Welcome Inspire Pilots!
Join our free DJI Inspire community today!
Sign up

Inspire 2 Flyaway

Joined
Feb 23, 2017
Messages
15
Reaction score
5
Hi guys, posting this to hopefully help out others. I was on a job the other day photographing and filming a navel ship with an Inspire 2 + X5S. Managed to get some good footage of the ship but after about 5 minutes had a warning saying 'magnetic interference, switch to ATTI if aircraft changes behaviour'. The aircraft seemed fine but I switched to ATTI mode anyway just incase. We continued to take photos and then a few minutes later lost full connection of the drone on the iPad and the controller itself. Every failsafe failed. The drone did not return to home and did not make any attempt to land. It went out to sea, probably never to been seen again...

After researching and speaking to various people in the industry, it seems that the radars and satellite dishes on the ship completely fried the insides of the Inspire causing complete loss of connection and control.

In the UK you are required to write an 'Operations Manual' when you apply for your CAA SUA licence. Our Ops manual was roughly around 11,000 words and after writing so much about all the failsafes that are in place if something was to ever go wrong, it was truly terrifying when nothing worked.

I couldn't find much on the internet about flying drones near vessels/ships. So just a word of caution to anyone planning to do something similar in the future.
 
Hi guys, posting this to hopefully help out others. I was on a job the other day photographing and filming a navel ship with an Inspire 2 + X5S. Managed to get some good footage of the ship but after about 5 minutes had a warning saying 'magnetic interference, switch to ATTI if aircraft changes behaviour'. The aircraft seemed fine but I switched to ATTI mode anyway just incase. We continued to take photos and then a few minutes later lost full connection of the drone on the iPad and the controller itself. Every failsafe failed. The drone did not return to home and did not make any attempt to land. It went out to sea, probably never to been seen again...

After researching and speaking to various people in the industry, it seems that the radars and satellite dishes on the ship completely fried the insides of the Inspire causing complete loss of connection and control.

In the UK you are required to write an 'Operations Manual' when you apply for your CAA SUA licence. Our Ops manual was roughly around 11,000 words and after writing so much about all the failsafes that are in place if something was to ever go wrong, it was truly terrifying when nothing worked.

I couldn't find much on the internet about flying drones near vessels/ships. So just a word of caution to anyone planning to do something similar in the future.
Sorry to hear you lost the I2 but at least your commercial insurance will replace it (assuming you had hull cover). Most commercial UAV policies will have a replacement to you in a few days.
Was the marine radar danger not taken into account in your site survey and risk assessment?
 
Makes me sad to hear u lost it. So what research led you to conclude the nav sys was fried? Do you know for certain what happened? Do you have any more fine details about the loss?
 
I would say you are far from knowing conclusively the cause of your incident.

I suppose it is theoretically possible for the ship's radar to overload the Inspire's radio antennas if you flew right in front of the dish while it was transmitting. That would be the only thing I can think of knocking out the radio link but leaving everything else intact. That would be the first I've heard of such a thing.

A loss of link should have resulted in the Inspire entering RTH though.

All that notwithstanding, the ship is most likely made of steel. If you got close enough, that was your compass error right there. Switching to ATTI was the right first step. The next step should have been to fly to a safe distance and re-evaluate the compass. If still no joy, you should have landed and attempted to determine the cause before resuming.
 
Maybe the crew was messing with you. Threw a fake GPS at your drone.

Please explain: "threw a fake GPS at your drone." Are you asserting that someone maliciously send a GPS jamming signal to the drone? If so, that signal is omni-directional and would most likely disrupt all other GPS receivers in the area unless they were SAASM enabled and the proper keys loaded.
 
Last edited:
Hi guys, posting this to hopefully help out others. I was on a job the other day photographing and filming a navel ship with an Inspire 2 + X5S. Managed to get some good footage of the ship but after about 5 minutes had a warning saying 'magnetic interference, switch to ATTI if aircraft changes behaviour'. The aircraft seemed fine but I switched to ATTI mode anyway just incase. We continued to take photos and then a few minutes later lost full connection of the drone on the iPad and the controller itself. Every failsafe failed. The drone did not return to home and did not make any attempt to land. It went out to sea, probably never to been seen again...

After researching and speaking to various people in the industry, it seems that the radars and satellite dishes on the ship completely fried the insides of the Inspire causing complete loss of connection and control.

In the UK you are required to write an 'Operations Manual' when you apply for your CAA SUA licence. Our Ops manual was roughly around 11,000 words and after writing so much about all the failsafes that are in place if something was to ever go wrong, it was truly terrifying when nothing worked.

I couldn't find much on the internet about flying drones near vessels/ships. So just a word of caution to anyone planning to do something similar in the future.

