Recently, we were conducting a waypoint mission to collect imagery for a mosaic over marshes in Louisiana using a Matrice 350 RTK and Zenmuse P1. I flew it manually to a position near the start point and hit play. I noticed a few seconds in that the P1 had not pointed straight down. Then one of my VOs noticed the drone was descending rapidly. I tried to use the stick to force it back up but it didn’t take any input so I paused the mission (should have done that first!) and it stopped descending at about 57 ft above takeoff point - it had started at 388 ft - and hovered there for about 15 seconds. Then one of my VOs took the controller from me because he had more experience with the M350. He pointed the P1 straight down and the drone promptly continued descending. Though, oddly, we don’t see this gimbal motion in the flight log. Yikes!! We had screen recording on and the P1 view expanded and saw the drone stopping right above the water. The corresponding message in the log is “Aircraft at the boundary of an Altitude Zone or aircraft altitude too low. Flight task paused.” No message about the mission resuming. We assumed someone had hit play, but maybe moving the camera gimbal caused the mission to resume. This was scary! We congratulated ourselves for seeing stopping the aircraft from going in the water, but it seems like it stopped itself.
We checked the aircraft and controller and the flight logs and really don’t know what happened. We are wondering if the waypoint mission was corrupted somehow. Also, we had left the controller on for about 30 minutes between flights and wonder if that had anything to do with it. We are using AirData to examine the flight log.
We checked the aircraft and controller and the flight logs and really don’t know what happened. We are wondering if the waypoint mission was corrupted somehow. Also, we had left the controller on for about 30 minutes between flights and wonder if that had anything to do with it. We are using AirData to examine the flight log.
