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Lost spark today. Only brought 4 days ago.

That's what I'm thinking as well. My predictions were right and it's absolutely flooded with rain here.

I think today's search will be a bit more eventful.

I'm considering getting a Mavic 2 ZOOM to help with the search due to its long distance. I don't want to have another spark incident.

An extreme solution, but of course its a superior drone in most every way. Hope you find the Spark, do let us know.
 
An extreme solution, but of course its a superior drone in most every way. Hope you find the Spark, do let us know.

I wanted a Mavic for a while but brought a Spark to get into the whole drone stuff. I'm not going to buy a Mavic just to look for the spark ?
 
Quick update all, after the third day of searching it looks like the drone is gone.

The private allotments came up empty and a decent search around surrounding woodland turned up empty.

After asking many people, getting the story in a local newspaper and shared across social media the search has come up empty.

It absolutely poured last night so if the drone was somewhere in the wild, it's most surely dead now.

I've contacted DJI and they're looking into it. I am devastated that it's only a week old and the compass and GPS failed in a large open field area with little to no interference.

The wind wasn't that strong really so I was hoping it wouldn't be too far away. Even though the drone had 5-5:30m flight time left in it, it never attempted to return home.

I hope that DJI will hopefully replace the drone or at least give me a discount on a new one due to the complete unexpected failure or several major components.

My boss was unavailable to bring his drone out today to help search the area due to weather.

I'm hoping to buy a Mavic 2 zoom. I am not entirely too focused on the camera on the drone as it's more of a hobby than a profession of mine. I will take the Mavic on the same course and see if I can hunt it down. I hope it'll be possible to recover the drone but this is the end of the thread it seems.


Thanks to everyone's help and on the off chance I recover the drone I'll be sure to let you all know.
 
I am lusting after a Zoom.... :D so cant blame you there! The rain wont kill the drone, if you can find it, there are ways to dry it out. I had a non DJI drone fly away on me January of 2018, we found it sticking out of a melting snowdrift mid-March. I set it out in the sun , let any water drain out, then put it in a pillow case, and into a bag of rice, in about 2 days, took it out, popped in a battery, and bingo. Back to normal. The crash was cushioned by the snow I am sure, and not even a prop was damaged. Sparks are one of the more durable DJI products, so if you can find it, it will stand a chance once again. As an aside, I used to hang out in Worthing, Little Hampton many many moons ago, looking at your map brought back memories, though back then, it was flying a kite on the beach near Rustington. Cheers.
 
Hi all, final update from me here. It appears that someone has taken the drone when its preformed its come down as a search spanning 4 days using drones and 6 people has came up empty.

DJI have been great and issued a replacement.

Thanks for everyones help! See you on DJI Mavic Drone Forum soon ?
 
Hi all, final update from me here. It appears that someone has taken the drone when its preformed its come down as a search spanning 4 days using drones and 6 people has came up empty.

DJI have been great and issued a replacement.

Thanks for everyones help! See you on DJI Mavic Drone Forum soon ?

It would be interesting to know if DJI can receive its position if someone tries to fly it? In theory the app should be able to receive the serial number of the drone...
 
It would be interesting to know if DJI can receive its position if someone tries to fly it? In theory the app should be able to receive the serial number of the drone...

I'm sure that's a possibility but I'm in the U.K so likely due to some GDPR bollocks they wouldn't be able to provide to location.

Another note, seeing as I had to provide my serial number when they was processing a replacement, I'm hoping they would have blacklisted it.
 
I'm sure that's a possibility but I'm in the U.K so likely due to some GDPR bollocks they wouldn't be able to provide to location.

Another note, seeing as I had to provide my serial number when they was processing a replacement, I'm hoping they would have blacklisted it.

GDPR might look like a bollocks to you but it's a great regulation to protect our privacy and our data.

Hopefully they can block it from flying remotely.
 
GDPR might look like a bollocks to you but it's a great regulation to protect our privacy and our data.

Hopefully they can block it from flying remotely.

I agree that it's a good regulation but I work in the computing industry operating retail stores, repair centres, IT support centres and web hosting & email management for hundreds of companies. Unfortunately I know GDPR all too well and after a year of having to deal with it from a business stand point it sure does get annoying.
 
Unfortunately, everyone can fly a lost spark.
I doubt if DJI can block a drone from flying, but even this is true, a drone can fly for years without DJI notice it.
 
Unfortunately, everyone can fly a lost spark.
I doubt if DJI can block a drone from flying, but even this is true, a drone can fly for years without DJI notice it.

They sure can block it.
The missing Spark flight controller serial number has been tagged by DJI.

Case in point, someone could not get their Spark to activate.
Upon further investigation, they blocked it because it was reported stolen.

DJI can do a lot with a flight controller serial number.

I my case, they can unlock to fly in an authorization zone with a serial number.
They can unlock altitude limits on a Mavic Air with a serial number.