I took off from a steel bridge that I guess was reinforced. My I2 flew erratically until it was far enough away from the bridge. I landed about 100 meters away instead of trying to force land it on the bridge. On another occasion I was flying near the harbor in southern Helsinki where the large ferries arrive and depart from, I noticed quite a bit of interference and was only able to overcome it once I moved away from the ships. I would guess that your problem was all the broadcasts in and around the same frequency as your drone and controller link.
 
I would say you are far from knowing conclusively the cause of your incident.

I suppose it is theoretically possible for the ship's radar to overload the Inspire's radio antennas if you flew right in front of the dish while it was transmitting. That would be the only thing I can think of knocking out the radio link but leaving everything else intact. That would be the first I've heard of such a thing.

A loss of link should have resulted in the Inspire entering RTH though.

All that notwithstanding, the ship is most likely made of steel. If you got close enough, that was your compass error right there. Switching to ATTI was the right first step. The next step should have been to fly to a safe distance and re-evaluate the compass. If still no joy, you should have landed and attempted to determine the cause before resuming.

I agree with not knowing conclusively but unfortunately without the drone being sent to DJI I don't think I'll ever know exactly what caused it. As for landing to determine the cause before resuming that's a painful lesson learnt... All fully insured though so not the end of the world.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BigAl07
I would guess that your problem was all the broadcasts in and around the same frequency as your drone and controller link.

This could cause a loss of link but the drone would not just drift away. It would RTH. I fly in urban areas with tons of WiFi and other wireless. I've had my range shortened and I've lost link a few times but the drone always went to RTH and I was able to retake control.
 
This could cause a loss of link but the drone would not just drift away. It would RTH. I fly in urban areas with tons of WiFi and other wireless. I've had my range shortened and I've lost link a few times but the drone always went to RTH and I was able to retake control.

Maybe. Who's to say? This is a perplexing situation. However, for sure the boat/ship didn't blast the drone as someone suggested. I would not rule out RF interference coming from the ships and surrounding area.
 
This could cause a loss of link but the drone would not just drift away. It would RTH. I fly in urban areas with tons of WiFi and other wireless. I've had my range shortened and I've lost link a few times but the drone always went to RTH and I was able to retake control.

It 100% did not RTH as the drone would be in possession and I'm quite sure it made no attempt to RTH as surely we would have regained connection if it was coming back to us? Do you know if its possible for the drone to stop in the air where it lost connection and attempt to land directly below?
 
It 100% did not RTH as the drone would be in possession and I'm quite sure it made no attempt to RTH as surely we would have regained connection if it was coming back to us? Do you know if its possible for the drone to stop in the air where it lost connection and attempt to land directly below?

Yes. If you have your settings for it to just land as opposed to RTH then it may have landed in the water when it failed to connect.
 
Yes. If you have your settings for it to just land as opposed to RTH then it may have landed in the water when it failed to connect.

We didn't have the settings set to that to happen, just wondering if it was a possibly if the drone realised RTH wasn't possible for whatever reason, to then attempt a direct landing below?
 
Commiserations on the loss of the I2 from a fellow Makem. What was it that was departing - Was it the Corona?

I'm not 100% sure that the ship's radar will have messed things up for you, esp in that area as if it had fried the I2's electronics, then those living on over in Bishopwearmouth and around the Garths would have had fried tv's radios etc! Unless of course you perched the I2 right in front of the radar scanner! It most likely may have caused interference and loss of C2 link for short times, but the I2 should have coped with that.

Couple of thoughts for you:

Did you calibrate the compass before flying? And if so where? On the Quayside, or over the solid ground behind your marked home-point?
If you did a compass cal on the Quayside, then you've probably unwittingly screwed the compass by doing the calibration over an area that would have a lot of metal reinforcing, shuttering and beams underfoot - even the ground to the side could have pilings in it :(.

Did you do any firmware or DJI Go updates in the days or hours prior to the flight? If so, did you check that all your flight settings were as you expected them to be after doing the updates?

Did you actally see it fly out to toward the piers? If not, then you could have a look around the last shown location on the north foreshore - it may have landed somewhere in the scrub between the footpath and the houses at Topcliff. Although by now, someone would probably have found it and pawned it down the bottom of Hylton road!

I've had that type of compass error show up a couple of times while in flight. Each time I've stopped, hovered and switched over to ATTI mode for a second or so, then tried flicking back to Sport and P-GPS to see if it would hold position or if the error recurred. In all cases I've expereinced, the compass error was only momentary and the I2 was able to go back in to P-GPS mode and fly back without an issue. I've also noticed that recently (as in last couple of firmware/dji-go versions) that compass error can appear when manually switching into or out of ATTI mode.

