New member, disastrous first fight

[Puppies 59]

Just received my Lite plus today.
Did all the set up and calibrations etc.
Took of for my first flight and within 20 seconds I lost video feed

I tried return to home, but nothing happened. Total panic mode, I jumped in the car in the direction I flew and walked about a mile in open countryside looking for it. Then I resigned myself to having lost my £1200 drone and went home!

I started looking through the app and found the flight details and it had only travelled 70 odd meters. So I looked on Google maps to see where it could be. Then I got my Mavic air 2 out and scoured the area looks for a Bright orange drone. It's only when I got the footage from the mavic and studied it on my PC that I found the bugger!
Had to get a friendly passers-by to retrieve it for me from a wooded area for me as I'm disabled.
The Gimbal is broken and all of the props, but everything else is fine!
I looked at the footage from the Evo, but there wasn't anything on the sd card even though I hit record.

So I have no idea why it crashed. I've emailed support asking them to take it back for repair and hopefully they can read the flight data to see what happened?
Any thoughts from guys would be appreciated!

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

sorry to hear about your crash; obviously this is not your first drone since you mentioned air 2 so you know all about connections, gps, homepoint, etc. i would just send it in under your autel care or autel warranty and have another go at it again later; good luck!

 

[Puppies 59]

sorry to hear about your crash; obviously this is not your first drone since you mentioned air 2 so you know all about connections, gps, homepoint, etc. i would just send it in under your autel care or autel warranty and have another go at it again later; good luck!

Cheers, just waiting for Autel getting back to me to see where I stand
I'm going to really nervous about having another go, just have make sure my first flight is over open ground for easy retrieval

 

[DARKSeifer]

It seems that that drone just hovered there for 30 minutes and then crash landed, you can upload the log to airdata and you'll see far more information than in the app.

Losing video signal doesn't mean you lost your drone, as RC will probably still work, so if it is close you can visually flight it back. Sometimes video freezes but you still get telemetry, so you can use the compass or the map to manually fly it back. If everything fails you must rely on RTH. Note that sometimes when you lose video signal you don't lose RC signal, so the drone doesn't trigger auto RTH until you manually press the button or the low battery RTH engages.

One of the most important things in drone flying is waiting for satellites and set the homepoint properly, in an open area with at least three meter clearance, because it's your main failsafe. If you lose signal, if the controller dies, if the app glitches, if the phone dies, if the cable dies... it will just auto return.

PS: The gimbal just seem to have lost the dampers, but doesn't seem broken, maybe it's a cheap repair.

 

[Puppies 59]

It seems that that drone just hovered there for 30 minutes and then crash landed, you can upload the log to airdata and you'll see far more information than in the app.

Losing video signal doesn't mean you lost your drone, as RC will probably still work, so if it is close you can visually flight it back. Sometimes video freezes but you still get telemetry, so you can use the compass or the map to manually fly it back. If everything fails you must rely on RTH. Note that sometimes when you lose video signal you don't lose RC signal, so the drone doesn't trigger auto RTH until you manually press the button or the low battery RTH engages.

One of the most important things in drone flying is waiting for satellites and set the homepoint properly, in an open area with at least three meter clearance, because it's your main failsafe. If you lose signal, if the controller dies, if the app glitches, if the phone dies, if the cable dies... it will just auto return.

PS: The gimbal just seem to have lost the dampers, but doesn't seem broken, maybe it's a cheap repair.

Thanks for the reply, how do you upload the log to air data?
Cheers!

 

[DARKSeifer]

Go to Drone Data Management and Flight Analysis | Airdata UAV and make an account, then link your Autel account to it, and it will update the logs automatically from the Autel server.

You can upload the logs to the Autel server by jsut pressing the cluod button in the upper right corner of the Flight Logs section of the Autel Sky app.

 

[Puppies 59]

Go to Drone Data Management and Flight Analysis | Airdata UAV and make an account, then link your Autel account to it, and it will update the logs automatically from the Autel server.