They can also prevent takeoff
 
Hi.I had same prob with my spark.previous day flew without a prob and next day while flying low altetude around 20m my baby took off at high altitude en i could not see her.i gave up and sat down pondering on my loss. About 5min later i could hear the sound of my baby landing.sjoeeeee happy happy. Maybe there is a glitch in dji spark software and dji neednto check in on it.hope you find your baby buddy
 
Late advice I know but when the wind up high starts to take your drone away, you need to get it down FAST. Airpseed at that altitude can EASILY exceed your drone's top speed, and when it falls into Return To Home it will be going much slower than that and just get pushed farther and farther away from you until its batteries die. I lost a (thankfully very cheap) quad last year due to this, but in my case it was a lost cause. 100ft up it caught a powerful air current and I lost visual on it before I could bring it down. At least with the spark you can navigate with video and bring it down low enough to get it out of the higher speed air.
 
Today I lost my spark. It was a sunny day and wind conditions were fine but as the drone was flying around it looks as if the wind had just lifted it up. It went to over 500ft. After about 1 minute of this happening the drone and the lost connection with the controller and defaulted to return to home mode, I knew this had happened due to the controller regaining connection for a moment.

The last flight data recorded showed it hovering above someone's house, it pointed the camera down but was still 500ft in the air. It was at 37% and had 5 minutes of flight time left. It only needed 2 minutes to fly to home.

The thing is, the signal was fine but in its final moments it entered ATTI mode but it also had a little "18" on the signal bar (satellites).

I've given up the on foot search after 3 hours. Can anyone offer any advice? I'm just worried someone has heard it land itself and just taken it.
your first mistake.. not getting to know your craft .... second... you fley to far away keep it within say 500 1000 meters.... you need to set the compass calibration every flight .. make sure theres not alot of wifi stuff around you... and flyin a open feild not over houses and in neighborhoods.. power lines make emf houses have wifi... to much noise floor dji does not care about noise floor other controllers have fss frequency hopping why dont dji use it there tooo lazy.... they would rather use wifi freq like 2.4ghz and not hopp on them or not use 433 mhz long range like you can get with thes long range kits nooooo they just dont care... this is why i wont buy another dji product ever... but you should never fly over homes fly in a park over a field where you know if it crashes you can walk over too it.. try not to fly 100 feet up planes fly that 80 feet max and youll be fine there if theres a airport 5 miles from you and you dont have to contact the tower 5 miles out thats a misnomer its 2 miles.... these sparks they instead of fss they upped the power levels thats why your spark gets hot and the controller its a 1 watt to 1.5 watt transmitter.. the fools at dji dont realize wattage dont matter so much as dbi and a clean signal and signal spectrum your cell phone transmits and receives on 500 mah thats half a watt to towers 3 miles away why cant they do this with our stuff ill tell you they dont care the best spectrum is around 900 mhz anyway before you fly anything get to know its quirks fly within 30 feet of yourself and 20 feet off the ground a few days... calibrate etc etc.. and dji has left us in the dust they have proven they would rather build a new drone charge you money for that than fix with software etc the older stuff
 
I'm new to this forum and sorry to hear about the drone loss. Would a Bluetooth tracker help in these scenarios? Just had a look at the Tile Pro and it claims a range of 300ft(100m). If you had a fair idea we're the drone went down, this could be a useful tool.
 
Hello from the Hoosier Heartland, stw303.

I have a Loc8tor tracker, similar to the Tile Pro.

Luckily, I haven't had to use it but it's there JIC.


Welcome to the Forum. ?
 
They sure can block it.
The missing Spark flight controller serial number has been tagged by DJI.

Case in point, someone could not get their Spark to activate.
Upon further investigation, they blocked it because it was reported stolen.

DJI can do a lot with a flight controller serial number.

I my case, they can unlock to fly in an authorization zone with a serial number.
They can unlock altitude limits on a Mavic Air with a serial number.

They can also prevent takeoff

An activated spark, doesn't need re-activation to fly.

If someone flies without an internet connection, DJI will never notice that.

Unfortunately, everyone can fly a stolen spark.
Power on, connect to device, and fly. No need for internet connection, or some approval from DJI.
 
Mate go to find my drone in the Dji go4 App you can track its last location even if it crashed and the battery pops of. Good luck mate.
Today I lost my spark. It was a sunny day and wind conditions were fine but as the drone was flying around it looks as if the wind had just lifted it up. It went to over 500ft. After about 1 minute of this happening the drone and the lost connection with the controller and defaulted to return to home mode, I knew this had happened due to the controller regaining connection for a moment.

The last flight data recorded showed it hovering above someone's house, it pointed the camera down but was still 500ft in the air. It was at 37% and had 5 minutes of flight time left. It only needed 2 minutes to fly to home.

The thing is, the signal was fine but in its final moments it entered ATTI mode but it also had a little "18" on the signal bar (satellites).

I've given up the on foot search after 3 hours. Can anyone offer any advice? I'm just worried someone has heard it land itself and just taken it.
20190513_175141.jpeg20190513_175119.jpeg
 
Mate go to find my drone in the Dji go4 App you can track its last location even if it crashed and the battery pops of. Good luck mate.
Unfortunately, that will only show the last recorded location from the flight log. The aircraft was flying at an altitude of 502 feet at the time, so that's not going to be the location where it landed.
 
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