What actually happened around the time you lost control? where you still flying in ATTI mode, or had you switched back to GPS? I'm wondering if you could have either lost the video downlink (but not C&C) and unwittingly either manually triggered RTH to land, or triggered an Autoloand by accident (instead of RTH) - did you try to RTH and if so did you use the remote RTH button or the on-screen one? Or alternatively, you've lost the video downlink, but not the C&C link, become disoriented as a result, been in ATTI mode and without realising you've still got control, the wind has simply blown the I2 away to sea?

Final possibility... the compass error was real and sustained, so when it lost C&C link and tried to RTH it simply headed back the way it thought was the right way (but the compass heading was misreading), so simply flew off. RTH, either when initiated by you, or by loss of C2 signal, still needs the aircraft to be able to know where it's heading, and where it's at - ie needs compass and GPS positioning, so (sadly) isn't totally infallible. FWIW, there was a spate of RTH issues a month or so back with the Phantom 3 that resulted in fly-aways, turned out that DJI Go wasn't recording/updating the correct Home position at take-off. So when people used the RTH to fly home on autopilot instead of flying themselves... the P3's flew away - seems they probably tried to go to the previous home point instead!

Anyway, hope the insurance coughs up and you're not out of action for too long!
 
  • Like
Reactions: deltalimatango
Commiserations on the loss of the I2 from a fellow Makem. What was it that was departing - Was it the Corona?

I'm not 100% sure that the ship's radar will have messed things up for you, esp in that area as if it had fried the I2's electronics, then those living on over in Bishopwearmouth and around the Garths would have had fried tv's radios etc! Unless of course you perched the I2 right in front of the radar scanner! It most likely may have caused interference and loss of C2 link for short times, but the I2 should have coped with that.

Couple of thoughts for you:

Did you calibrate the compass before flying? And if so where? On the Quayside, or over the solid ground behind your marked home-point?
If you did a compass cal on the Quayside, then you've probably unwittingly screwed the compass by doing the calibration over an area that would have a lot of metal reinforcing, shuttering and beams underfoot - even the ground to the side could have pilings in it :(.

Did you do any firmware or DJI Go updates in the days or hours prior to the flight? If so, did you check that all your flight settings were as you expected them to be after doing the updates?

Did you actally see it fly out to toward the piers? If not, then you could have a look around the last shown location on the north foreshore - it may have landed somewhere in the scrub between the footpath and the houses at Topcliff. Although by now, someone would probably have found it and pawned it down the bottom of Hylton road!

I've had that type of compass error show up a couple of times while in flight. Each time I've stopped, hovered and switched over to ATTI mode for a second or so, then tried flicking back to Sport and P-GPS to see if it would hold position or if the error recurred. In all cases I've expereinced, the compass error was only momentary and the I2 was able to go back in to P-GPS mode and fly back without an issue. I've also noticed that recently (as in last couple of firmware/dji-go versions) that compass error can appear when manually switching into or out of ATTI mode.

What actually happened around the time you lost control? where you still flying in ATTI mode, or had you switched back to GPS? I'm wondering if you could have either lost the video downlink (but not C&C) and unwittingly either manually triggered RTH to land, or triggered an Autoloand by accident (instead of RTH) - did you try to RTH and if so did you use the remote RTH button or the on-screen one? Or alternatively, you've lost the video downlink, but not the C&C link, become disoriented as a result, been in ATTI mode and without realising you've still got control, the wind has simply blown the I2 away to sea?

Final possibility... the compass error was real and sustained, so when it lost C&C link and tried to RTH it simply headed back the way it thought was the right way (but the compass heading was misreading), so simply flew off. RTH, either when initiated by you, or by loss of C2 signal, still needs the aircraft to be able to know where it's heading, and where it's at - ie needs compass and GPS positioning, so (sadly) isn't totally infallible. FWIW, there was a spate of RTH issues a month or so back with the Phantom 3 that resulted in fly-aways, turned out that DJI Go wasn't recording/updating the correct Home position at take-off. So when people used the RTH to fly home on autopilot instead of flying themselves... the P3's flew away - seems they probably tried to go to the previous home point instead!

Anyway, hope the insurance coughs up and you're not out of action for too long!

It was the Corona! What a small world.

We did do a compass calibration before take/off because it physically wouldn’t let us take off without doing one. Could be because we updated the software earlier that morning? Since the incident I've read plenty of articles stating that you should only do a compass cal in a wide open area and only once every few weeks/months if you fly in the same area a lot.

That screenshot up above isn’t completely accurate in regards to where the drone actually was at the time we lost connection. We continued flying for a few minutes from where that log says the drone was, before it went out towards sea.

At the time of the connection loss we were flying in ATTI mode but tried to switch back to GPS and it was unresponsive. We attempted RTH multiple times too without any response.
 
