DJI Spark Drone

Boone NC

Description

On Feb. 23rd around 1:30 pm, I was flying a mission about 1/2 a mile from the greenway area in Boone at a private residence in Class G airspace at approximately 350ft AGL when the aircraft experienced an abnormal compass function and GPS signal loss. The aircraft then proceeded to become unresponsive to the remote control including pause/stop function and entered into a "fly away". The camera feed however persisted and I could see the UAV (drone) was somewhere in the proximity of the greenway meadows when all connection was lost and the aircraft entered into an emergency landing. Due to hardware malfunction and signal loss during the flyaway, I lost VLOS and GPS map tracking. I only have a guess of where the aircraft landed based on the camera feed. The missing aircraft is a white DJI Spark marked FA3HCK C4Y7 on the side. It is likely somewhere within a 1/2-mile radius of 36.2081889,-81.6545267. If you spot or have retrieved this aircraft please respond to this AD. A fair reward will be offered upon safe return! *FYI: For those wondering...The mission was not initiated or intended to fly over the public greenway property or restricted airspace as that would have been in violation of the land owner's permission. This was simply a result of an unfortunate hardware malfunction on the GPS chipset that will need to be serviced if found and returned. The mission was intended to stay in VLOS on a flight radius of around 1/2 an acre of private land with full permission for the flight. Thanks for reading and please reach out to me if you have a lead!