Today I flew two separate mapping flights using my Mavic 2 Enterprise. Both flights were conducted at 150ft. The flights were going well until the drone went to do the parameter of the map. At that point the drone lost altitude control. My Drone Deploy app was still saying I was at 150ft but my drone was flying higher and higher. The first time I didn’t catch what was happening till it was 650ft high! I only know it got that high because when I hit the return to home my drone deploy app registered -500ft when I landed! I restarted my phone, the app, switched the battery on the drone and did a firmware update before attempting the second map at a different location. But when it went to do the parameter I could tell it was starting to fly away again! I hit RTH and it landed at -90ft since I caught it earlier this time.
Yesterday I flew a similar map with a parameter and my drone flew it perfectly. The only noticeable environmental difference was that today was windy.
Was there a glitch with the drone deploy app today? Any suggestions on what I should do before my next flight so this doesn’t happen again? Could it have been the wind?
Thank you
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How windy was it (steady and gusts) on the ground, as well as couple hundred feet up?
When you look at your flight logs/map, does it show straight flight lines or saw tooth (e.g. being blown by the wind)?
When the aircraft started to climb on its own, by chance had you not shut DJI or other app down before using DD?
Might be time for a imu & compass calibrate.
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It was pretty windy and gusty. Persistent 15mph winds with gusts up to 28mph.
I did a compass calibration and IMU calibration each flight. The first flight DJI might have been open. The second flight I made sure everything was shut down but DD.
After looking at the images the drone was actually steadily ascending the whole flight time on both flights but not very noticeably from the ground till the parameter. But DD never showed the altitude change. It showed it doing its normal one or two foot fluctuations off of the 150ft desired altitude.
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Did the telemetry hang or was it still reporting and just reporting the wrong elevation?
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It was still reporting and following its map course but reporting the wrong elevation.
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While breezy at 15mph steady, wind gusts to 28 should not cause a M2E to ascend like what you describe. With the wind you would have heard seen the M2E using more power and also battery time decrease. If wind was bad, should have gotten a windy condition error/warning message while in flight. Also when you look at flight logs for example with airdata or similar, high wind would have shown a sawtooth flight pattern vs. straight or planned lines. Not saying wind was not factor, however sounds more like compass, imu, controller/app issue. Regarding wind, try this sometime, with aircraft powered off, hold aircraft firmly perpendicular to ground and props towards wind, do the props spin up to same sound pitch level as when powering up for take off? Also if not using something like UAV forecast or other tool, good to use one to see surface winds, also at altitude, as well as forecast. Good luck.
Let me clarify that last one. It was reporting the elevation I wanted with the usual slight elevation shifts of a few feet, but the drone was not actually at that elevation. I landed at negative elevation both flights. The first flight be -500! because I hadn’t realized what was happening.
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I’m going to try a test flight today since the wind is pretty calm. Going to offload and reload DD and will definitely do a compass and imu calibration. Hopefully the problem does not persist. If it does… is it time for a new drone? I know I’ll need a new thermal by September so I may just bite the bullet now.
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