You can upload the logs to the Autel server by jsut pressing the cluod button in the upper right corner of the Flight Logs section of the Autel Sky app.

I think I did this. Is the attached screen shot the flight log? I can see there were only 5 satellites at take off, and you can see the home point has been set?

 

[Landey]

I think I did this. Is the attached screen shot the flight log? I can see there were only 5 satellites at take off, and you can see the home point has been set?

Screen is not the flight log, just a mapped representation of location, RC, home point and drone positions.
But both screenshots show the RC (you) being in a building. Is that correct?

 

[Puppies 59]

Screen is not the flight log, just a mapped representation of location, RC, home point and drone positions.
But both screenshots show the RC (you) being in a building. Is that correct?

Yes!

 

[Puppies 59]

Yes!

Sorry, no I wasn't in a building, I was in my garden.
I've had an email from Autel asking me to
"
#1 Take off the SD-Card and create transmit_log.txt and copy_log.txt file at the root of your sd-card
#2 Insert the card into the aircraft, turn on the aircraft and controller and wait for 10 minutes, the log will be created automatically to your SD-card
#3 Take off the card, zip all files, and send them to us"
The trouble is I don't have a clue on how to do this. My brother will, so I've asked him for help!

 

[CrazyDroner]

Oh No - Sorry for your loss. Ive been flying drones since before the Phantom 1 came along. One thing to keep in mind with drones no matter what drone. Loosing video signal is not the end of the drone. My advice to pilots is always this.... DONT PANIC. On the new drones you can hit Return to home and it should come back.... There could be a few reason you lost video signal, ive lost it a few times - When that happens just revert to your map overlay - Point the drone back to you - Gain 30 m or 20m in elevation and fly back to your position on the map. Thats if the Return home doesnt work. I must add , we lost a Mavic pro after a coastal take off at Hermanus in South Africa - Drone took off after 50 m of flight screen went black and lost the drone - We found it - It was taken out by a seagull. Mate of mine lost a brand new Mavic 2 Pro - Was shot down by a chap with a pellet gun and the drone impaled itself on a fence.... Off topic sorry.

 

[Puppies 59]

Oh No - Sorry for your loss. Ive been flying drones since before the Phantom 1 came along. One thing to keep in mind with drones no matter what drone. Loosing video signal is not the end of the drone. My advice to pilots is always this.... DONT PANIC. On the new drones you can hit Return to home and it should come back.... There could be a few reason you lost video signal, ive lost it a few times - When that happens just revert to your map overlay - Point the drone back to you - Gain 30 m or 20m in elevation and fly back to your position on the map. Thats if the Return home doesnt work. I must add , we lost a Mavic pro after a coastal take off at Hermanus in South Africa - Drone took off after 50 m of flight screen went black and lost the drone - We found it - It was taken out by a seagull.

Thanks for your reply.
I've been replaying things in my mind and after I retrieved the drone, I remember thinking that the battery must be flat, so I put it on the charger and there still 3 solid green lights and 1 flashing, so it wasn't flat. Also the battery was detached from the drone, so I can only conclude that it crashed into the tree and fell detaching the battery. The only reason I can think of that the flight was 33 minutes long, was after that time I switched the controller off!

 

[CrazyDroner]

Hiya - Sorry for my sloooow response. So basically the flight time is activated upon take off and motor shut down. The controller doesnt activate the flight time recording. You didnt perhaps loose sight that the drone was still airbourne somewhere along the way ? I had a situation like that few years back with a Mavic Pro V1. We were filming a MTB event for broadcast and the organiser had a check point at the top of a mountain range with a Ham Radio guy calling the numbers through of the riders before they entered single track. I did an orbit around the edge of the mountain and as the radio guy hit the TX button it made me loose control of the drone. I eventually couldnt see it - I didnt know that it was still airbourne and that it did a recovery landing into a tree ! I recovered it all well and safe - Nothing destoyed but it was scary moment - Did some research after that and found that basically any radio signal above 5Ghz can mess with the drone controls. Especially if its a big PUNCH of EMP. The problem is that so many of the new 5G cell towers are in that range. I know the new drones search and band hop nut its a massive problem.

