Spark suddenly descends without controller input

diversions · Sep 3, 2025

This just happened to me. Twice, in fact. The Spark is hovering fine and suddenly it starts to descend straight into the ground. Checking the logs / player on Airdata... it was descending despite no controller inputs to descend. Sats were rather low though (9)... but vision sensors were on. Curious why the drone didn't catch the descent. Anyway, I guess I'm not flying far for the next few days as I try to figure out what's going on. Thankfully the crashes were all on dirt and it looks like everything is intact.

Cheers, and thanks for any suggestions on how to troubleshoot.

*T

SoccerRef12 · Sep 3, 2025

My Spark would do that when the outside temp was over about 80°F. Something inside overheats. Could that be your issue?

diversions · Sep 3, 2025

SoccerRef12 said:
My Spark would do that when the outside temp was over about 80°F. Something inside overheats. Could that be your issue?

You may have something. Converting to celsius... sheesh. That's the temp I set my AIRCONDITIONER to. It only gets down to 26 on winter nights where I am. Average temp is here is 90°F. And on that flight I was hovering mostly rather than zipping about.

I was flying near 220v power cables... like within 5 meters... so that might be the culprit.

This morning I recalibrated IMUs and compasses... and it flew fine for an entire battery. So maybe it just needed a recalibration?

Anyway, I'll start taking it further out / higher up in stages to make sure the problem is gone. I'm still lucky because I normally fly it out over the ocean to take sunrise photos. In this case, I was just flying it near my house to test new props. So it crashed from like 3 feet off the ground onto grassy turf. No real damage.