DJI Spark Massive Interference

Spark
1

Alright, for some background I own a dji spark drone. Currently I’m in northeast Poland during the occurrence of the issue. It was roughly 10pm when it happened. A thunderstorm had passed over a few hours ago. I’m in a pretty rural part of the already rural town.

It’s 10pm roughly and I decide to go for a night fly; I know I shouldn’t but I wanted a nighttime view of my little neighborhood and the town in the distance. I have edited the software parameters beforehand to increase sport mode maximum velocity for my applications. I have also edited the max height to 500 meters. My goal that night was to get to 500 meters and take a few photos; yes I know that’s really illegal but that’s how I am, I take precautions to make sure no airplanes and such are anywhere near me. Anyway, I’m nearing 500 meters height and I notice a little lightning in the distance and about a second later I momentarily lose rc connection to the drone. The connection re-establishes momentarily afterwards. I’m a little perplexed by how it’s happening as the sky is clear of all clouds aside from the thunderstorm clearing away in the distance. I decide to continue to the target height as I am very close. Again more lightning can be seen far away and I lose connection, again. This time I lose all transmission to the drone. No video transmission and the controller indicates no drone is connected to it. I fear for the worst thinking that the drone will be swept away by the wind assuming that the gps is also lost. For a split second the controller reconnects and issues an auto land command automatically. The connection is then lost again. At this point I am struggling to gain control of the drone. I do not have any success even after restarting the controller twice. Each time it connects briefly but then disconnects leaving me with the rth noise. Once the drone gets to about 10 meters height the controller connects to the drone, sort of. It was really more of a spasm of connected then disconnected really quickly indicated by the controller light and drone indicator lights, all the while I still have no control. I wait for the drone to lower to the ground and land.

That experience was terrifying. I don’t remember the dji manual indicating that I shouldn’t fly when a thunderstorm is near, correct me if I’m wrong.

Could thunder be a really strong interference?

2

In my opinion, yes. Unstable atmosphere and wind would certainly be a factor. At that altitude what was the wind and wind gust velocity that night? Can you upload your flight log to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help so we can see what actually happened according to Go4 ?

3

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/W7UMS027RJNCRQMYCFBQ
If you’d like, I have the drone flight log from dji assistant.
Also, I never fly if the ground wind speed or 8000ft altitude wind speed is above 15km/hr
I know the drone can handle 20 km/hr winds but at the time 8000ft wind speeds were 10km/hr according to the internet.

4

If you are flying vertically straight up above you, without pointing the flat sides of the antennas above you (completely the opposite of the normal antenna position for horizontal flight), loss of signal is to be expected, especially at that height above the RC. The lightning may have have just been an independent intervening event, with no causal effect.

5

I keep the flat sides of the antenna paralell to the top surface of the controller. I’ve never experienced a signal loss when flying up to even 3000 feet. Im usually sitting in an chair when doing a straight above flight so natrually the antenna are point up-ish.

6

Well, we can then rule out user error, but still not convinced the lightning is the cause, but it also can’t be entirely ruled out yet. Not familiar with northeast Poland, so signal jamming is also a remote possibility. Anyone see anything in the Logs? Not my forte!