I went out 2 days ago and took a flight I’ve before to survey some property. As I reached the extent of the Spark’s range, the signal dropped and it was disconnected from the RC. I wasn’t too concerned as this has happened before and, typically, it will RTH with no problem. Only this time, not only did it not RTH, it remained disconnected and at 400 ft in the air, I have no idea where it would have come down. I check the last known GPS lock through Google Maps to no avail. I’ve now uploaded the flight log but as I view it myself, I can make sense of the information and I’m hoping you guys can help. Much appreciated! As I wait for this response, I’m going back out there today to search on foot and see if I can get lucky. Thanks!!
The flight log shows the last location at 39.33631956 ,-76.76708413. Since your flight log shows no signs of strong wind, your Spark should have definitely been able to make it back to the home point if it tried to return home. Since that did not happen, I’m thinking the battery might have disconnected mid-flight or a hardware failure caused it to crash.
If it crashed at that location, you’ll likely find it somewhere within this yellow box:
I see. Well, I’ve not located it thus far but there are some trees to go through as well as a field that is knee high brush.
Also, when I hit the RTH button, the controller beeped a lot but the distance never changed. Does that mean it never tried to RTH or could it have reveresed direction in an attempt to RTH?
In other words, should I search along the flight line back toward the home point?
I also want to point out that prior to that flight I had updated the firmware on the aircraft and remote. The first time I tried to fly it was acting strange. I landed, rebooted and then everything seemed fine. Should I find the drone, would you reccomend a downgrade in the firmware?
If the remote controller was still connected, you could have initiated RTH. And RTH would have been auto initiated 3 seconds have the remote controller disconnected from the Spark. In either case, you wouldn’t have seen the distance change in DJI GO since the downlink disconnected at the end of your flight log.
If RTH has been initiated, it should have made it home. The GPS, battery power, home point, wind, etc. all looked good. I would start the search in the yellow box.
If you find the drone, you should take a look at the DAT flight log to see what it reveals. I doubt updating the firmware was the cause of this loss.
At the points in your log where the Spark was hovering in place, you can tell the wind was blowing since the pitch and roll were not close to 0. However, the wind was not strong enough to prevent the Spark from holding its position.
The wind was blowing toward the direction of the home point after you flew over top of the school. So, that should have helped the Spark fly back to the home point had it attempted to return home.
Were you able to hear the Spark in the air at any point after the remote controller started beeping?
No, unfortunately it was out of my line of sight and too far away to hear. When I heard the remote control beeping for the RTH function, I began walking quickly in the direction of the drone hoping it would reconnect and continue flying home but it never reconnected even when I was within only a few hundred feet. It’s just that the field there is very thick. I’m going to go back out there when I get an opportunity and just begin a grid search on foot of that field. Seems to me that, based on this new data, that the drone would most likely be in that field.