 

[Puppies 59]

Hiya - Sorry for my sloooow response. So basically the flight time is activated upon take off and motor shut down. The controller doesnt activate the flight time recording. You didnt perhaps loose sight that the drone was still airbourne somewhere along the way ? I had a situation like that few years back with a Mavic Pro V1. We were filming a MTB event for broadcast and the organiser had a check point at the top of a mountain range with a Ham Radio guy calling the numbers through of the riders before they entered single track. I did an orbit around the edge of the mountain and as the radio guy hit the TX button it made me loose control of the drone. I eventually couldnt see it - I didnt know that it was still airbourne and that it did a recovery landing into a tree ! I recovered it all well and safe - Nothing destoyed but it was scary moment - Did some research after that and found that basically any radio signal above 5Ghz can mess with the drone controls. Especially if its a big PUNCH of EMP. The problem is that so many of the new 5G cell towers are in that range. I know the new drones search and band hop nut its a massive problem.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I uploaded the flight to Airdata. The drone only travelled about 70m, and the flight only lasted 23 seconds (13 of those were purely gaining altitude and 10 travelling forward.)
As previously mentioned the battery had become detached front the drone. Airdata shows the battery at take off 83%, and the landing as 83%. So if the flight had been 32 mins the battery would probably be near 0%?
Also from Airdata, I discovered that the satalite signal strength was dangerously low, and I'm thinking that although the telemetry was showing the drone as being 50m high, this would be inaccurate and could have been much lower and hence why I crashed into a tree. I'm also wondering why the front sensors didn't stop the drone, can a poor satellite signal cause this?

Cheers

 

[bkushner]

Just received my Lite plus today.
Did all the set up and calibrations etc.
Took of for my first flight and within 20 seconds I lost video feed

I tried return to home, but nothing happened. Total panic mode, I jumped in the car in the direction I flew and walked about a mile in open countryside looking for it. Then I resigned myself to having lost my £1200 drone and went home!

I started looking through the app and found the flight details and it had only travelled 70 odd meters. So I looked on Google maps to see where it could be. Then I got my Mavic air 2 out and scoured the area looks for a Bright orange drone. It's only when I got the footage from the mavic and studied it on my PC that I found the bugger!
Had to get a friendly passers-by to retrieve it for me from a wooded area for me as I'm disabled.
The Gimbal is broken and all of the props, but everything else is fine!
I looked at the footage from the Evo, but there wasn't anything on the sd card even though I hit record.

So I have no idea why it crashed. I've emailed support asking them to take it back for repair and hopefully they can read the flight data to see what happened?
Any thoughts from guys would be appreciated!

I'm betting you won't hear from support.

 

[Puppies 59]

I'm betting you won't hear from support.

Wrong....
I've had extensive communication with them by email and latterly by WhatsApp.
I had to extract the flight log from the drone, upload it to Google drive and send them the link.
I must admit that their English is pretty hard to decode, but then my Chinese is a bit sketchy .
Just waiting for them to get back to me with the results.

 

[bkushner]

I was referring to US support

 

[Puppies 59]

I was referring to US support

Okay, I wasn't aware that the US had different arrangements!

 

[Puppies 59]

Okay, I wasn't aware that the US had different arrangements!

OK some good news, I've to return it and get a new one. They still haven't got to the bottom of the problem after studying the flight log, but hope to get back to me soon.
So when I do find out, I'll post the results.

 

[Puppies 59]

New drone received yesterday, no issues this time.
Did a quick range test today, got to 4.3km with full rc signal, compared to my MA2 which at 3.5km would return to home after totally losing signal over the same route....very impressed. Oh , and the video quality is in a different league!
Only issue is that I miss the advanced Gimbal settings from the MA2