We did do a compass calibration before take/off because it physically wouldn’t let us take off without doing one. .
Ahhh...... there's your answer then.
Poor magnometer calibration. You simply should have moved to a different location (several feet away) instead of attempting calibration.

Mystery solved.....
 
From what you've said, I'd be more inclined to think that a mixture of factors led to the loss of your I2...

Updates earlier in the day, coupled with the compass calibration before flight, then loss of C2 being the icing on the cake :( .

A lot of people say to do compass cals before every flight, but I've found that advice to be more risky than leaving a decent calibration alone until you really need to do one! As an example, I did a compass cal on my P4 back in the winter and it started toilet bowling on the first flight after, something it had never done, thought it was down to having some led lights nearby that had magnets in the ends of them. Recal'd again, and it was slightly better, but not a lot, so packed up for the day. It wasn't until the next morning I realised that the gloves I was wearing had fold-back finger tips and they had magnets in them... guess what was right next to the compasses when I did the calibration :( . Since correcting that mistake, I've only calibrated the compass once more... after replacing the legs on the P4 following a crash. With the I2, I've only done a compass cal once, and that was several months after I got it and when the compass readout values were showing high amber to red values irrespective of where the aircraft was.

So, I'd hazard a guess that the firmware or Go 4 updates you did may have reset or altered some flight parameters, specifically the RTH behaviours. Then your pre-flight compass calibration was probably done over the concrete of the quayside with a load of ironwork buried underneath, leading to a calibration that was fine over the quay, but which went wildly out once flying clear of the quayside over the river. That threw the compass exception, so you switched over to ATTI. You then got some interference which blocked out the c2 link and initiated the RTH, that then either tried to land in place, or tried to fly home using a bad compass which then gave bad positioning and it headed off into the north sea. You may have got control at some point, but as you couldn't see the telemetry feed on DJI Go, you won't have realised and to compound things even more, the drone may have drifted with the wind....

The Ops manual is great, but real life is messy and things don't always fit the scenarios we've envisaged or what we've written down :(

The log flight path shows the last indicated position over the north foreshore... did you actually see it fly off towards the piers?

Also, you said it wouldn't let you take off without doing a calibration.... can you remember what sort of message it gave you? (If you get it again on future flights, move 20-30ft away from where you were before trying a calibration, and make sure it's over decent solid ground and not somewhere that's man-made.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: CoreySnipes
From what you've said, I'd be more inclined to think that a mixture of factors led to the loss of your I2...

Updates earlier in the day, coupled with the compass calibration before flight, then loss of C2 being the icing on the cake :( .

A lot of people say to do compass cals before every flight, but I've found that advice to be more risky than leaving a decent calibration alone until you really need to do one! As an example, I did a compass cal on my P4 back in the winter and it started toilet bowling on the first flight after, something it had never done, thought it was down to having some led lights nearby that had magnets in the ends of them. Recal'd again, and it was slightly better, but not a lot, so packed up for the day. It wasn't until the next morning I realised that the gloves I was wearing had fold-back finger tips and they had magnets in them... guess what was right next to the compasses when I did the calibration :( . Since correcting that mistake, I've only calibrated the compass once more... after replacing the legs on the P4 following a crash. With the I2, I've only done a compass cal once, and that was several months after I got it and when the compass readout values were showing red.

So, I'd hazard a guess that the firmware or Go 4 updates you did may have reset or altered some flight parameters, specifically the RTH behaviours. Then your pre-flight compass calibration was probably done over the concrete of the quayside with a load of ironwork buried underneath, leading to a calibration that was fine over the quay, but which went wildly out once flying clear of the quayside over the river. That threw the compass exception, so you switched over to ATTI. You then got some interference which blocked out the c2 link and initiated the RTH, that then either tried to land in place, or tried to fly home using a bad compass which then gave bad positioning and it headed off into the north sea. You may have got control at some point, but as you couldn't see the telemetry feed on DJI Go, you won't have realised and to compound things even more, the drone may have drifted with the wind....

The Ops manual is great, but real life is messy and things don't always fit the scenarios we've envisaged or what we've written down :(

The log flight path shows the last indicated position over the north foreshore... did you actually see it fly off towards the piers?
Test flights should always be made after any updates to sign the aircraft off as fit for mission - I usually log five flights before I am prepared to sign off the aircraft back into service.
I don't think this was done.
DJI have a history of fouling things up with every firmware re-hash. They never fully document changes and therefore its imperative a full system/flight test is done before any commercial ops takes place. You simply cannot update in the morning and go fly a commercial op in the afternoon - Not with DJI's track record.
The rest I would bet my entire fleet on was a bad compass calibration......
 

New Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
22,273
Messages
210,620
Members
34,254
Latest member
adamwalker4963