Mid Flight Disconnect Diagnosis

[YOWer]

Good evening Spark colleagues

I was hoping you could possibly shed light on a disconnect problem I had today - my first. I had flown the Spark on a fully charged battery for about 20% of the battery reserve (therefore leaving 80% available) and completed the flight with a shut down. Then my neighbour asked me to check his chimney cap. So I rebooted Spark and flew it to his place. I was hovering over his chimney when there was a gust of wind and all of a sudden I was disconnected (using controller with OTG to iPhone).

I nearly panicked (ok I did panic for a moment) and tried everything to reconnect to no avail. Spark smartly went into RTH or so I hoped as I couldn't confirm with controller. It ultimately flew back and landed beside me. Yay!

So the diagnosis: any thoughts as to the disconnect? Do you think it was because I was using a less than fully charge battery? Gust of wind? Other.

All thoughts welcome.

Best
YOWer

 

[Florida Drone Supply]

I doubt it was caused by the battery state of charge or wind gust. You will probably never know what caused it. Are all your firmware versions up to date?

 

[YOWer]

I doubt it was caused by the battery state of charge or wind gust. You will probably never know what caused it. Are all your firmware versions up to date?

Yup - all is up to date and current.

 

[DesertWindAero]

RF interference in the neighborhood?

 

[YOWer]

RF interference in the neighborhood?

Nothing showed on the controller prior to the disconnect. Also i just checked my log and there is no record of the flight - or at least it doesn't show the disconnect and auto RTH....

 

[GDN21]

did the chimney was between the controller and the spark ? Perhaps the chimney made a screen for the RF transmission ?

If it launched a RTH procedure is that it lost the signal.

 

[Texas Gonzo]

Yup - all is up to date and current.

Well, there's your problem! Lols. All kidding aside, as others have said many times before, you'll never know for sure. Sounds like steroid-amped dji super gremlins to me. They're vicious! Most likely it was just one of those occurrences, prob due to neighborhood wifi interference. Dji seems especially susceptible to it...

 

[TedStriker]

I had a similar disconnect yesterday. Flying with an iPhone 6s Plus and OTG. This happened 8 minutes into the flight. Lost camera feed and data from the Spark. I still had VLOS and RC control sticks still controlled Spark, so I was able to land.

 

[RaeThrills]

Started happing to me yesterday no warning, lucky i was flying in my house, then today wanted to test it again, and I had all kinds of warnings, from bluetooth devices, to strong interference. Without the otg cable. So i assume the spark just hates a crowded airwave.