. Last log at 54.3s, probably lost RC signal here. But since it is in Atti mode, it cannot RTH. The AC would have attempted to auto land from here. Hard to tell the actual altitude above ground here as you had taken off from a cliff and hence it is difficult to predict how much time later it would have landed.

 

[nilanjan118]

Btw, I shared your log with another user JJB from the DJI Spark official forum, who is very adept at analysing flight logs. Here's his prediction on where your drone would have landed. See the orange marker below.

 

[OwYeah]

Btw, I shared your log with another user JJB from the DJI Spark official forum, who is very adept at analysing flight logs. Here's his prediction on where your drone would have landed. See the orange marker below.

Wow thanks a lot !! I'm gonna go search this area with a phantom to look up in the trees. Thanks a lot really, because it's out of warranty DJI won't do **** even if it's a flaw from them.
And to answer to your previous message, I couldn't fly in Atti mode because the drone had already range issues and the controller was not connected to it anymore.

 

[xspwhite]

If the drone is white and the trees are full of snow, then it might be hard to find. My guess is that it landed in the top of one of those pine trees.