Welcome to Akutan Alaska the 25th island in the Aleutian Chain. Located next to the World Famous Dutch Harbor. Akutan is home to Trident Seafood's often shown in the Deadliest Catch where they process everything from Pollock, Cod and Crab during the many seasons. Having suffered a Flyaway and loss at resulting last sighting as the drone flew East/North East out to sea. I would love to know for certain why, however the only thing I can assume is that the Optimera Wifi Satellite dish measuring over 10' across which was pointing from behind the buildings and pointed almost exactly where signal was lost was the source. I had launched from an elevated platform hovered over the dock getting a home point reference than flew across the bay. Starting 30' above the waterfall with video on slowly climbed to 400' then panned up the mountain side to show the source of the water. Couple of quick shots and then started back when I saw the dreaded communication error. I flipped the mode switch and hit RTH, drone hovered around 400' elevation and appeared to move 30-40 feet side to side. After about 10 minutes drone was observed flying easterly out of the bay towards the Bearing Sea. With over 378 flights logged starting out with the Mavic Air this one puzzles me. What am I missing?
Flyaway lost at sea...
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Meta4
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The recorded flight data is always the first port of call when looking to solve flight incident mysteries.
Since you've already looked at Airdata, just post a link to the Airdata summary, but make sure you've ticked the box to share data.
That's unlikely to have caused the issue.
PhantomWetSuits
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I think were going to find you that he lost signal near the mountain Pan and entered Atti Mode most likely .
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Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.
Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.
Atti mode would have been nice, loss of connection and grey screen with the drone not going to RTH upon command and upon disconnecting from control.
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I have attached both the morning flight and the afternoon flight raw data. below. I would appreciate any insight, potential wifi / signal interface there is a Starlink antenna on the deck where I was flying from and I was walking around that area. Optimera satellite antenna pointed towards the area where the drone was. Normally I had been flying in Atti Mode and the day before had switched over to GPS mode due to winds over the mountain and a low flight above a dam for inspection purposes.
Meta4
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Here's what that flight looks like:
Your flight data doesn't have anything to solve the mystery.
You launched, flew out and turned back towards home at 5:30.
The drone was 400 ft up over open sea, the battery was at 77% and the the drone was making good speed towards home when signal was lost at 5:47.6.
At the time the drone was in steady level flight toward home, at a speed of 19 mph.
There's no indication of a collision or flight irregularity.
We have no data to show what happened after loss of signal.
Failsafe Action was set to RTH and with the light wind and battery level the drone should have come home.
I doubt that the antennas had any effect.
At worst, signal interference might swamp the control signal which would trigger the Failsafe Action and bring the drone home.
It won't cause a drone to fly away or fall from the sky.
If you've lost signal, flipping switches or pressing the RTH button will have no effect
How confident are you about this observation?
Someone has exceptional eyesight to see the drone at that distance.
I can't think of much that would cause what you've described.
On losing signal, the drone should have initiated RTH and in those conditions it should have returned safely.
If the drone regained signal briefly around the time you pressed RTH, that could cancel the RTH and leave the drone hovering, but that should have been in the recorded data.
But there's nothing that would cause the drone to fly off somewhere on its own.
Been flying for several years, keeping the drone in sight is what we do especially if we want to keep our 107 certification. That being said it was the only white object against the green background further aided by the Firehouse Strobe light that was visible from the shore. Yes the drone should have returned, hard fail safe when controller is shut off is also suppose to initiate this feature which was also attempted. With out a drone to analyze I an speculate what happened which is the same place it would appear that you got to. Thank you for double checking my data, and with that I will be going back to a spectator on the Phantom sideline.
I was very thankful that I also had insurance on mine both 1 MM in Liability and Hull Loss. I applied the settlement and have moved over to the Inspire 2.
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