Strange behaviour: NFZ, Compass Error, Heading Exception

[SpeedCore]

I read some disturbing posts about fly-aways and now I'm a bit concerned since I had a strange flight behaviour a few days ago that I'd like to share that with you. Maybe you can understand the cause of that what was happening. I was out at a waterfall on a sunny day in switzerland and wanted to take some aereal shots. No NFZ, not even a warning zone here. When I was some meters out, I got the following message:

"Current RTH route will pass a No-Fly-Zone. Pay attention to the aircraft's position to avoid RTH failure."

As you can see, I was only 85m out at 27m altitude, so there shoudn't be a connection issue between rc and spark. One nore time: No NFZ here, not even a warning zone.

A few moments later I got "Warning: Compass Error. Exit P-GPS mode" and "Warning: In Flight,working,IMU,encountersheadingexception,please switch to atti mode if craft behave abnormally"

I didn't feel comfortable with all these warnings over water and flew home backwards, snapping some shots of the falls. There were many people around the falls, maybe the mobile phones accumulated strong interferences here, that's all I can think of.

Here's the detailed flight log:
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Looking forward to your thoughts!

 

[noooris]

Happened to me a couple of days ago. Exactly the same set of problems. I checked now and I realize that I also got the NFZ warning. Three different threads in the past 2 days. Three identical problems. Three different continents.

Is this some solar activity (KP is low, but I know thats not the only thing)

 

[SpeedCore]

The only thing that contained metal in the immediate vicinity was the bench I was sitting on. I'm not sure, if it's a compass or a GPS issue. I took a flight a few minutes earlier with only 6 satellites and an automativ fallback to ATTI at takeoff. It took some seconds to lock more satellites and then continued in P-GPS mode. Anyway, I had warnings on this first flight as well, but not the one mentioning the RTH NFZ issue. The SD card was freshly formatted, it was the first time using it. Formatted it via DJI Go 4 app. It's a Sandisk 64GB Silver (80MB/s). That's the detailed log of the first flight: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com Doesn't look like the optimal spot to fly, I guess.

 

[noooris]

The only thing that contained metal in the immediate vicinity was the bench I was sitting on. I'm not sure, if it's a compass or a GPS issue. I took a flight a few minutes earlier with only 6 satellites and an automativ fallback to ATTI at takeoff. It took some seconds to lock more satellites and then continued in P-GPS mode. Anyway, I had warnings on this first flight as well, but not the one mentioning the RTH NFZ issue. The SD card was freshly formatted, it was the first time using it. Formatted it via DJI Go 4 app. It's a Sandisk 64GB Silver (80MB/s). That's the detailed log of the first flight: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com Doesn't look like the optimal spot to fly, I guess.

Sorry I just finished editing my reply. I went back to my own problem a couple of days ago and realized it was identical. This is scary!

 

[SpeedCore]

There was a lot of water dust in the air near the falls. Maybe that could have affected the GPS reception, but I guess there's not much water dust in Kuwait

EDIT: Just a thought... did anyone have issues caused by rf jammers that were put up intentionally to prevent people from flying drones at specific locations? I didn't see any other drones in the air, although this is one of the big sightseeing spots in Switzerland. There were no "no drones" signs so I don't think intentional jamming is an issue but it could be, though.

 

[noooris]

There is real dust in Kuwait But even if it was a GPS reception issue, why would it say there is a compass error, an imu error, and an NFZ warning. Its a more general issue affecting many components.

 

[noooris]

Radio jamming would cause it to drop connection to the remote. It could also conceivably jam the GPS signal. However, to cause an imu error, and a compass error you would need something like an electromagnetic pulse gun. I highly doubt any of that stuff would be used in Switzerland, and not in a location like this.

 

[SpeedCore]

Guess you're right... So maybe we had the same behaviour by chance or there's really something going on (solar activity?)... I'm back in Austria now, so I can't try flying at the same spot with recalibrated aircraft but I'll do some testflights in my homezone today to see if the issues continue.

 

[noooris]

It could also just be bad programming. Maybe the only real problem we had was just the compass error, but all these other errors are just falsely triggered. Unfortunately its a guessing game, with the deaf leading the blind

I will head out to the desert today to test her over soft sand dunes and see if everything is normal. My kp is showing 1 for the rest of the day (which is unusually low, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it less than 2).

 

[Wombatclay]

This sounds like a GPS accuracy problem. It thought the Spark was else where. The last 6 days has seem some high Kp levels (Solar flare) which does disrupt GPS signals. Even your car GPS gets affected.... ever notice it says your driving about 10-20m from where you actually are.... imagine the Spark doing that then the internal code work trying to figure it out and compensate. Need to review all aspects around you before flying including weather you can't see. Have had plenty of days which I would have loved flying but didn't want to Rick the Spark in Kp 6 conditions.

 

[Wombatclay]

It could also just be bad programming. Maybe the only real problem we had was just the compass error, but all these other errors are just falsely triggered. Unfortunately its a guessing game, with the deaf leading the blind

I will head out to the desert today to test her over soft sand dunes and see if everything is normal. My kp is showing 1 for the rest of the day (which is unusually low, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it less than 2).

1 means not activity with solar winds... have found anything over Kp5 starts messing with the GPS and compass. My limit is 4. Have tried a Kp6 which gave me loss of signal.

 

[noooris]

I’m realizing now that the kp index was 5 when i was flying, even though my app (UAV forecast) had said 3. I also discovered that kp is highly localized (I had assumed given the relative size of earth to sun and the distance that it would be pretty much global).

I’ve been searching for a better kp index app and I found “My Aurora Forecast and Alerts”. Its a highly detailed app with a nice long term forecast feature, accurate 2 decimal index based on location, even details of solar winds. Very fascinating, but remember that this app is for people who want to see the Aurora, so it considers a higher kp good.

 

[SpeedCore]

This website says that kp was between 2 and 3 on the past Sunday:
The Kp-index - Sunday, 1 October 2017

So that shoudln't be a problem for our spark's gps, right? Speaking of solar activity: I was also experiencing problems with my car gps when driving home on Sunday.
That would support the solar storm thesis, but the website tells kp was just 2-3. Strange things are happening.

 

[DesertWindAero]

Same thing with this guy in Iceland.

What's going on?

 

[Freebird32]

I read some disturbing posts about fly-aways and now I'm a bit concerned since I had a strange flight behaviour a few days ago that I'd like to share that with you. Maybe you can understand the cause of that what was happening. I was out at a waterfall on a sunny day in switzerland and wanted to take some aereal shots. No NFZ, not even a warning zone here. When I was some meters out, I got the following message:

"Current RTH route will pass a No-Fly-Zone. Pay attention to the aircraft's position to avoid RTH failure."

I was flying in my backyard today and got this same warning. Same place I've been flying without that warning. I am off-line in 'airplane mode' and tablet is connected to RC with cable. I do have nearby zones, but am not in them. Got a compass error too which I corrected by moving the Spark. Very strange behavior considering I have flown in this spot dozens of times. Still on version 0400 FW without any issues until this popped up and I was only a few feet from the spot I took from.