Hello, I’m new to drones and new to posting here. I was flying my Spark this evening, just above my home to take some aerial shots of the house. It kind of just took off on it’s own, rising and speeding up. I was able to follow it for a while but could not gain control or get it to return home. The flight record in the DJI app indicates it’s at home but it’s not (and I checked the roof and trees), but even more perplexing, it indicates that the drone never left the vicinity of my front yard, even though I had VLOS on it two streets away. So, I uploaded the flight log into the viewer and think I know where it is but want to be sure I’m reading it right before I go knock on someone’s door. Based on this: https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/H7KAE0SWCIE0CPDNYF1E/# does it appear that it went down in the backyard of that house?
You had a compass issue basically right after takeoff. The aircraft switched back and forth to ATTI mode ( Which means no GPS Positioning). At ~145 sec, it switched to ATTI again and began drifting with the wind. You commanded up throttle and the aircraft climbed to ~40 meters and continued to drift.
NOTE: The aircraft will not RTH in ATTI mode if there is a compass issue.
This is incorrect. The flight log shows a final distance prior to signal loss of ~408 meters and and altitude of ~40 meters.
No. As above at that point the aircraft was ~ 40 meters in altitude. I suspect the drift continued until the battery reached critical. Most likely farther away than the last position.
Thank you, Fly_Dawg. I appreciate your reply very much. I was confused by what I was seeing in the app vs what I saw when I downloaded the flight records and looked at then in the viewer. I guess the drone is lost and I’m super bummed. Thanks again for interpreting the info for me.
Thank you, msinger. I will continue looking. Forgive what may be a dumb question, but would it have autolanded in that area, do you think?
Yes. It didn’t try to return home since it wasn’t using its GPS data when the remote controller disconnected from the Spark. In that case, the Spark auto lands at its current location 3 seconds after the remote controller disconnects. And since it was slowly drifting with the wind, it won’t be at the exact location shown at the end of your flight log.
Thank you so much.
Let us know if you find it.
Unfortunately I have not yet found the drone, but after analyzing the flight logs, DJI has been kind enough to offer a replacement drone under my Refresh plan. I will continue to look out for my drone just out of curiosity as much as anything, to see where it ended up. MANY thanks to you guys for your advice to a newbie and for the tool that allowed me to “see” the flight log and know where to search. I appreciate it.